To jolt our friendly blog out of its doldrums, Andrew Stott sends us a personal reminiscence of a different sort of music festival.
The National Music for Youth competition in Birmingham.
At a rehearsal for the Street Choirs festival, which incidentally is happening over the weekend of the 13th-15th of June, 2025, in Bradford, one of the singers told a story about a previous festival which reminded me of my adventure in Birmingham, so I thought I’d send it to Larry to put on the blog.
Back in 2007/8 my daughter was a backing singer in the school Soul Band. The band had made it to the National Music For Youth finals in Birmingham. For some reason she didn’t want her parents to go and watch. But I thought that I really didn’t want to miss it, so I got out of work as early as I could and set off to Birmingham.
The journey didn’t go well — the competition started at 5pm and I didn’t leave until about 2pm, giving myself a contingency of just half an hour to park and find the venue once I’d arrived. This buffer soon disappeared as the traffic ground to a halt on the M40 and I had to take a detour up the old A34. This was in the days before I had a satnav so I just followed my instincts (and the signs for Birmingham of course).
The finals were taking place at the International Convention Centre in the middle of the city. Fortunately I managed to park only about 10 minutes walk away at 5 to 5. I legged it to the ICC and remarkably there was no queue at the box office, I explained to the woman at the desk that my daughter was performing and she said that it was just starting but there were some seats left at the front and she got someone to escort me in to the Symphony Hall through the side door at the front and I sneaked along the front row to an empty seat near the middle. Phew, just in the nick of time, I settled down to watch.
The first performers were a classical orchestra and as they were limbering up (or whatever you call it when an orchestra tests their instruments) I spoke to the man next to me to see if he knew the order of events. He had a list of entrants which I was alarmed to see contained only classical ensembles. There was no mention of any soul band. Uh oh, it soon dawned that I had gone to the wrong place. Cue the walk of shame, back along the front row and out of the side door.
Back to the box office I dashed, to be told that what I wanted were the rock & pop awards which were taking place across town at the Barfly in Rea Street. I got rough directions but thought it would be best to get a taxi as I was now late. Off I ran in the general direction of where I thought a taxi rank would be, and got close to the station (and pretty out of breath) before I spotted one.
Jumping in the first taxi I asked for the Barfly in Rea street. But the driver hadn’t heard of it until I said it was a music venue. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘That’s the Custard Factory, I know it now’ and off we went. After a 10 minute ride round the one way system we pulled up outside the venue where there was a big queue of young people. This must be the place, I thought. I paid the taxi driver £10, jumped out and in a most out-of-character move I terribly sorried and excuse me pleased to the front of the queue. It was the wrong venue! This was a concert by the well known band ‘Feeder’. Aaaargh.
Someone told me that the Barfly was a couple of blocks away, in the basement of the old brewery. Another bit of running got me there. I dashed down the steps just in time to see the 4th act of the competition come out. They weren’t the Soul Band, so I found and bought a programme to find out when they would be on.
‘Oh bother’ I thought to myself. They were the 3rd act.
I did stay to watch the other acts, and I did see the winners, a band called Stand out Riot, perform. Remarkably, they seemed to have about 20 members, including a horn section. So it wasn’t a completely wasted trip.
[But what did your daughter say, Andrew, or maybe she never found out that you were (almost) there to see her sing?]