Our next Home Of Metal open day (think antiques roadshow for fans of Metal) takes place in Waterhall at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 7th of Feb, from 11am to 4pm.

Bring along your memorabilia, photos, old tickets, T-shirts, patches fanzines etc as well as your personal stories to be recorded and added to the Home Of Metal archive.
The event will be hosted by none other than Brummie of the year, Kerrang! Radio presenter Johnny Doom, with a host of guests, as well as a selection of memorabilia which will be on display.

The event is free – all welcome.

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.

Photo from http://www.guitarmasterclass.net

The Broad Street Business Improvement District is delighted to announce that Heaven and Hell guitarist, founding member of Black Sabbath, Grammy Award winner and king of heavy metal Tony Iommi will be honoured on the Broad Street Walk of Star’s on Sunday 23rd November 2008.

Following an afternoon of live music from local bands on the stage in Centenary Square ‘Kerrang Radio’ presenter Johnny Doom will host the evening, with the presentation of the star taking place at 6.30pm.

Home of Metal encourages fans of  Black Sabbath  to be photographed wearing their prized band t-shirts.
Images will be taken by the Birmingham photographer Steve Gerrard, who has been capturing bands in action for over 20 years, and has photographed some of the biggest names and artists. The photographs will then go on display on the Home Of Metal website and in future exhibitions.

Followed by our last Capsule gig of the year at the Hare & Hounds with Racebannon + Trencher + Dream Dreams The Dreamer – doors at 8pm

The BBC Midlands Today featured The Home Of Metal Open Day which took place last Thursday at The New Art Gallery Walsall.

Watch here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7722704.stm

Next open day at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery on Saturday 7th of Feb – plenty of time for you to hunt out your photos, programmes, ticket stubs and stories. Or you can upload your own images to the archive and contribute to this project, which aims to celebrate Birmingham & The Black Country as the birth place of Heavy Metal.

Another busy week ahead firstly we have Constellation Records latest signing Seattle-based group THE DEAD SCIENCE with support from the incredible one man guitar/drums band THEO (for fans of Battles, Oxes, Steve Reich) and Brummie post rock favs UNA CORDA – thats at the Hare & Hounds on this Wednesday.
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The Dead Science talk through some of their artwork.


Una Corda -‘Three’

Followed on Thursday by our next HOME OF METAL event at The New Art Gallery Walsall 6pm – 9pm FREE EVENT

With special live performance by Einstellung ‘… A Touch Of Sabbath’
Einstellung are proud to have the opportunity to pay homage to Sabbath and thank them for allowing four like minds to meet. For this special evening Einstellung will be performing a Sabbath inspired piece. If you listen carefully within the simplistic motorik beats and slabs of Sabbath inspired riffage you may well be raising those metal fists in the air to some monstrously well know Sabbath gems.

The evening will be hosted by Kerrang! Radio DJ Johnny Doom with special guest Nicholas Bullen (one of the founding members of Napalm Death – responsible for inventing Grindcore)

We have been lucky enough to be given a handful of ‘Halford Live at Rock In Rio III’ Promos to give away, so don’t forget to hunt out your old ticket stubs, programmes, photos and stories relating to the innovators of the genre – Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Napalm Death and Godflesh!

Home Of Metal enamel badge now available from our shop for just £3.00

Last Saturday was an overwhelming success with Wolverhampton Art Gallery reporting over 970 people in attendance at our first Home Of Metal open day, we had everyone from small kids, to teenagers right through to the more distinguished older gentlemen. We all had a blast and are incredibly grateful to Kate Williams Pryror and her team at Wolverhampton for all their hard work, Johnny Doom from Kerrang! Radio for hosting the day and for his interviews with our special guests Jim Simpson and Digby Pearson.

The website has now been launched and over the next week or so we will be adding the digitised artefacts to the archive – check out www.homeofmetal.com

Here are a few photos taken by Naz, from the day to give you a feel for what happened;

Johnny Doom interviewing Jim Simpson

A selection of press clippings and photos on display

Adults and kids making badges & colouring in Black Sabbath picture by Aye Jaye

Godflesh  & Napalm Death related cabinet courtesy of Earache Records – included hand written lyrics, original art work mock ups (old school hand made cut n paste)

Judas Priest & Black Sabbath cabinet of treasures

Led Zeppelin cabinet with rare Russian release of Stairway To Heaven (Courtesy of Lisa Bardsley) and only known official 7″ release of Stairway To Heaven (Courtesy of Nigel Dodds)
Home Of Metal family tree created by Francesca Bunny Williams

Fascinating stuff!

A rare outing for this Robert Plant painting by John Judkins ‘Pop Star ’73’- part of Wolverhamptons permanent collection.

Stuart Williams from Walsall local history archive

Teenage kicks!

On display at Wolverhampton Art Gallery on Saturday, then The New Art Gallery Walsall on the 6th Nov.