BROADCAST/PLONE : THE IRISH CENTRE,BIRMINGHAM

As Bill Mclaren would say,(if he were a Brummie music commentator instead of a Scottish rugby commentator),"the streets of Moseley will be dancing tonight",every bedsit,studio flat and yuppie pad will be silent but for housebreakers with impeccable taste in vinyl records

John Peel,PLONE and the new kings and queens of   the cool ,kitsch,intellegencia,BROADCAST,the not so youngsters are in moog/farfisa heaven tonight.Its two years at least since I last saw them playing to a packed bar at the custard factory,i.e. 100 people,the Irish Centre holds at least 5 times that and its rammed with real fans,not just Peely groupies,who ingest every  sepia tone ,every la la and probably discuss the velocity settings of  patch no 18 on the antiques roadshow of keyboard weaponry that Broadcast have collected over the years.

OK,usual scene setting apart,even I find it boring to write this sort of stuff,Broadcast are indeed one of the finest bands in Britain,they ve stolen the most fantastic bits of sixties soundtrack and updated them with compassion rather than cynicism,with art in the forefront of their minds rather than finance and hey kids,believing in yourself and doing your own thing really y works,for Broadcast have never been bigger commercially than right now.

I 'm not sure that anyone would play this music to seduce a lover or to lift their soul or to prepare for a night of excess,but someone somewhere has commanded that BROADCAST are now leaders of the avant garde revolution,the Damien Hurst,Tom Paulin,Martin Amis of this genre, year 2000.

Me ,personally,I was bored shitless but that's not a criticism of Broadcast or PLONE,its just the difference between a   Constable landscape and a Renoir representation ,a matter of personal preference,I like my bands to sweat from the sheer effort of forcing their meaty  fare onto an audience,Broadcast like to politely offer you a tofu tartlet albeit with a wonderful sauce to dip it into.I don't feel very cool at this gig,I m   sure the majority of the sell-out crowd do.

I am beginning to get a guilt complex about not being very enthusiastic about the local bands who are enjoying success right now , they all have my best wishes,but I   don t see any point in writing glittering reviews if I don't mean it,and with great bands appearing weekly from all over the world this cities contribution still seems stale by comparison.The midlands ,says it all I suppose.

PLONE are very similar,though slightly more experimental,I d like to hear a Fat Boy Slim remix of a PLONE track rushing headlong up the charts,its an unlikely and probably undesirable occurrence ,but their relentless keyboard bass rhythms do lend themselves to such a ridiculous idea.

With a myriad of faceless acts clogging up the charts,I think its important for "alternative music" to have an identity which is why I  couldn t get too far into the new Moseley music scene ,after a hours worth of these bands,I can't tell who is who and frankly don't really care to. Its too much like algebra,fascinating for five minutes,but then you wonder why you re bothering........