this is the modern world

ghost town

whilst the politicians and big corporations are living it up, at a certain London sports event, this is what the reality of life and sporting facilities are like for real people. empty shops on the high street, sports areas fenced off from the public, run-down public facilities that date back to another century. no £1 million pound double-decker buses on our high-streets, or common people being given huge sponsorship deals.... music is by the excellent soap operatic society the voice is Helen Highwater of The Ritas the lyrics are by me, written over a day on twitter, when i was feeling particularly annoyed with the corporate schmooze-fest. the original footage and images, were taken during a very wet and bleak friday, and partly inspired by The Clash film Hell W10. anyhoo, here's the lyrics, as originally written:

I'm claiming ownership of #lumberin2012borelimpics #lumberin2012borelimpics will be the penultimate festival of TheNewBoring, featuring a 200ft statue of Adele, 1000 LiamGallaghers... ...There will be a TributeToXfactor tribute act, 30 sensitive singer songwriters will impale themselves on flaming accoustic guitars... 25,000 footballers wives and reality TV stars will lead a procession, headed by FernCotton dressed as TheQueen and Nickleback will perform.. there will be a marathon 48 hour edition of "8 out of 10 cats" where #seanlocke will insult a guest, with the same put-down, over and over. Meanwhile, I'll be out of the country, somewhere interesting. Enjoy. #lumberin2012borelimpics #lumberin2012borelimpics Banksy to unveil new mural of an albino hamster, in a baseball cap, smuggly listening to a DJShadow compilation cd. #lumberin2012borelimpics the EDL/UKIP to host ThePalaceOfTheEmpire and bang on about invading foriegners, whilst dressed as Crusaders... #lumberin2012borelimpics there will be no hoodies, no smoking, no drinking, no dogs, no Irish, no free-speech, but there will be a McDonalds #lumberin2012borelimpics in the skies, chrismoyles and 100 lesser #radio1 DJs will do a fly-past, bouyed-up on their own hot-air... #lumberin2012borelimpics on day 2: 100 boybands will reform as tribute acts, and then release cover versions of classic boyband songs. #lumberin2012borelimpics a large inflatable DavidCameron head will float across the London skies, spitting soggy "BorisBalls" at the locals. #lumberin2012borelimpics everyone gets complementary cans of Carling, UnionJack hats and a cd-copy of "Simon Cowell Sings The Hits of Oasis' #lumberin2012borelimpics Argyle & Bute do the catering but no one's allowed to photograph anything. #lumberin2012borelimpics Starbucks and Carling to serve-up a special boring drink - "The Lageraccino" that gets you both drunk AND sober. #lumberin2012borelimpics for 2 weeks only, every day will be a Tuesday. #lumberin2012borelimpics all the different Bristish street tribes will get together and tell each other they aren't "authentic" #lumberin2012borelimpics James Blunt+Elbow to team-up and write a song lasting 36 hours, about a woman who's really sad about something. To celebrate the #lumberin2012borelimpics Adele will release her own brand of socks, to be sold in the Co-op. To celebrate #lumberin2012borelimpics Ford will release a new model, called "The Car", which will basically be a car. During the. #lumberin2012borelimpics every episode of Eastenders, will be filmed on the moon. For security reasons, during #lumberin2012borelimpics Police will be allowed to arrest groups of people, found to be congregating on buses. The #lumberin2012borelimpics Official Programme, will have no words, just pictures of BorisJohnson reading emails at his desk. The fortnight long #lumberin2012borelimpics will last for 365 days, weather permitting. During the fortnight of #lumberin2012borelimpics all PCs bought will have Windows 87 installed, whether you want it, or not. During the #lumberin2012borelimpics Ed Sheeran will think really hard about a song, but not actually write it, and have a cup of tea instead At #lumberin2012borelimpics Coldplay will change their postcodes Live-Onstage in front of 1000s of adoring fans. During #lumberin2012borelimpics Noel Gallagher will be offsetting his carbon footprint, by smacking himself everytime he has a song idea. In celebration of #lumberin2012borelimpics DaveCameron will claim he's going to pose nude for Playboy, but deputises the job to NickClegg The #lumberin2012borelimpics weather will be: sunny spells, temp of 28 degrees, untill 11:00am, followed by heavy rain for rest of the day During #lumberin2012borelimpics LillyAllen will reform ...twice. In celebration of #lumberin2012borelimpics MickHucknall will star in a reality TV show, but not actually appear on it, as he's on tour. On TV during #lumberin2012borelimpics TimeTeam will bury the body of a 2000 year old archaeologist, in Nuneaton. #lumberin2012borelimpics DizzeeRascal and RossKemp to star in a soap-opera about "grime". #lumberin2012borelimpics Lloyd Grossman to host a show about non-famous people called "Bryan Ferry". Depeche Mode to reform with an all-new line-up, and to re-write a cod-reggae version of WalkingOnSunshine for #lumberin2012borelimpics This must be waht life is like in SponsoredTweetLand everyday #lumberin2012borelimpics #lumberin2012borelimpics wayne rooney, wayne rooney,wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney, wayne rooney.

saturday night beneath the plastic palm trees

interesting some of the imagery you can unearth whilst researching a book... this image above is the clifton cinema, just north of perry barr, was photographed by me early one sunday morning, back in 2008. got some good images from it, it's a damn fine building to photograph(even if only from the outside). i always wondered what the interior would be like, so here's some old photographs, stemming from the 70's(colour) and all the way back to 1938...

love the colour scheme of the interior...

blue christmas

we had the obligatory romp in the snow - whilst everyone else was sat in their cars, going backwards down the hill, we had fun throwing ourselves into snowdrifts, or bellowing "IT'S CHRISTMAAAAAAS!" noddy-holderstylee!
nature in the raw, get out and enjoy it people...

kitted myself out for the weather with a red-plaid vintage thermo-king hunters shirt-jacket, grinder biker boots, my adidas ski hat and a speiwak snowboard jacket... i usually only wear these clothes at this time of the year, when the snow kicks in!

We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.  -Friedrich Nietzsche

inner city blues

seeing as i started-up a new flickr group handsworth, for my recent photos of the area(and because there wasn't already a flickrgroup for handsworth!), i thought i'd put up this list of some of the other groups for the city(drawn-up by pete ashton, over the last few years), and maintained by tim ellis

Birmingham
Birmingham: It's Not Shit
Birmingham Exposure
Metroblogging Birmingham
Birmingham Post and Mail
Social
Birmingham Flickrmeets
Black Country Flickrmeets
Regional
Bearwood
Bournville
Broad Street
Digbeth
Edgbaston
Erdington
Hall Green
Jewellery Quarter
Kings Heath
Kings Norton
Longbridge
Moseley
Selly Oak
Stirchley and Cotteridge
Sutton Park
Yardley
Interactive
Birmingham Chain Photos
Guess Where Birmingham
Themed
A45 Road Birmingham/Solihull/Coventry
Art Deco West Midands
Aston Villa
Birmingham Bicycles
Birmingham Botanical Gardens
Birmingham Canals
Birmingham Christmas market
Birmingham City FC
Birmingham - Forward (for the city Coat of Arms)
Birmingham Graffiti and Street Art
Birmingham Library The Current Library - in Chamberlain Square
Birmingham Music Live
Birmingham Parkland
Birmingham Street Name Signs
Birmingham Tornado
Birmingham Through the Viewfinder
Boring Brick Buildings In Birmingham
The BT Tower, Birmingham
Concrete Birmingham
The Cube: Birmingham
Favourite Birmingham buildings
Haunted Birmingham
The Library of Birmingham The New Library - in Centenary Square
Lomo Birmingham
Made In Birmingham
Number 50 Bus Route
Public Art in Public Transport
The Pubs of Birmingham
Purple Mermaid (Uni of B'ham Circus Society)
Rockabilly Birmingham
Selfridges Birmingham
Sporting West Midlands
Style Birmingham
Suburban Birmingham
Supersonic Festival
West Midlands Cafe Society
West Midland Hard Core (DIY photography)
West Midland Urban Explorers
The Yellow Wall
Live in the Midlands (Music gigs)
Relevant
Red Brick Buildings (tagged)

as i've said - this list is by pete, who started off the birmingham flickrmeet group, back in may 2005, and you can buy his stuff here.
tim updates it here on a regular basis.

krupa

Dirty Bristow Launch
Originally uploaded by Marty & Sas Taylor

the dirty bristow launch party - from saturday night, as attended by myself and H.
a fun evening's entertainment, best described as off-the-wall!
i kept coming across various people i knew or had heard of online...
that's me in the fedora, and H. in the red mac.
a magazine that sells beer.
can't be bad.
the article i illustrated is on architecture, and somehow happened to be written by someone i knew from my art-school days(although i haven't spoken to anyone from then, in many years!).
rather a good publication though, i'm chuffed to have been involved.

jimmy jazz

yesterday, we came across brynel's hat shop - H. was looking in vain for a decent hat-pin, and we'd spotted what is one of the few real hatshops left in the city-centre(albeit just off the main drag, on fiveways).
yeah, h. got her hat-pin, but what kept us longer was my discovery that they stock bailey's hats... cue me trying on various items... i came away with a bailey fedora:

which i couldn't not wear out that same evening.
made me feel like a bluesman... nice item!
i was impressed enough to tell the owner vivean, at least three times, i was impressed that somewhere in birmingham stocks good hats(me, i've been watching certain old dudes out of the corner of my eye, looking for clues as to where they'd get their immaculate pork-pies and fedoras...).
problem solved... vivean asked me if i was in a band, as most of the men who shop there seem to play in one.
nope, i'm not in a band anymore!

we went back a couple of weeks later - and i bought a black baileys fedora.
i may have to make a return trip here, and get some winter bunnets...

ten long years

so much for the government's much trumpeted big society, in some places it already exists...
like here in birmingham, where a sikh temple sits on the same junction as a church(incidentally, there is another church to the far left of the photo, out of shot).
this was from the early morning photowalk i took along soho road, in handsworth.

this is from the start of the day, under the flyover.

and finally, at the end of soho road.
i was thinking of robert johnson when i processed this image... i'd just been watching one of the francis ford coppola blues films(warming by the devil's fire), which referenced the event where johnson finds himself at a crossroads and sells his soul to the devil.
those films are damn good btw - i'm working my way through them, some are merely historical, and the better ones tell stories - awesome stuff, just what i needed to watch.

more images to come, as i work on them.

lonesome rhythm blues

headed out early on bank sunday, to get some street photography in... although i could've done with the sleep!
on the way to my destination(more to come from that session), i thought i'd grab an impromptu shot of a pizza-emporium in the street... more so because the light was pretty good at the time, but the shop itself is fairly striking in that it's an oldschool fast food joint, selling chips and such with some neon and 195o's decor.
there is a good bit of perspective, that i managed to pull from the corner view too...


and this old lad was waiting around at the bus-stop in carrs lane(that's the arse of the bullring just out of shot, round the corner), and again, the light was favourable for some shadow-play, so i grabbed the image before it was lost forever!
more in the next post, as to where i was heading... a less than salubrious suburb, which had a location for the next printed collection(details to come...).