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.

Photographer Steve Gerrard, who is working with us on the Home Of Metal project to capture fans portraits has taken some amazing images of Capsule favourite band of all time, the wonderful Melvins. We were gutted to have missed them just recently when they played in Nottingham, and to make life worse we heard they put on a show to remember, now joined but another of our fav bands the mighty duo that is Big Business….these photos go some way to easying the pain of missing them and we’re really excited about ATP’s Nightmare Before Xmas, where they’ll be curating the weekend alongside Mike Patton. (The Capsule Grannies will also be DJing).

Go and check out Steves photos – he’s a star!!!

On Saturday 25th of October at our Open day at Wolverhampton Art Gallery we have some special guests in conversation with Kerrang! Radio DJ – the legendary Johnny Doom, a stalwart of the Midlands Metal scene.

Jim Simpson 12am – 1pm in conversation with Johnny Doom

Jim Simpson
Birmingham-based Big Bear, so called after the nickname given to Simpson by legendary DJ, John Peel, runs one of the oldest independent labels in the UK, specialising in jazz, blues and swing artists, although it has also been successful in other music genres.
Jim is the unsung hero of Heavy Metal, he ran the progressive club, Henry’s Blueshouse where he inspired Robert Plant, Jon Bonham, Judas Priest and a plethora of others all of whom came see the legendary American Blues artists Simpson programmed back in the day.
He managed Sabbath for their first three albums, which included the seminal ‘Black Sabbath’ album, then Paranoid and Master of Reality.

Digby Pearson, Earache Records founder 2pm – 3pm in conversation with Johnny Doom

The label has made its name releasing some of the most brutal albums of the past two decades. Earache has been home to such outfits as the legendary Napalm Death and Godflesh as well as a host of other extreme bands. Earache’s artists have set the standard for cutting-edge, uncompromising music.
But just as inspiring is the story of how it came to be. Nowadays, internet wizardry or a truckload of cash can be a band’s best friend, but in the early days, Earache had neither. All it had was one man; founder, patriarch and self-confessed obsessive, Digby ‘Dig’ Pearson.

Dig built Earache the old-fashioned way – through word-of-mouth, determination and an unswerving belief in his bands, though his outlook on the last two decades is a tad modest under the circumstances.

Wolverhampton Art Gallery – Open Day Saturday 25th October 10am – 4.30pm
Free Event – refreshments provided – all welcome