Jon Bounds produces, amongst many other internetty things, the mighty Birmingham Is Not Shit website. It’s a superb collection of the weird, not so weird and the wonderful that is probably the UK’s most decried and warmly loved big city. It’s definitely one for your feed reader, even if you’ve never been.
So, today when the story above popped up, it looked like something I would know about, or have heard about. Indeed it would seem strange if I hadn’t known. Rooftop gigs like this had happened before, they’d been all the rage. But after much puzzling, it was pretty clear that I didn’t know. Not exactly.
A minute or two on Google found Breakthru and Dickie, the lad there in the hat playing the drums, sent me this photograph, along with the scan of a newspaper article about it all. See that skinny young thing with the cropped hair staring up in amazement? That could so easily have been me. It isn’t, but still..
A few of us had scratched our heads earlier in the day trying to work out exactly where this had all happened. Dickie added his red arrow to the map, and suddenly it all fell into place.
Dickie was about 18 or 19 when the photo was taken. It was an exciting time in the city, lots going on, lots and lots to see and do. Fourty (40) pages of jobs in Thursday’s Evening Mail every week, and a sense of style and optimism that you could touch and feel. Thanks Jon, and good to meet you, Dickie. The archive album by Breakthru only came out about a year or so ago on a specialist 60s label called Circle and is available here.
Never, never throw away your old photographs.…
So, who took the pictures?
Oh, quite co-incidentally:
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4 Comments
One day this sort of thing will cease to amaze me.
That days ain’t here yet.
Wow!
Not quite as coincidental with the Music Archive thing as you may think. Me doing research for the Brum Music Month/Archive show on the Big Paws was responsible for me finding out about Breakthru and ordering the CD. It came just a bit late to play that week, but I really like it so will no doubt give a track or two an airing on the Rhubarb Radio soon.
Great bit of detective work!
I’ll make sure to listen – usually do. Thing is, they are GOOD. :)
There’s more from Dickie – an email came while I was away. And of course I’ll add a link to The Big Paws radio show.
Thank you both! What an enjoyable experience.
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