For those of you that enjoy a good power ballad and a little bit of reach and grab action, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ll be DJing at ATP Festivals ‘ Nightmare Before Xmas’ this weekend in MInehead.
You’ll find us in the Crazy Horse venue on Friday night 1am – 4am – oooh its a late one for the grannies!!!
Should be an amazing weekend with Melvins, Squarepusher, Big Business and Torche to name but a few, do come and say hello…

FRIDAY DJ SLOTS – CRAZY HORSE
9PM – 1AM – DECLAN ALLEN
1AM – 4AM – CAPSULE GIRLS

Last Sunday we went to interview Tony Iommi for our Home Of Metal project, and while waiting for him to receive his Walk Of Stars in the bitterly cold Birmingham rain we took shelter in the ICC.  Walking around, a little lost was none other than Ronnie Dio (of Rainbow – and not the puppets), so we helped him find his way and were rewarded with a photo – how happy do I look, well we all know how much I love a good power ballad!

It should also be noted  (taken from Wikipedia) – “Ronnie James Dio renowned for his consistently powerful voice and for popularizing the “devil’s horns” hand gesture in metal culture. He is currently collaborating on a project with former Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Vinny Appice, which is going under the name Heaven and Hell.
The Interview with Tony Iommi will be on the Home Of Metal website shortly.

Our friend Juan Rae came up with the idea of Tape Club, whereby every couple of months we get together at a mates house and produce a tape to swap, we all chip in with lots of booze and snacks and over the course of the evening listen to one side of everyones tapes chosen at random out of a bag.

Its a great idea, mainly because it makes you listen to loads of records you’ve not heard for a while and get excited about your record collection all over again! In a Fluxus stylee we all set ourselves challenges for the theme of the tape – this time I’ve gone for (surprise! surprise!) an animal related theme.

Courtesy of Popcards.fr

Side A
Pontiak – White Mice
High Places – Canary
Arbouretum – Buffalo Ballet

Pram – Monkey Puzzle
Mouse On Mars – Catching Butterflies With Hands
Black Dice – Seabird
Jefferson Airplane – White Rabbit
Devendra Banhart – Dogs They Make Up The Dark
PW Long – Eagleeye
Alabama Thunder Pussy – Mosquito
Fannypack – Bunnies
King Kong – White Horse
Oxes – Boss Kitty

Courtesy of Popcards.fr

Side B
Blevin Blectum – Real Live Escargot
Coil – Blue Rats
Techno Animal – Piranha
Neurosis – United Sheep
Electric Wizard – Black Butterfly
Black Sabbath – War Pigs
John Renbourn – Goat Island
Captain Beefheart – China Pig
Songs:Ohio – Tigress
Palace – Come A Little Dog
Polar Bear – Tay

I thought it was about that time of year to dig out this press shot!
As inspired by Ideals recent BHM Doppelgänger facebook group, hours of fun.

Its that time of year again – when the entertaining website ‘Birmingham is Not Shit’ holds their ‘Brummie of The Year’ nominations, Capsule were lucky enough to come third last year,  winner was the outspoken Digbeth landlord John Tighe, who founded the campaign to keep Digbeth vibrant! Second was Blogger extraordinaire Pete Ashton, who pretty much single handedly got the creative industries blogging, including getting us started.

So who would be worthy this year, its a hard one – let us know who you think deserves to be nominated and crowned as Brummie of The Year?

I think it would be hard for me to choose between Johnny Doom better known as being the late night dj for Kerrang! Radio and previous lead vocalist of the band Doom,  Johnny has been an amazing advocate for our Home Of Metal project, his early support and first hand knowledge has been invaluable. But whats best is he isn’t a man afraid of hard work and got stuck in when he was co-ordinating the stage crew for us at this years Supersonic Festival, his crew are clearly the unsung heros of the festival, along with our volunteers and sound crew.

Photo courtesy of Penny  Mcconnell
My other nomination would go to Helga Henry at Fierce Earth, for the way she so generously shares her knowledge and contacts and the way she encourages so many of us working in the creative industries, and most importantly for her work in the tea room at Supersonic.
Get involved here – http://www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk/award

Oh what fun we had and really quite remarkable that even despite the terrible weather the show was a total sell out, with over 1200 people in attendance, all the bands were amazing especially the mighty Shellac – Bob, Steve and Todd how we love you so.

Some amazing photos of the bands by Pete Ashton

Photos of folks in fancy dress by Katja Ogrin

and the highlight of the night for us was when Sara (our latest Capsule Granny) was asked by Steve to have her photo taken with him, separated at birth!!!

* On a more solemn note – Capsule acknowledge that there were problems with the venue in terms of the bar and toilets, and although we have little control over these areas as they are run by the venue itself, we continue to urge them to improve on these matters. Despite this we hope that the event itself was of the highest quality, we appreciate your continued support.

Just a little reminder that this Saturday we are hosting the ATP Release The Bats Halloween party in Space 2 at the Custard Factory, with an unmissable line up (only show outside of London):
SHELLAC / OM / WOODEN SHJIPS / PISSED JEANS / LIGHTNING BOLT + DJ ANDY WEATHERALL
Doors 6.00pm – Lightning Bolt perform at 6.30pm

There are still a handful of tickets available from:
Ideal 18 / 20 Gibb Square, The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA
Polar Bear 10 York Rd, Kings Heath, Birmingham, B14 7RZ, 0121 441 5202
Swordfish Cheltenham House, 14-16 Temple St, Birmingham, B2 5BG, 0121 633 4859

Now on to competition time:
ATP invite all Release The Bats ticketholders to dress up for Halloween, either as something traditionally spooky or as something to do with one of the bands. Like last year there will be Best Costume and Best Photo competitions, with prices including ATP Chalets, Polaroid PoGo Cameras and ATP goodies.
•    People wearing costumes should take a picture with either one of our roving photographers or at the Release The Bats Photo Booth. The three best costumes on the night will win prizes including a PoGo. Images of the costumes from all three Bats events will then go onto www.atpfestival.com/releasethebats where people will be able to vote to find the overall chalet winner!

•    The best photo competition will be judged after the events through photos uploaded to Flickr at www.flickr.com/groups/releasethebats2008 and the best photo over all three nights as picked by a professional photographer will win the chalet!

And here are some suggestions of costumes should you be a small dog coming along to the event.

Hours of fun to be had searching for dogs in costumes (clearly a favoured past time of mine)

The pace is definitely quickening as Saturday approaches, we were at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery yesterday, dropping off the bits and pieces of memorabilia along with a variety of old press clippings to put on display, we also did a photo shoot for the Express & Star as well as a little practice run with our wonderful group of volunteers – here we all are in our HOME OF METAL T-shirts which were kindly sponsored by Fly53. Aren’t we a happy bunch!!! Now its heads down to add all the content to launch the archive.

Photo by Najma Hussain

Earlier in the week myself and two of our team Dunc and Bill went on Kerrang! Radio and did an interview with Johnny Doom, talked all about why Capsule had initiated the project and why Bill & Dunc wanted to get involved –  you can listen to here.

L-R : Johnny Dooms plastic bag(!!!!), Johnny Doom, Bill and Dunc.