house/dance/drum & bass

Coming from a smaller city, I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived in Birmingham, to find the massive choice of venues for music, ranging from classical and opera to rock/metal and dance or house music. As Birmingham is central and has some of the best big concert facilities in the country, in the form of the NEC, NIA, ICC, there are constant big names visiting. However, for the smaller names there is an even wider choice. The O2 academy, which happens to be just a few minutes walk from Aston uni campus, is host to some awesome bands of many genres. This is where I attend the most gigs. To date I have seen get cape wear cape fly, the feeling, embrace, sum 41, biffy clyro and dj sets from bloc party and arctic monkeys. Had my budget been less stretched there would have been many more visits though I must say, as every week there is a live performance or two catering for most tastes in the indy/rock/alternative genres.

For the other popular student genres of music, house/dance/drum and bass, there is also the custard factory and Q club. These play host to more big names, the main one for me being pendulum, who frequent custard factory on numerous occasions. The venues themselves are similar to the academy, sort of small(ish) club venues which are ideally suited for gigs. The other benefits of these places being that they often open up for a club night after the gig, and in some cases, the members of the band do dj sets during the club night. The average cost for gigs of this size are usually more affordable than that of the big arenas too. Expect to pay from as little as £8 and up to a maximum of £25 or so.

One of the big advantages of Birmingham and its thriving music scene, along with its central location, is that it makes an ideal excuse to drag your friends from other unis or home down to see you. For pretty much all of the gigs I mentioned above, I told a mate about beforehand, knowing they'd like the idea, and then simply bought the tickets, got them on a train and let them crash at mine after the gig. It's a great way to keep in touch and makes them take the journey to see you a bit more worth while. It also means, with the range of shows on, you can usually get to see all your old mates without having to leave the city!

The live music scene isn't the only way to experience music in Birmingham, however. Every bar or club in the city tends to stay true to a certain style of music. Once you get a grasp of what genre is played where, which doesn't take long, then you can shape your nights out to suit your taste in music. There are clubs known for more rnb and hip hop, such as bambu, some for indy and alternative, such as snobs, barfly or the academy, and those for dance and house, such as the soon to be opened Gatecrasher. There are also some bigger clubs which accommodate for everything from cheese to indy to dance to house to chillout, such as Risa or Oceana. All this range means that no matter what you like, or if you're like me and just want something loud you can move around to, then you'll have plenty of choices for places to go!    

One way of quickly getting an idea of where to go for what, and to find people to take with you is to join a music society at uni. At Aston, we have the LMS (live music society) for all the muso's, fusion dance music society, the bangra society, altsoc: the alternative music society, and rocksoc just to name a few. These societies are a good way to meet people with the same tastes, get an idea of where to go, keep updated on the music you like, introduce you to local bands, and perhaps best of all, get you discounts and deals for the sort of places you'll want to go.