iMAGAZINE

Swordfish record store is one of the few remaining record shops in Birmingham town center. Now the CD Megastores such as virgin megastore have come to a close there are not a lot of options on the high-street to get your music whether your looking for current, old, alternative or mainstream. Be-ing one of the last record stores they have quite a lot of the cities old vi-nyl’s, old CD’s and a lot of alternative music that you would not see in the mainstream traders like HMV. It’s a pretty down to earth place with all the vintage trimmings, loads of re-cords, classic CD’s such as original copy’s of black Sabbath and AC/DC. They have a selection of dusty vinyl’s that would be a collector’s paradise such as ‘grace under pressure’, ‘wolf-mother’ and ‘the bridewells’. The place attracts Indie kids, middle aged men, oldies, all age groups really!Outside of the shop and all over the spear spaces of the walls are post-ers and advertisements, advertise-ments of recent up coming events in places such as the HMV or the Academy, its good to know what’s going on in town so you don’t miss out on all the gigs and raves!!Obviously the record shop doesn’t make too much money so why not go down there and spend a few pennies, do it for all the indie kids of the future and music education and respect!The swordfish record store has taken part in ‘the record store day’ events, here they host gigs and put on a show! It is celebrated on the 17th of April every year, the store could not

take part this year due to money is-sue but last year hosted such people as Vinny and the curse, tom peel and the traps. It a shame that the record company has struggled this year be-cause it’s a shame to see a treasure cove of vinyl’s go to waste, the mu-sic should be respected as it is part of our history. Unknown person on-line said “swordfish record store is an Aladdin’s cave”, after visiting the store I can say I get the same feel as that! You don’t know where to start! The owner of the store, Mike is a very knowledgeable man involving music and always has an insightful opinion whether its just social chat or your are looking for the perfect vinyl’s.Through years and years of the music industrys producng music the first was the vinyl record, clas-sics like Elvis Presley and the Jack-son 5 were first placesd on record making the original disks very ex-penive and rare. They are very im-portant to most collecters when it comes to the more famous artists of history. The only way your go-ing to find this kind of thing is look-ing into the sidestreets and visiting places like swordfish record store. There have been a few vinyl shops in birmigham over the past 50years supplying the brummies with good music ranging from hip hop to heavy rock albums. I feel after researching the different vinyl stores arond the city i have leart that music should be appriciated alot more and the people keeping it aline behind the senes are also to thank and are very important in the music industry. The record shops, once popular are still holding onto our roots and music revolutions, i hope they can hold it out through the tough money problems and keep it going for bir-migham and all over the country.

RECORD?SHOPPING

T-BOMBS NEW PICTURE goes here.... :)

The electric cinema is an independant cine-ma who plays less maintreme movies. They have an old ticket machine stating ‘ad-mission one’ on the on the coupon which adds a nice vintage touch to the whole experience!Other than the film productions they display, they also have event nights where they host such things as stand-up comedy, rock gigs and guest speakers such as Shane Medows. They have an evening called the film orcestra evening where they host a band playing old classic songs from the movies, even better they put the film clip on in the background so you can expe-rience that epic moment in the film! They have thought of many ways of entertain-ment and have now thought about doing weddings and that will be taking place in the near future. The electric cinema also plays a selection of forign films that are played for a certain amount of time i.e. 2 weeks or 3 weeks and the film price is de-cided by the box office. They do sell tickets on arrival but they advise you book online in advance, some book weeks in advance so its always good to have nosey online and see what they have to offer!www.theelectric.co.uk/

The Electric cinema show a selection of films such as Ghost Busters which is a bon-fire night special. They are playing a very re-cent film called Contagion and a film called we need to talk about kevin, a recent film production based on a best-selling novel by Lionel Shriver. Along with all these features they also have a bar where you can get beers, ciders, wines and cocktails to have during your movie, they also add staff ser-vice thoughtout your film and you can or-der drinks to your seats. The cocktails are a luxury and some are themed with the mov-ies on show at that time, for example they created a spiderman themed cocktail cel-ebrating the release of the new film com-ing out, the cocktail started out red, with a twist of a cocktail stirer is was blue, classy ey! so get on down to the electric cinema and watch some of the new films out or settle for a less mainsteme film and get a little aducated!

On the 27th of October Ben-jamin Fancis Leftwich played the HMV intitue in Birmingham. He was suppted by ‘Daughter’ who delicatly enchanted the crowd with songs such as ‘Landfill’ and ‘The Shadows’. The audience watched in hushed anticipation as Banjamin took the stage, accompanied only by his acoustic gui-tar. The atmosphere was set as he began to play tracks from his critically acclaimed debut ‘The last Smoke before the Storm’ We stood in ore as his soothing vocals filled the small room, he was met with a rapture of applause at the end of each song.Hits such as ‘Box of stones’ and ‘pictures’ had the audience sing along but the beauty of this gig was simply standing and witnessing this young talents vocal and song writing ability.By the final track ‘Atlas Hands’ the audience were vis-ibly moved as his delicate tones faded to the largest reaction of the night, with guests leaving far more

at peace with the world than when they entered.Benjamin francis leftwich is not so well known in the music industry as of yet, although i dont think he would really want to be comer-cialised. His songs sing about his past experi-ences of love, betrayal, good memories, he al-most sounds like a poet. I personally find his lyrics very moving and really felt the atmosphere reach an ultimate high listening to his words. It was not like any gig i have been to before, most gigs are loud, messy, alot of booze and lairy stu-dents, this was alot more down to earth, and al-most personal, you could feel everyomes facina-tion in the room, watching his with hawk eyes. I would recomend any gigs at the HMV institue in birmingham, the venue is great, just the right amount of room, the sound systems they have are pretty impres-sive compared to your average club-bing night out! You usually buy your tickets in ad-