2. ‘Is There Anyone Out There?’
Documenting Birmingham’s Alternative Music Scene 1986-1990
Acknowledgements and Thanks
Thanks to Dave Travis for opening up his incredible archive and recalling the histories
associated with The Click Club. Likewise, thanks to Steve (Geoffrey S. Kent) Coxon for his
generous insights and for taking a road trip to tell us almost everything.
Thanks on behalf of all Click Clubbers to Travis and Coxon for starting it and for program-
ming so many memorable nights for creating an environment for people to make their
own.
Thanks to Dave Chambers (and Andy Morris), Donna Gee, Bridget Duffy and Bryan Taylor
who provided particular materials for the exhibition (Bryan for some fine writing!).
Thanks to all of those who contributed written memories: Steve Byrne; Craig Hamilton;
Andrew Davies; Sarah Heyworth; Neil Hollins; Angela Hughes; Rhodri Marsden; Dave
Newton; Daniel Rachel; Lara Ratnaraja; Spencer Roberts; John Taggart; Andy Tomlinson
and Maria Williams.
Acknowledgements to the many contributors to Facebook Groups for The Click Club and
Birmingham Music Archive.
John Hall and Ixchelt Corbett
Mighty Mighty: Russell Burton, Mick Geoghegan, Pete Geoghegan, D J Hennessy
Hugh McGuinness.
Lyle Bignon, Boris Barker, Darren Elliot, Graham Bradbury, Richard March
Yasmin Baig-Clifford (Vivid Projects), John Reed at Cherry Red Records, Ernie Cartwright,
Birmingham Music Archive, Justin Sanders, Naomi Midgley.
Neil Hollins for production of the podcast interview with Steve Coxon and Dave Travis.
Digital Print Services who produced the images.
Special thanks to: Neil Taylor, Ellie Gibbons, Anna Pirvola, Aidan Mooney and Beth Kane.

3. What was The Click Club?
Established in 1986 by Dave Travis and Steve Coxon, ‘The Click Club’ was the name of a
concert venue and disco associated with Birmingham’s alternative music culture. Located
at the nightclub ‘Burberries-on-the-Street’, on a pre-regeneration era Broad Street,
capacity was limited to a few hundred attendees on any one night.
During the period 1986-1990, the club showcased a wide variety of acts reflecting the
varied culture of the independent and alternative sector such as those associated with the
C86 collection issued by NME: Primal Scream, We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use
It, and The Mighty Lemon Drops. The club supported the emergence of other local bands
such as The Wonder Stuff, Ocean Colour Scene and a group of ‘grebo’ acts from the Black
Country including Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. It scheduled Gothic Rock
bands like Balaam and the Angel, Fields of The Nephilim and Rose of Avalanche, as well as
nurturing the so-called baggy scene with appearances from The Charlatans, James and Blur
(before they were labelled ‘Britpop’). The heterogeneous nature of the independent scene
and a liberal approach to booking was further underlined by performances from hard-core
punk bands like The Stupids, ‘acid jazz’ act James Taylor Quartet and DJ Fatboy Slim, as
well as Zimbabwean music from The Bhundu Boys, who hold the record for the venue’s
best attended gig.
The Click Club was thus important locally, nationally and internationally for the economic
role it played as part of a touring circuit, and for distributors and retailers of independent
music. As a central feature in a music scene operating on a DIY-basis, independent of the
major labels, at the intersection of subcultures, it also had enormous cultural value for its
participants.
Like so many sites of popular music culture, Burberries is long gone and, as with so many
scenes that have had an important in people’s lives, assessing its significance after the fact
poses a number of challenges. This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Click Club’s
opening, an apposite moment to explore and celebrate such a space and the scene and
network of activity it represented.
This exhibition draws upon the personal archive of promoter Dave Travis, whose archive of
film, posters, magazines and ephemera detail a dynamic space and time. Central are a set of
images taken by Travis at The Click Club, which are a small proportion of those produced
as a professional music promoter and photographer. Travis estimates that his personal
archive of photographs is in excess of 100 000 images. The exhibition enlists participant
accounts and loaned artefacts too in order to contextualize The Click Club as a historical
moment that remains important to its community and to the music and cultural heritage of
Birmingham

4. Who is this exhibition for?
The title of the exhibition comes from 1986 single ‘Is there anyone out there’ from local
band Mighty Mighty:
Is there anyone out there for me?
Is anyone else lonely?
I can’t stand another summer,
but if only, I could find that girl
surely she’s out there somewhere
someone to care and share in my world
someone to drag me round Chelsea Girl!1
The lovelorn lyric evokes the romantic angst of youth but also poses a question for the
curators of this exhibition: who is out there who might know about The Click Club and is
anyone else interested in this subject?
The questions we have set out to explore therefore ask: what is the value of this material?
What does it tell us beyond confirming the memories of the few individuals it concerned?
Does such material have wider importance and contributions to make for our understand-
ing of the past?
While the exhibition will no doubt appeal to those who attended The Click Club as well as
fans of popular music more generally, it is aimed too at a broader audience interested in
history, urban life, creativity and the cultural economy.
These notes set out contextual details for the exhibition as well as details of those behind
it. They aim to supplement and echo the materials found in the exhibition and to underline
the nature of a general project to recognize, explore and preserve popular music’s past – in
Birmingham and further afield.
1To underline the appropriateness of the song and title, Chelsea Girl was a clothing store and iconic
meeting place in Birmingham High Street. As the Evening Mail’s Zoe Chamberlain wrote in February
2015 in a feature on the city’s lost shops and shopping culture:
Every young woman of a certain age loved Chelsea Girl when they were
growing up because it offered trend-led pieces at affordable prices.
They disappeared when the company morphed into River Island in 1988

5. Curating the exhibition
The core of the exhibition is the photography of Dave Travis. Travis began his career
as a photographer for music magazines such as Sounds, New Musical Express and
the local BrumBeat. His photographs were originally used in Click Club promotional
items and materials such as the in-house Click! magazine.
The images reflect his trained eye and we have sought to present these not just as
records and historical documents but also as artworks in their own right.
Over 500 original negatives were digitally scanned and these are presented in a
slideshow in the exhibition. A selection of images – representative of the general
culture of the Click Club and Travis’ artistry – has been selected for the walls and
displayed in a variety of shapes and sizes. These images were scanned at high
resolution and prepared for print with the help of Ellie Gibbons of the Birmingham
School of Media, BCU.
The exhibition was originated and overseen by Dave Travis, Jez Collins, Sarah Raine
and Paul Long of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR).
Collins is the founder of Birmingham Music Archive and has published widely on
popular music heritage. Raine is a PhD student researching the younger generation
of the current Northern Soul scene. Long is the Director of BCMCR and Professor of
Media and Cultural History. Anna Pirvola, a postgraduate student in the Birmingham
School of Media, aided the team and the organization of the exhibition.
Parkside Gallery
Parkside Gallery is a leading art, design and media exhibition space within the
Birmingham City University Parkside Building, with an emphasis on, but not
confined to, media and design-led practice. Exhibitions add value to the research
that is being undertaken within the wider context of the University.
The gallery is an integral part of the Faculty of Art, Design and Media’s teaching
and learning environment. A small committee of University staff shapes an annual
programme of relevant and innovative work that seeks to engaging audiences within
and beyond the institution. Visitors can expect to see a diverse range of shows
throughout the academic year, culminating in the University’s own graduate shows
in the summer.
‘Is There Anyone Out There?’ is the second of three shows within the programme
that explore music genres and culture constructed from archives of photographic
images, ephemera and memories. We have already exhibited on the design of punk
rock and are planning an exhibiton on the Northern Soul scene in Spring 2017.
Exhibitions at Parkside Gallery are managed by John Hall and Ixchelt Corbett

6. C86 & All That – The Cool Universe
Neil Taylor is a former NME journalist credited with compiling the influential C86
mixtape. In his last book, Document & Eyewitness: An Intimate History of Rough Trade
(Orion, 2010) Neil chronicled the rise of the Rough Trade label and shops. His latest
book, C86 & All That: The Birth Of Indie In Difficult Times, due out later this year,
chronicles the independent music scene of the mid 80s. In this short piece, he outlines
the musical development of a national scene. (See: www.facebook.com/c86andallthat)
In May 1986, the NME asked me to co-compile C86, a cassette drawing together 22
new bands that helped codify a nascent independent music scene that had steadily
been taking shape for the previous two or so years. The grinding effects of a hard line
Conservative Government, the on-going recession, the brutally discombobulating social
effects of the recent miners’ strike, and the sense that the period of post punk was well
and truly over, all combined to create a rupture in the previously steady flow of youth
culture. A sudden thirst for change led to an outpouring of new bands, record labels,
clubs and fanzines. It was, some later claimed, the birth of Indie.
The phenomenon was nationwide, with a whole welter of new bands forming and new
clubs and record labels appearing to service their needs. Labels such as Creation, Pink,
Ron Johnson, Vinyl Drip, Subway Organisation, Sarah and 53rd & 3rd sprang up not just
in the capital but elsewhere – in Bristol, in Glasgow, in Manchester, in Nottingham and
in all parts of the country. At first the bands were written about in the mushrooming
fanzine world, in publications such Rox, Simply Thrilled, the Legend!, Adventure In
Bereznik, Are You Scared To Get Happy? and Trout Fishing In Leytonstone whose
editors were increasingly one step ahead of the mainstream music press. Through word
of mouth, bands could pick up gigs all over the country. A band might play Ziggys in
Plymouth and follow that with a show at the Mission Club in Bristol, before moving on
to the Click Club in Birmingham, to the Wilde Club in Manchester, the Twang Club in
Rochdale before arriving in Glasgow at Splash One. A similar route might then be plotted
down the other side of the country before arriving London where the notable clubs
included (or had included) Alan McGee’s Living Room, Dan Treacy’s Room At The Top,
Bay 63 and the Cellar Bar at Thames Polytechnic.
The new indie was put together piece-meal, uninformed by anything as all-encompassing
as the social media and internet networks that exist today. People made it up as they
went along – their own take on what they considered to be cool. For instance, when the
Jesus & Mary Chain played (and visited) London for the first time in summer 1984 Alan
McGee was shocked by their ‘punk accident’ look, which was ‘cool’, but smacked of ‘…a
small town version of a movement that was dead’.
Even in its borrowings, then, there was always a vestige of originality. Indie culture
borrowed heavily, but at its best was never slavishly imitative. It took from the kinetic
energy of Rockabilly and the pre-Beatles British Rock and Roll scene, and from all that
followed – Merseybeat (first and second wave), Mod, Psychedelia, Punk, Krautrock, Glam

7. and other genres. Punk had put ’60s pop culture to the sword – ‘no Beatles, no Stones’,
as the Clash famously proclaimed – but indie rediscovered the period, took inspiration
from it and fused it with the energy of punk to create a kind of ‘psychedelic punk rock’.
C86 was the NME’s twenty-third cassette release – and was, daringly, made up
exclusively of new bands: it went on to become the most commercially successful
tape the paper ever issued, selling in excess of 40,000 copies. Some bands offered
up the best track that they could – Primal Scream, for instance, whose ‘Velocity Girl’
established a blueprint ‘indie’ sound that has come to define the moment and echoes
throughout the later work of the Stone Roses, one of the first bands to take indie
beyond the confines of the hip elite and into the mainstream. Some bands thought they
were being shrewd and declined to offer up their best work, fearing that it would be
lost on an itinerant release that would quickly become forgotten. One band declined to
appear on the tape at all for fear of being typecast. In the end, everyone got typecast as
C86 became short-hand for a sort of guitar-driven, indie sound.
In 2014, I began thinking about the tape once more and, in particular, about the social
and cultural circumstances of the times. I decided to write a book about the period, C86
& All That: The Creation Of Indie In Difficult Times. The tape had lived a strange life – it
was all but derided by 1987, yet thirty years after its release it is rightly recognised,
by many, as iconic, a defining moment. The years shortly following the release of the
tape saw indie take on the mainstream, with a number of groups having ‘proper’ hits
in the ‘proper’ charts. They included the Wedding Present, the Mighty Lemon Drops,
the Darling Buds, the Stone Roses, Primal Scream, We’ve Got A Fuzzbox & We’re Gonna
Use It, the Shop Assistants, Pop Will Eat Itself, the Primitives and others. This was
the moment when indie came of age, for some, or completely lost it, for others, as the
fledgling genre got turned into just another brand and indie became Indie (note the
capital). In truth, the rising power of marketing attempted to turn every kind of music
into its own mutually exclusive genre. What had once been tributaries connected to
the main flow in 1983 as the new music got going – such as anarcho punk, psychobilly,
trash and garage – suddenly became isolated, specialist interest areas.
I finished writing C86 & All That: The Birth Of Indie In Difficult Times in spring 2016
and it will be published later in the year. The book deals with the creation of the new
indie from its roots in 1983 (and earlier) through to launching of the tape and beyond.
A planned second volume will deal with the period up to 1990. Like this exhibition, the
book highlights a time and a culture that seems almost impossibly distant now, one
less manicured and self-aware and all the more refreshing for that. In time, the indie
culture of the mid-1980s was emasculated by the hedonistic rise of Acid House and
Lads Mag culture that followed immediately on from it, and by the swagger of Brit Pop
of the early 1990s. But it never disappeared. Like the cool universe – the dark matter
the astronomers tell us floats between the stars and is the most interesting, dynamic
and volatile part of the night sky – it has always been out there, if not always visible to
the naked eye.
BCMCR has invited Neil to speak at BCU on the occasion of the launch of C86 & All That:
The Birth Of Indie In Difficult Times later in the year.

8. Exhibiting Pop Music History and Heritage
Even if we are interested in the newest sounds, the central organizing activity of
popular music is ‘the record’. This term originally referred to the capturing of a
particular performance that took place live and in the studio. Of course, this is
now a rather redundant way of thinking about making music: there is no ‘original’
performance when the multi-track, studio desk or laptop merge performances or
indeed originate sounds and songs. Nonetheless, we continue to refer to ‘the record’ as
a particular artefact that conveys an ideal impression of a whole performance, whether
on vinyl, tape, CD or digital compression files such as the MP3, not to mention the
capturing of the sound and image of musical events in film, TV and radio programmes.
A further aspect of the historical sensibility in popular music is the way in which
records lend themselves to preservation in the form of the collection. Many people
might be ‘curators’ of the array of music they own and for the ways in which they
arrange it and preserve it. In addition, then, music consumers preserve and record their
own engagement in music, their attendance at concerts and their allegiance to artists,
in terms of the collection of related merchandise or ephemera.
Of course, so much of the music that we love is about the past: ‘Let’s Twist Again’ (…
Like We Did Last Summer)’; ‘Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio?’; ‘Summer of
‘69’;‘December 1963 (Oh What a Night)’ or ‘In My Life’. Lyrics might be about the past
and the music might quote older sounds or indeed be made from recordings from
the past. And so much of this music is bound up in our memories and how we recall
important moments: parties, family, friends, first loves, as well as major historical
events.
One way in which the current exhibition might be viewed is as part of a wider industry
devoted to pop music’s past, and the history of popular music is big business. Amidst
the search for the next big thing, the music industries repackage and re-promote
the music of the past in the form of new pressings, extended versions and box sets.
Witness Bob Dylan’s The Cutting Edge from 2015 (volume twelve in the ‘Bootleg’
series), which offers insights into the development of the triumvirate of Highway 61
Revisited, Bringing it All Back Home and Blonde on Blonde. As Rolling Stone magazine
summarises, it is ‘available in a six-disc and a two-disc version, as well as a monster
limited-edition 18-disc set that includes every single take of every song from the three
albums’.
Artists of various vintages tour their most popular or critically acclaimed albums:
Primal Scream with Screamadelica, Van Morrison with Astral Weeks or UB40 with
Signing Off. This kind of enterprise is supported by dedicated publications such as
Record Collector, Classic Rock, Uncut or Mojo. Radio and television commission a
wealth of individual retrospectives concerned with popular music past focused on
individual artists, genres and moments. Other TV shows like HBO’s Vinyl and Netflix’s
forthcoming The Getdown dramatize pop’s past, interleaving fact and fiction in
spectacular style, echoing Hollywood biopics such as Jimi (Hendrix): All Is By My Side
(2013), Get On Up (James Brown)(2014) or Miles (Davies) Ahead (2016). There are of

9. course whole TV channels dedicated to the past such as VH1 and Vintage TV: ‘a vital,
unique offering for those who grew up with the many vintage artists still touring and
recording as well as for a younger demographic beginning to appreciate Vintage TV’s
“soundtrack to the 20th century”’ 2.
The invitation to (re)consume pop’s past – on record, on screen, on stage – is echoed
by opportunities to engage and experience its sacred places. Popular music’s sites of
special historical interest are at the heart of an expanding field of the tourist industry.
Whether Memphis’ Beale Street, Liverpool’s Strawberry Field, Loretta Lynn’s Ranch,
the Chasing Rainbows museum at Dolly Parton’s theme park Dollywood or the
Salford surveyed in The Smiths-related tours, each offers a means of experiencing or
connecting with the roots of particular music genres and origins of artists.
Alongside such promotional productions, popular music history has attained a
place as a part of national heritage culture. There is, for instance, the British Music
Experience now at the Cunard Building, Liverpool after several years at the O2. ‘David
Bowie Is’ tours the world after a successful season at the V&A while at the time of
writing, ‘Exhibitionism’ at the Saatchi Gallery displays the archive and history of The
Rolling Stones and a year-long range of events, supported by the Heritage Lottery
Fund and the Mayor of London’s Office, are taking place across London in celebration
of the 40th anniversary of Punk.
For some, this range of activity is dubious, the critic Simon Reynolds for instance
complains that it represents a form of ‘Retromania’, lamenting ‘Pop Culture’s
Addiction to Its Own Past’ (2011). Certainly, there are plenty of new bands and
dedicated cultural entrepreneurs who are sceptical for the same reasons as Reynolds,
that such backward looking impedes the breath of creativity and innovation. Reynolds
is sceptical too of whether pop belongs in museums –simply because you rarely get
to hear the music – while others are openly hostile to the presumption that it has any
cultural worth, or reject the conventional means through which subversive music and
stylistic movements are remembered. Nonetheless, this kind of heritage activity is
evidence of a general democratization of the past and a form of public history. Thus,
while this range of activity might offer economic returns, it is important to register
how it is simultaneously something that has public value, recognition of the cultural
worth of popular music in the life stories of individuals and communities. At the
opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, pop music was one of the
central representations of British culture and heritage.
The BBC’s role in this area has been significant in recognizing the centrality of
popular culture in the national story, with BBC4’s Friday night is dedicated to
showcasing music documentaries and compilations from the archive, and its ‘My
Generation’ development is the culmination of this attention.
Most interesting is the way in which this particular project by the national public
2www.vintage.tv/who-we-are/about-us

10. service broadcaster reflects a coming together of official projects – produced ‘top-
down’ from either commercial music industry or public cultural institutions – and
more organic activities. Cassian Harrison, Channel Editor of BBC Four, suggests
that: ‘My Generation is a fabulous example of what the BBC can do: a year-long
celebration of the power of popular music to shape the story of everyone’s lives
- from the stars to ordinary people’. The programme makers have clearly been
inspired by the practices of community ventures devoted to music such as ‘Pompey
Pop’ in Portsmouth, ‘Uncommon People’ in Sheffield or ‘Pink Noise and other Hull
Bands of the 1980s’ about Humberside. Closer to home we might also note the
influence of projects such as ‘Soho Road to the Punjab’ (Punch Records) and Home
of Metal (Capsule), both funded by HLF, and our own Birmingham Music Archive
(BMA).
BMA is certainly evidence of a wider set of activities organized across the online
world that focus on individual artists, geographical areas, subcultures, venues,
shops and communities. These can be found on bespoke sites, pages on Blogger
or Wordpress and, most fertile of all, social media platforms such as Facebook,
Tumblr, Pinterest, MySpace and the ‘micro’ blogging site Twitter.
On Facebook for instance there are groups as varied as: the Record Shop Archive;
Birmingham Record Shops 1970-1990; The Old Punkrock-Badges Fanatics; 80s
Fanzines and Ephemera; Punk Memorabilia; Virgin Records In The 1970s And
1980’s; Stiff Records the worlds most flexible record label!
In each case, administrators and group members post links to YouTube
videos, Soundcloud files and Spotify, as well as official and ‘unofficial ‘releases.
Users upload digital scans of signed record sleeves, concert tickets, personal
photographs, along with varieties of ‘official’ images from record company
publicity or from the music press and other sources. Participants ask either
explicitly or implicitly, ‘Do you remember?’ or ‘Where you there?’, posting
invitations and comments, links and scans. In this way, communities are built on
the sharing of memories of specific pieces of music, performances, videos and the
place of such things in relation to individual lives and experiences.
This exhibition began when scholars at the Birmingham Centre for Media and
Cultural Research (BCMCR) discovered that amongst the many Facebook pages
about music was ‘The Click Club at Burberries’. This page is described as:
Alternative disco and bands; June 1986 - July 1990. Official Facebook page
administered by the original Click Club promoter. Created on the 25th anniversary
of the opening night (10/6/11).
Here, Dave Travis has scanned a range of his extensive records of gigs in terms of
programmes, flyers, posters and of course the photographs he took during this
period which document bands, audiences and the staff and environment of The
Click Club itself. As with many other pages like this, over 500 people have come

11. to join this site, commenting on photographs and the posts of other, answering
each others questions about particular gigs, records, nights or acquaintances,
generating memory, creating a response to Steve Coxon and Dave Travis’s work in
creating The Click Club and Travis’ archive of images.
This exhibition is an attempt to take this activity to a different space in order to
explore its meanings and value. As is demonstrated by online memories, it had
value for so many people who were there. But what has it to say to those who were
not? What can it tell us about the wider context of social and cultural history?
We proceed with the belief that this exhibition and activities like it are important
ways of thinking about the past and in particular, the value of popular culture in
the course of people’s lives. In this way, it is one way of responding to a recent call
from a group of historians:
‘Is There Anyone Out There?’ Documenting Birmingham’s Alternative Music Scene
1986-1990 might be an opportunity to reminisce and have fun for some or more
generally, as a means of finding out about a small but not insignificant space and
activity that offers a stepping stone to a wider set of questions and understanding.
Modern British historians have rarely shown much interest in questions of youth,
youth culture or popular music. […] The time has surely come, therefore, for
historians to take youth seriously; to seek to contextualise and understand the
ways in which young people have navigated their way to adulthood through the
dramatically changing socio-economic and political contours of the twentieth
century. Indeed, we would go so far as to argue that the study of youth and youth
culture provides an opportunity to uncover important aspects of social and
political change, be they mediated through consumption, the construction of
identity, the production of popular music, or in terms of providing a ‘space’ beyond
the family, school and workplace in which formative cultural and political interests
and perspectives are developed (Garland et al 2012, p. 265).

12. The Origins of The Click Club and its Cultural Context
Oh has the world changed, or have I changed?
Oh has the world changed, or have I changed?
The Smiths, ‘The Queen is Dead’
A Site of Memory
Founded by Steve Coxon and Dave Travis, The Click Club ran on Tuesday evenings at
Burberries nightclub on Broad Street, Birmingham, from 1986 until 1990. It provided
a performance venue for bands on independent labels and a disco offering music and
an ethos as an ‘alternative’ to the rest of the week at Burberries and the conventions of
the majority of the clubs in Birmingham. By 1990, The Click Club had relocated to the
Institute in Digbeth when the building was sold, reopening as Tramps for a while. This
move signalled that the city, and the field of popular music, had undergone changes, a
process in which this site of alternative culture played a part and which merits some
consideration both in the context of the current exhibition and the wider social history
of Birmingham.
Like a number of sites of historical cultural interest in the city, the building that housed
Burberries and thus The Click Club is gone: razed to the ground. In the local economy
of popular music, even while other physical spaces may be more enduring, their use
has changed. A good example is ‘Mothers’, a rock club hosted in a suburban dance hall
above what was formerly a furniture shop (now closed). It was here that Pink Floyd
recorded part of the album Ummagumma. Likewise with ‘Henry’s Blues House’, the
name for a regular slot in the room above a city-centre pub where Black Sabbath and
others gained an audience in the early 1970s. Previously, the pub was the home of a folk
club, famous for the recording of the Ian Campbell Band’s ‘Ceilidh at the Crown’ album
(1962). Later it was an important venue for the city’s punk scene. Now the site is closed
and earmarked for transformation into apartments.
Despite such transmutations, such sites are not forgotten: visit them and there are
often individuals or groups hanging around to commune with the spirit of the music
and community that convened there. Some come quite a distance to do so. At the time
of writing, the Broad Street space that was inhabited by Burberries is still empty: the
floor space has been covered over with a cursory layer of gravel in order to provide a
makeshift car park. Whether you have memories from actually having attending The
Click Club or have considered the images displayed in the current exhibition it is worth
visiting this space in order to imagine the structure that barely contained the sound,
energy and bodies that galvanized Tuesday nights.
3This section makes use of a memories and commentary provided by a range of people who
responded to a call online during early 2016. All of the commentaries are from those who
regularly attended The Click Club and are used across the exhibition. We also draw upon the
superlative Rocks Backpages for contemporary music journalism (www.rocksbackpages.
com). Thanks to Dave Travis, Bryan Taylor and Dave Chambers for original editions of Click .

13. Building The Click Club
The Click Club emerged from an earlier wasteland to fulfil a gap in Birmingham life. In
the mid-1980s a vibrant music economy and culture had developed in the UK. Prompted
by the DIY spirit of punk, hundreds of labels were established, sometimes simply to put
out one record by one band, and unevenly available across a national retail sector of
independent music stores (and even sometimes available in larger chains such as HMV or
Virgin). Some labels were established or supported directly by independent stores such
as Rough Trade in London, Probe in Liverpool, Red Rhino in York and Revolver Records
in Bristol. Together, these businesses formed a co-operative together with others such as
Backs (Norwich), Fast Forward (Edinburgh) and Nine Mile (Leamington Spa), to create
a distribution ‘Cartel’ in order to support the independent sector, underwritten by an
ethos to make available cultural work that would be completely ignored by the dominant
‘major’ labels and distributors such as (then), EMI, WEA or Polydor.
In a spirit of public service broadcasting applied to popular culture, the BBC DJ John Peel
supported much of this music because, as is suggested in his biography: ‘The 1980s saw
commercialism and marketing become the major driving forces behind getting bands
onto the radio, but John remained determined to back the underdogs of the musical
underground’. On his Radio 1 show, Peel would play records sent in by a prodigious array
of labels, reading out contact details so that listeners could mail direct for copies. Richard
Marsh of Pop Will Eat Itself, a key local band that was a regular attraction at The Click
Club, has recalled how this benefited the release of their self-released debut single of
1986 ‘Poppies Say Grrr!’ Peel played the single regularly, reading out both contact address
and phone number (actually Marsh’s parental home), with newfound fans mailing cash or
calling to speak with the band.
Of course, Peel was not the only means of finding out about music. Dedicated publications
such as Sounds, Melody Maker, Record Mirror and New Musical Express (NME: where
‘Poppies Say Grrr!’ achieved ‘Single of the Week’ when reviewed) responded to this
emergent field as much as they serviced the dominant record companies.
In the field of live music promotion, and in the same entrepreneurial spirit of DIY, some
were willing challenge the boundaries of amateur and professional music business. Bryan
Taylor, later one of the regular DJs at The Click Club, is one of a range of individuals who
sought to make their own entertainment – whether by forming bands and writing songs,
starting record labels or promoting gigs. Much of this cost money of course and required
a mixture of naivety, risk aversion and sheer brass neck. As Taylor recalls, the first time
Primal Scream ever played in Birmingham:
Myself and Hugh McGuinness (Later of Mighty Mighty) put this night on. We were
cautioned for flyposting, the gig didn’t get into the weekly listings for some reason, the
band turned up at 10.45 and the power was pulled at 11.10. Disastrous! I recall that we
had to pay the bands £200 as Hugh had signed a contract without my knowledge (!). As
we split everything I owed him about £65 so maybe took £70 on the door.

14. (Courtesy of David Chambers)

15. In spite of such efforts, regular gig-goers like Coxon and Travis lamented the apparent
decline of clubs and pub venues in the city by the mid 80s. As Derek Hammond (AKA: DJ
Taylor) wrote in the NME on the occasion of The Click Club’s launch: ‘Every club venue
managing to attract a regular crowd over the last 10 years has fallen victim to the city’s
ultra-conservative licensing, polizei and fire regulations. The Tin Can Club, the Holy City
Zoo, Barbarella’s and the Cedar Club – all are now untended mausoleums in a Youth
Culture graveyard’. The two were also reviewers for the music press (Coxon: words;
Travis: images), which made this situation a practical issue too. As Coxon relates, ‘Dave
and I were fed up of going to Derby, Leicester, Nottingham etc. to review/photograph
bands for Sounds that weren’t playing Birmingham because there wasn’t the right-sized
venue’. The city did not then have a venue that could cater for bands that were beginning
to gain success: enough to draw crowds that meant they were too big for a pub venue but
not appealing enough to merit booking at larger sites like the Odeon.
In late 1985, Coxon had learned that Mark Jones and Keith Williams, owners of the
Peppermint Place nightclub were in the process a new build along the same lines. Coxon
and Travis saw an opening. As Coxon recalls:
When I bumped into one of the blokes who was about to build Burberries (600 capacity,
exactly the right size) I said, ‘What’s your worst night?’ He said, ‘Tuesday’. I said ‘We’ll
have it.’ Then, Dave and I struck a spectacularly good deal where we paid no rent for the
venue (just a share of the profit) and they paid a share of the losses. It worked out for
everyone … Like a lot of what we did then, the end result was more luck than judgment,
but luck was on our side…
Managing The Click Club
The Click Club was named after Click!, a magazine that Coxon and Travis founded and
which continued to be available in house for the duration of the Burberries residency. It
launched on 10th June 1986 with a packed gig by local band Terry and Gerry. As Steve
Coxon recalls, at least one person approached him and Travis to praise the venture but
to warn that it would not last. But it did last, sustained by the DIY spirit of the post-punk
scene in which shared cultural values were as important as a return on investment or
search for profit.
Jeremy Paige of Cowboy Printing (also leader of Birmingham band Rumblefish) designed
the promotional posters for The Click Club; hi slogan was ‘Two thirds the quality, half the
price!’ As promotional material such posters would be pasted on available walls (subject
to an affable arrangement with Headquarters, the organization that controlled much of
the flyposting sites in the city). Posters were printed on lightweight paper that made for
efficient and economic flyposting. Travis relates ‘In the days before computer graphics,
everything was done by hand, including hand painted ideas for posters’. Each poster thus
had an individualized quality that gave them double value for music fans as souvenirs but
also underlines the rarity of such materials.

16. Regular Click Club goer John Taggart recalls his discovery of it and his first visit:
We made our way down Broad Street only to be confronted by a line of haircuts,
misfits, anoraks and National Health glasses outside Burberries nightclub. We joined
the line feeling sure we would be turned away for having the wrong hair or not being
cool enough. To our surprise we were welcomed in by a smiling man who I later found
to be called Dave Travis and for three pounds our lives he changed forever.
The construction of the Burberries space made for a distinctive experience. A low
ceiling made the venue seem smaller than its capacity suggested. Bands played on the
dance floor, on a 12-inch stage: ‘This was not deliberate. In the original plans, the stage
was going to be at the back of the club and about 4-5 feet high. Dave and I didn’t know
that the plans had changed and the owners had neglected to include a stage until 2
weeks before launch. They paid for a dismountable stage to be built. The dance floor
was the only place it could go. Actually, it worked out brilliantly.’
The organization of stage space in Burberries meant that the audience was always
close to the band – before during and after performances. Audience members could
stand in front, at the side and behind the stage. Fanzine writers interviewed acts in the
changing room, actually an adapted fire exit dressed in tinfoil. Angela Hughes recalls
interviewing Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream backstage in the toilet before a gig
for a fanzine.
It was the quietest place we could find to record it on my Sony Walkman. Bobby was
drinking orange juice and talked about how he would never drink before a gig as it
wasn’t fair to the paying audience. I was chuffed that I’d managed to get some time
with him – and it had been so easy. I’d just called earlier on in the day, asked to speak
to the Tour Manager and asked if we could come along and speak to the band. You
could do that a lot back then, we did it often.
If bands were able to stick around after they played for the alternative disco, they
would be joined at the bar by audience members and share the dance floor with them.
As regular DJ Steve Byrne has commented, The Mighty Lemon Drops, Pop Will Eat
Itself and The Wonder Stuff were ‘all brilliant bands who played the venue on occasion
and drank there regularly!! There were no airs and graces with any of the band
members who were in successful bands by the late 80`s on major labels. You would not
have known it as they were all very down to earth.’
As is apparent in the exhibition, one of the unalloyed joys of Dave Travis’ photographic
record of The Click Club is the variety of images of the audience simply having a good
time. Travis often turned his lens on the crowd, sometimes without reference to the
band of the night. Sometimes he captured the dance floor at the alternative disco but
such shots have none of the kinetic power of those losing themselves in the midst of a
live performance. The images attest to the obvious importance of audiences to music
culture but also the particularity of The Click Club. The proximity of band and audience
allowed for unusually intimate exchanges, with individuals arrayed before, beside and

17. behind musicians – with all action reflected in the mirrors and polished metal above
and around them. Such images convey the heterogeneity of The Click Club, as well as
the camaraderie and good spirit of audience members crammed into a small space,
vying for a prime viewpoint and moving with the swell of numbers.
Of course, some of the character of the club came from the fact that it was a licensed
venue as well as an interesting promotional arrangement. As Bryan Taylor writes:
At first, the ‘Alternative Disco’ nights took a while to take off. As an incentive, pints
were 60p before 11 o’clock and £1 afterwards. At the time, £1 was ‘nightclub price’! I
would often get a bus from Harborne at 10.30 with my mate and get there just in time
to order 8 pints of Tennents Extra to last me ‘til 2 o’clock. Quite often, it didn’t ... Also,
I wasn’t the only one to do this, so situations would arise where there’d be a group
of five or so of us around a table choc-a-bloc with pints, trying to remember whose
was who’s with comments like, “These are my six”, “My five are on the left” etc. etc.
(shudders).
As Lara Ratnaraja, another regular, recalls, the very fact of gig-going and partying on a
Tuesday evening could be quite demanding, enough to involve some serious lifestyle
planning: ‘I managed to get a job in a call centre that let me work afternoon shifts so I
would be met at the bus stop at 9 in the evening, by friends with a change of clothes,
go to Burberries and sleep off the hangover caused by cheap beer and go to work at 2
the following day.’
Gentle Tuesday: As Click Club as You Could Get
Before The Click Club launched, Travis had already gained some experience,
managing a band called ‘The Man Upstairs’ (two of its members – Rupert and
Caroline – took on regular DJ duties at The Click Club) and organising gigs at a city
centre pub. Coxon acknowledges that ‘Dave was the genius behind the band-booking,
though. He had great taste and insight. (Maybe still has.)…’ Importantly, as was and is
often the case in the independent sector, the two were genuinely interested in music.
As Travis has said: ‘We were fans rather than hard-nosed business men’ and, while
this did not militate against the success of their venture, it did contribute how the
two approached the management of their nights and events and the cultivation of a
particular community spirit.
Certainly, the promoters’ own fandom comes across in their recollections on
Facebook:
Dave Travis: I remember when Camper Van Beethoven played live at Burberries, we
locked the doors and everyone, including security went in to watch when they played
‘Take the Skinheads Bowling’
Steve Coxon: Actually, we didn’t lock the doors. For a few minutes, there, the Click
Club till and the door was entirely open while we and the doormen went and watched
the band, which was, basically, as Click Club as you could get!

18. Of course, the central fact of The Click Club was the music – whether live or on record –
interleaving with life. As John Taggart has told us:
The Click Club became the highlight of our week (life) we saw brilliant bands, we got
drunk, we snogged girls and boys made friends for life, we made shapes on the dance
floor … all to a soundtrack of brilliant songs: Velocity Girl Primal Scream, Almost Prayed
The Weather Prophets, Big Decision That Petrol Emotion, Pristine Christine The Sea
Urchins, Built Like a Car Mighty Mighty, She Looks right through me The Waltones, Give
me back my man The B52’s.
One of the best-attended nights was a double headline gig by 4AD label mates Throwing
Muses and The Pixies. Sarah Heyworth (who describes herself as blonde, sixties dresses,
always danced to Velocity Girl and Prince) writes ‘The club decor was naff even by peak
Eighties standard. But the great thing about seeing the bands was that you were eyeball
to eyeball with them on the three inch high “stage”. When Pixies played, the sweat,
throbbing veins and raw force of the band were literally in your face.’ Photographer
Phil Nicolls was present to shoot the images of the bands for Melody Maker. He writes
that ‘The small and low stage was also surrounded by mirrors with gaps where the fans
peered through. It was bizarre, the band being watched from all sides … The place was
rammed and the crowd went mental, the sound amazing. I think that was one of the best
gigs I’ve ever been to’. 4 As the Black Country Rock blog suggests: ’I know a few people
who were there who equally blown away and it feels like a Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks
at the Lesser Free Trade Hall moment. It really was one of those nights.’ 5 Many other
nights were as important for many other people for a range of reasons.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of the night’s launch, Coxon (under his music
journalism pseudonym Geoffrey S. Kent), pondered The Click Club’s reception and
evaluated its success in terms of a pact between promoters, bands and audience. In Click!
magazine he commented that: ‘The hard work you don’t need to know about. The faith
you already know about – it’s demonstrated every week. Because the only bands we
invite to The CLiCK! Club are the bands we want to see and believe other people want to
see too.’ This approach was distinct from those who would ‘put on any band who will pay
them enough for the night’.
To further understand the integrity and value of The Click Club it is worth considering
the nature of the alternative culture and space that it offered. Indeed, what was it and the
music it programmed offering an alternative to?
4http://www.philnicholls.com/archiveshop/prod_2949094-Pixies-live-at-Burberries-Birming-
ham-first-UK-tour-1988.html
5https://blackcountryrock.wordpress.com/2015/10/25/bloody-your-hands-on-a-cactus-tree-the-
pixies-at-burberries/

19. Writing on John Peel, and mindful of the dangers of generalization, Ken Garner has written
that bands favoured by the DJ ‘were characterised by a witty melancholic disaffection with
the emerging cultural orthodoxy of 1980s Britain’ (Garner 1993: 158). The context for this
orthodoxy was the ascendancy of the New Right manifest in several terms of Conservative
government under Margaret Thatcher. The dominant social and economic programme
of this period meant an end to the post-war ‘consensus’, the pursuit of deregulation,
monetarist polices and an ideology captured by the announcement that there is ‘no such
thing as society’. 6
John Peel noted that: ‘You’d get records sent in by these stroppy lads from tiny towns
in Lincolnshire, places you had to look up on the map . . . And I’m a great sucker for
cheerful amateurism. Another thing I liked was that a lot of these bands were almost
entirely without ambition. Their goal was often just to put out a single, or do one session
with us’ (Quoted in Reynolds 2005: 221). This is quite a contrast to the avarice and self-
interest promoted by government. Certainly, the kind of commercialism and marketing
that he was suspicious of was manifest in the appearance of artists like Madonna, Wham
or Duran Duran, a band of whom American critic Robert Christgau wrote: ‘As public
figures and maybe as people, these imperialist wimps are the most deplorable pop stars
of the postpunk if not post-Presley era.’ Interesting to note here that this band was one
benchmark against which The Click Club measured its ethos. As Dave Travis noted in Click
Magazine’s advice to bands submitting tapes in search of a gig:
It’s worth pointing out that if your band sounds like Duran Duran and any one band
member has one of those ludicrous feathered hair cuts that’s long at the back, short at the
sides and stuck up on top, or wears jackets with their sleeves rolled up to the elbow, we’re
not interested in hearing from you … The rest of the world doesn’t want to listen to the
bilge which you so predictably churn out.
What is worth pointing out here is the ethos of independence, intimately tied to a sense
of alternative cultural expression and an authentic commitment to music. Consider this
exchange between Andrea Lewis of The Darling Buds and Miles Hunt of The Wonder
Stuff from NME in which the nature of independence seemed to be under threat from the
encroachment of certain types of act, particularly those associated with Stock, Aitken and
Waterman’s PWL label as well as dance music:
Andrea: ‘… looking at the independent charts, it’s all Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue, Yazz,
Bomb The Bass. I’m not having a go at those bands it’s just that those labels have taken
over from the indies, from actual real live bands that gig up and down.’
6 Margaret Thatcher, originally quoted in Woman’s Own, 31 October 1987, discussed in Margaret
Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, Harper Collins, London, 1993, p. 626.

20. Miles: ‘With all those sorts of acts in the indie charts it’s hardly worth thinking about
anymore, it doesn’t exist.’ 7
To some degree, such exchanges, while seeking to distance independence from a
mainstream ethos, also gesture to at a kind of cultural conservatism. For writers like
Simon Reynolds, some aspects of indie-pop were rather retrograde although complex and
resistant to any one summation:
Indiestyle weaves elements chosen from a host of repertoires — Fifties and Sixties
children’s clothes, prepermissive adult clothing, Sixties beat and early psychedelic
styles, the American beatnik look (this fits because American bohemianism is a kind of
indigenous anti Americanism), Punk and Gothic wardrobes.
Similarly, indiepop is seldom straightforwardly revivalist, but fuses idioms like folk,
country, soft Velvets, hard Velvets, Dylan, Byrds, English psychedelia, Television, Spector,
Buzzcocks, Postcard and the Mersey groups of the early Eighties. What all this adds up
to is an elaborate and stylised authenticity, an innocence that isn’t natural but put on,
worked at. Indiepop’s fantasies of innocence are actually a sophisticated response to
current reality and to pop history. 8
Here, Reynolds was thinking of bands such as The Soup Dragons, Tallulah Gosh and the
kind of ‘Cutie’ or ‘Shambling’ band and subculture associated with a tape compilation
issued by the NME in 1986: C86. This compilation featured a host of bands that went
onto play at The Click Club: Primal Scream; We’ve Got a Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use
it; McCarthy; Mighty Mighty; Stump; The Shop Assistants; The Mighty Lemon Drops
and others. As such it, and the kind of cultural attitude summarized by Reynolds,
encompassed a wealth of the indie sector but varied enough to incorporate also genres
such as hard-core punk or even ‘World Music’, so-called, all of which were represented at
The Click Club on stage and on the playlist.
While commentators and consumers might have argued between themselves about the
meaning of independence and alternativeness, it was easier to identify what they were
against. In terms of having a good time, and the place in which to pursue one, it meant
something distinct from the kind of available nightlife experience in the city. As a physical
space, Burberries was typical with its emphasis on glitz and glamour, its superficiality
expressed in the reflective surface of the mirrors and neon. In this, it echoed the relatively
famous Rum Runner, as described by Duran Duran’s John Taylor ‘If you did make it
beyond security, you’d find that the club had been remodelled to simulate a sophisticated
New York environment: mirror flex, pink neon flashes, moving lights and a sad selection
7Len Brown, ‘The House of Love, The Darling Buds and The Wonder Stuff: Tomorrow Belongs To Us’,
New Musical Express, 7 January 1989.
8 Simon Reynolds, ‘Ladybirds & StartRite Kids’, Melody Maker, 27 September 1986

21. of sickly, etiolated palms – quite posh for Birmingham, really.’
In this design the aim of Birmingham nightclubs was aspirational and escapist, their generic
purpose summarised by one poster at the online Birmingham History Forum who writes ‘I
remember Bonkers........peppermint place...faces....millionaires.....loads of mirrors in there...I
always fared well in millionaires....never left alone always pulled that was late 80s I used
to go..’ Derek Hammond was pithier in the NME in describing The Click Club’s ‘Parasitic
residency in an up-market meat market’.
This is not to suggest by any means that habitués of The Click Club were in anyway less
interested in ‘pulling’ and many relationships were made (and broken) there. As Maria
Williams recalls:
We met in the Click Club back in 1986 aged 18 & 19 and that was it - for me anyway, he took a
bit more persuading! I remember going off to find the friend I’d abandoned, beautiful Sarah,
and babbling to her about this bloke I’d just met, and she just said “bloody hell are you going
to get married?” because I was being so effusive... And I really shocked myself by blurting out
“yes!”. Anyway reader, I married him. And we’re still together 30 years later.
Ultimately, those who subscribed to the alternative claims of The Click Club responded to
a freedom to be themselves – there was a strict ‘No Smart Dress’ policy, so overcoming the
general insistence across the city that jeans, trainers and a lack of shirt and tie in men were
detrimental to atmosphere and a good time. Above all, what united and defined the culture,
whatever the differences about what constituted independence or alternativeness, was the
primacy of the music. As Bryan Taylor describes his role: ‘DJ wise it was all pre-cd, mp3
etc. and we survived very well indeed with the old two turntables and a microphone. The
microphone, however, was out of bounds and I understood why Dave Travis wanted it that
way when I called into Burberries one Thursday night with him to witness what a ‘normal’
night was like. Quite frankly it was awful and the dj announced every record and also talked
over each one.’ Click Club regular Andy Tomlinson has also written:
I went on to be a DJ on the indie-circuit in Birmingham and the Black County during the late
80’s/early 90’s, but it wasn’t until I went to Burberries on a Tuesday night and heard Rupert
& Caroline playing indie & alternative tracks, that I ever imagined I would hear the kind of
music I was listening to in my bedroom, in a nightclub!!! Up until then, the only music I’d ever
heard in nightclubs in Birmingham was the slick soul of Alexander & Luther, or Brum club/
party classics such as ‘Welcome To The Monkey House’ by Animal Magnet & ‘Kiss Me’ by Tin
Tin.
Valuing The Click Club
Some of the music labelled as ‘alternative’ from the 1980s exhibits some of the inevitable
consequences of DIY culture in its character. To many ears it is poorly recorded and even
often poorly executed in terms of musicianship. However, this is not always the point of why
people make music, nor what they value about it: the total sound and imaginative landscape
of a record is what matters. Ian MacDonald, after Alexander Pope, suggests that a little

22. learning is a bad thing, particularly in pop: ‘where technical expertise tends to produce either
songs of lifeless textbook correctness or kitsch exhibitions of decorative pseudo-classicism’
(MacDonald 1994, 2005: 10n). There are enough gaps and suggestions in recordings and
what they gesture to for listeners – as much as their creators – to imagine aims and ideas
that never quite materialise as intended. The value and meaning of music is not there to be
read off like a set of terms and conditions. We might love the label, a cover image, a particular
sound, the associations of where we bought a record and so on. Thought of in this way, music
is important personally and collectively (from a couple of people to a crowd) not for how
much money it made the UK economy, how many mansions it paid for or awards it won. In
the song Ballad of the Band, Lawrence from the great Birmingham outfit Felt encapsulates
the apparent dead end of so much music, as well as the scenes that music inspires and is
inspired by. In his mournful tone he sings: ‘Ain’t got no money, ain’t got no fame/And that’s
why, I feel like giving in’ and yet such a recording, which has barely registered amongst the
wider culture, is described by the super fan and author JC Brouchard as ‘a perfect pop-
rock song, from the intro on with the rhythm guitar riff and the solo guitar, both played by
Lawrence.’ (Brouchard, 2011: 28). To others, such music is equally valuable because it might
have been playing at a particular moment, in a particular club, on a particular night, either on
record or played live by the band.
In the traces and memories of a place like The Click Club we discover how the romance and
imagination engendered by music carries over into the wider community of interest that
convened there. And bands are often especially adroit in capturing in song the imaginative
and romantic potential of any location and the aims and ambitions of particular communities
of interest. For instance, another evocative recording by Felt, ‘Final Resting of the Ark’, might
be interpreted in this way. In this song, Lawrence uses the biblical fable of the lost Ark of the
Covenant as a metaphor for identifying locations that have been inspirational sites of cultural
production:
Palisade of pleasure
A circus sound
Paris of the twenties, a New York sixties art underground
Buried treasure
A Gaudi park
57th street gallery
The final resting of the ark.
Perhaps one could add to that list The Click Club, the place where Felt played their final ever
gig on 19th December 1989. For those who were there, and who might mythologize it, it was
a treasured moment on a par with these other, more renowned and well-documented sacred
spaces of culture.
The current exhibition displays but a fragment of Dave Travis’ personal record of The
Click Club, yet it is unusual to find such a systematically documented and well-preserved
archive of a scene in a city that has largely been overlooked and even actively disdained in
popular music histories. Amongst the images of dancing and performances, the record of

23. an appearance by a band like Suicide at The Click Club underlines the value of this
photographic archive and the exhibition’s exploration of the context and meanings of
Birmingham’s alternative culture in the 1980s. Across popular literature and media,
music genres and networks associated with New York clubs like CBGB or Max’s Kansas
City have been extensively documented and celebrated, favouring great bands like
Suicide, Blondie, Talking Heads, Patty Smith, Television or The Ramones, alongside
other types of creative worker and entrepreneurs that came out of that milieu. This
archive attests to this time and place and suggests that there is something to be valued
and celebrated (if not uncritically) about Birmingham’s cultural life, its development,
connectedness and those who made it that might contribute to how those in the city
see themselves and how they are seen in turn by outsiders.
Ultimately the experience of The Click Club proved to be transformative for so many
individuals, impacting on their orientation and direction in life and enduring in fond
memories, friendships and dispositions. As so many have recorded in relation to the
exhibition call for memories and comment:
Steve Byrne: ‘All in all The Click Club holds a very special place in my memories of the
time. It was a brilliant experience full of hugely talented and dedicated people from
the bands to the promoters, record shop workers and owners to indie and rock kids
out for a good time. There was never any trouble, the beer was cheap and friends were
easy to make.’
Sarah Heyworth: ‘I still love music, go to gigs when I can and still count as good
friends many of the people I had fun with at Burberries. Most of us run our own small
businesses or still make art. The indie spirit fostered there survives.’
Neil Hollins: ‘Burberries was a beautifully messy, atmospheric and intimate venue. I
was a regular there and saw many bands; these experiences lit up my life and fed my
obsession with music and fuelled an ambition that, one day, I would one day be in a
band good enough to grace the stage there myself’.
Dave Newton: ‘God bless The Click Club!’
Lara Ratnaraja: ‘what has never left me is the sense of friendship and like-mindedness
that surrounded the club. I still make my initial judgments on people’s record
collections.’
Spencer Roberts: ‘The people and millions of bands I saw that inhabited my world
every Tuesday night at Burberries from the mid to late eighties, would go on to shape
my life, and my world view on everything. Thanks for the drink, the friends, the great
music and the memories – Dave Travis!’
John Taggart: ‘…and because we were you young we thought it would never end and
like all good things it did. It was a special time and a special club…’

24. Our aim in this exhibition is to explore those transformations but also the meanings
that such stories offer for a general cultural history and sense of the city, of the role of
popular music, the night-time economy, subcultures and scenes. What, we ask, might be
transformative for us and our knowledge of history, the city and culture in engaging with
the stories revealed by the exhibition materials?
Postscript
Alongside film of gigs from inside The Click Club, the current exhibition also displays a
short film of its wider location. Shot on super 8mm film by Dave Travis, this short piece
surveys Broad Street. We see abandoned buildings, boarded up plots and an overgrowth
of vegetation slowly reclaiming this partly derelict urban space. In the same film, Travis
turns his lens to capture the many cranes arrayed around what would in time become
the International Convention Centre. We see the noticeboards proudly announcing the
coming development and a spread from the local paper on the vision of what Birmingham
would look like in the 1990s.
Between furniture store Lee Longlands and the old Trade and General Workers Union
building, a walk around the empty site of Burberries now reveals the results of this vision.
There is a density of new apartments, a whole series of other clubs and scenes have come
and gone. Just towards the Five Ways island is the site of the Gatecrasher super club
that attests to the legacy of the rave culture of the late 80s and its hubris. At Fiveways,
Auchinlick Square is the abandoned site of Faces International and Peppermint Place.
Myscha’s on Tennant Street is closed, while the Sugar Suite, still going strong on Broad
Street, makes a claim to be the oldest urban club.
One of those faux frontages is dressed to make the vacant lot look like a proper building –
perhaps to aid the imagination of developers addressed by the agent’s note. Opposite is a
Novotel and signs point to NIA, ICC, National Sealife Centre and Brindley Place’s mélange
of architectural styles. Standing at the entrance to what was Burberries one can look
down street too at the new Library of Birmingham and the tower of the Hyatt. At the back
of the club, one looks across to The Cube and the site of the Mailbox development.
All of this change reminds one of a familiar theme in accounts of Birmingham life, of its
making and remaking, first recorded by James Dodds in 1823 in his song ‘I Can’t Find
Brummagem’
Full twenty years and more are passed
Since I left Brummagem.
But I set out for home at last
To good old Brummagem.
But ev’ry place is altered so
Now there’s hardly a place I know
Which fills my heart with grief and woe
For I can’t find Brummagem.

25. The changes in Birmingham represented by the new Broad Street established at the
end of the 80s attest to the increased importance of the leisure economy in the twenty-
first century. Birmingham has undergone a transformation of its very economic base,
as Patrick Loftman and Brendan Nevin put it, ‘From ‘Motor City’ to ‘The Convention
City’’(1996). The nighttime economy as well as the city’s wider cultural offer has
grown in importance and contributed to overturning some of the historically negative
perspectives of the city. While these transformations appear to be engineered by a
core of visionary agents on high, what of the contribution of a wider cast of actors
who have forged the heterogeneous culture of the city in a myriad of ways? Those who
created, appeared at and attended The Click Club might be amongst those actors, the
people who, between them, have contributed to creating and recreating Birmingham
in meaningful and exciting ways.

26. What next? Exploring the archive and mapping the context
of The Click Club
What is represented in this exhibition is a partial snapshot of a place in space and
time. The very selection we’ve made from the archive of Dave Travis in particular is an
interpretation, accentuated by the layout of the exhibition boards and the type of print
made from the images, as well as the commentary we’ve provided and solicited from
others.
In developing the exhibition we attempted to involve as many people as possible in order
to extend the nature of this interpretation. During the exhibition period – and beyond –
we welcome feedback as well as suggestions for additions, amendments to commentaries
and so on.
We have also created a map that invites participants to extend our understanding of
Birmingham’s music culture. This might work in two ways: firstly, those who know
something about The Click Club might be willing to indicate the connections between that
site and its attendees with other venues, clubs, record stores, events, individuals and so
on. For those who were not there – before this time, during or after, right up to today –
they are welcome to add notes or signs about important venues, places, spaces and so on
that extend our understand of what places, people and events have mattered to them.
It is important for visitors to feel able to comment and feed back to us.
Whether you were there or not, whether you have any interest in popular music or
cultural heritage, insights into your reactions to this interpretation about what is here
and what is missing are things we’d like to hear about.
You can win one of the exhibition prints by filling out one of the available feedback
cards, sending us a letter or emailing us.
Simply name the print that you would like to win with a short explanation of why you
want it and some feedback on the exhibition. You might want to think about the following
questions:
What knowledge have you gained about Birmingham’s popular music history?
What have you learned about popular music heritage?
What changed as a result of visiting the exhibition?
What kind of similar activities have you been involved in that could be investigated by
historians?

27. You can leave comments in and around the exhibition and you are welcome to
contact us directly:
Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research
Parkside Building
Birmingham City University
Curzon Street
Birmingham
B4 7BD
Telephone: 0121-331-5468
Email: info@BCMCR.org

28. Exhibition Partners
Birmingham Music Archive
Practice in the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research that is concerned
with popular music history and heritage is in part inspired by the work of a range of
activist archivists and historians. Jez Collins of the BCMCR is one such activist and the
founder of Birmingham Music Archive and his activities were central to the development
of this exhibition. Here, Jez outlines his ethos.
I’ve been fortunate enough to live more or less my whole life in Birmingham. And I’ve
always been surrounded by music.
I have vivid memories of queuing with my mom and dad, in about 1975, outside Cyclops
Records in Piccadilly Arcade for Bob Dylan tickets (for them, not me!). Of being with my
cousins Mark and Loz in Chelmsley Wood later on in the 70s and 80s and listening to the
new punk and then post punk records they brought home from trips to town. Of feeling
somehow different to the majority of my peers at school because I liked ‘weird’ music.
And then finding a home with a group of mates drawn from all over the city who dressed
like me, danced like me, and liked the same music as me: Brian, Dave Kal, Steve and Linda,
Squee, Dave Wheels and all the others.
The nights spent at venues such as Upstairs at the Mermaid seeing local bands like
Napalm Death and The (Anti) Contras, at The Barrel Organ with Egyptian Fringe and
Nigel The Spoon and of course at The Click Club where I’d see Mighty Mighty or The
Poppies.
Memories of escapades, of love, of friendships won and lost and of course music.
When you are in the middle of it, young
with your whole life ahead of you, you
don’t think about how these times might
be captured. How these people, these
places and spaces and this music might
be remembered in the future. How your
history might be remembered.
Looking back now, with the benefit of
hindsight, this experience laid the seeds
of the Birmingham Music Archive (BMA).
I wanted to be able to share my music
history and culture with others and
provide a space where others could do
likewise.

29. And I was also driven by the frustration that, more broadly, Birmingham’s music heritage
wasn’t recognized by its own citizens or further afield. Certainly not like Liverpool or
Manchester.
So the Birmingham Music Archive was created expressly for anyone to document,
celebrate and share whatever aspect of music culture is important to them. There is no
right or wrong, no singular version of history and nothing too small or insignificant to be
included.
Taking this approach to the creation and formation of local history has resulted in a
deeply rich resource of material and memories being uploaded and shared across a
number of online environments. The main BMA site hosts hundreds of entries on bands,
venues and record shops written by a broad community of music lovers. The associated
BMA Facebook group continues to attract 1000’s of uploads of photographs, ticket
stubs, flyers and all manner of associated memorabilia as well as generating prodigious
amounts of memories and conversations between members.
All this music and memory activity highlights the role that popular music plays in the
lives of individuals and communities, who come together to create, populate and sustain
the Birmingham Music Archive.
The truth is this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There is so much more material to
be collected and preserved, more projects and research to be undertaken such as the role
that black music and migrant communities have played in the cultural life of Birmingham,
a project that is proving hard to find funding for, before we can fully realize the potential
that the Birmingham Music Archive can play in documenting Birmingham’s incredible,
rich and sustained music culture.
Please do continue to help us build such a resource by getting involved at:
birminghammusicarchive.com | Facebook: Birmingham Music Archive Public Group.
Jez and friends The Very Things, The Tube,
Newcastle (1987)
Jez on stage at the Barrel Organ with Nigel
The Spoon

30. Vivid Projects
BCMCR and Vivid Projects have collaborated on a range of music, archive and heritage
related activity.
Vivid Projects is a collaborative project space exploring all forms of media arts practice.
The company was founded by Yasmeen Baig-Clifford in 2012, developed out of VIVID
(1992-2012). Yasmeen is lead curator, and works with associate programmers to
explore historical and emerging contemporary media practices. There is a focus on
iterative research, and the company supports artistic innovation through seeding early
stage creative practice alongside sourcing rare and underground arts practices for new
audiences.
Vivid Projects places high value on cultural research, developing dynamic curatorial
projects which create contemporary access to archival content. The programming
opens up spaces between film, cultural studies and visual arts - redefining the role
of archives from repositories to active resources for artists, and facilitating broad
audience engagement.
Highly successful archival projects, such as Slide/Tape Library of Birmingham and
the University of Birmingham CCCS50 project, have connected archival content back
to communities. Current work in development with HEI partners focuses on moving
image and the ethics and digital potential of archival practices, and through this, we
are brokering new opportunities for artists with academic and cultural partners across
disciplines and sectors.
Selected projects from 2008 to the present are archived at www.vividprojects.org.uk
Vivid’s NOISE + NOSTALGIA is a season exploring the Post-Punk aesthetic in moving
image and sound which runs through May. BCMCR is hosting the following:
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR?
19 May | 7-9pm | Venue Parkside, Birmingham City University
Screening of HOME TAPING (78mins) introduced by Yasmeen Baig-Clifford, Vivid
Projects and panel discussion with Richard Heslop and Justin Smith.
Launched with a remit to support ‘minority programming’ Channel 4 started
broadcasting in 1982 with a platform for marginalized and controversial content. In
1986 The Chart Show emerged, heavily influenced by the video formats of MTV and
unique at the time for replacing presenters with a computer-generated information
display. Music video production moved on from a visual music aesthetic to a more
commercial footing. With music video forming an increasingly important part of
historical studies of the 80s, what is the context for music video now?

31. Justin Smith and Richard Heslop will discuss these issues and more in a post-screening
discussion chaired by Professor Paul Long, Director, Birmingham Centre for Media and
Cultural Research.
Justin Smith is Professor of Media Industries, University of Portsmouth and Principal
Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Fifty Years of
British Music Video, 1965-2015’ in collaboration with Dr Emily Caston, London College
of Communication (UAL).
Richard Heslop is an established director of music videos and films, directing videos for
artists including The Cure, Happy Mondays, Sinead O’ Connor and New Order, as well
as programmes on Channel 4 and the BBC. Selected early films are screening at Vivid
Projects 6-21 May

32. Ellie Gibbons
Ellie Gibbons is a photographer and digital retoucher based in Birmingham, and a
tutor in Media Photography practice and theory at Birmingham City University. It is at
BCU she is also completing a Masters in Visual Communication, exploring considered
approaches to documenting ‘family’ with an emphasis on analogue processes.
Bethany Kane
www.bethanykane.co.uk
Concentrating on the lives people lead, Bethany Kane aims to reveal their narratives
through photography by highlighting details within the personal and public
environments central to their processes of identity construction. Her practice
builds upon the knowledge and understanding she gains through her own personal
experience, using retrospective photographic processes to produce a unique insight
into these rarely documented subjects. Past exhibitions include her work on the
Northern Soul scene, Punk, Skinhead and Oi subcultures.
Accompanying Kane’s photographs documenting the site of where The Click Club used
to stand is her work on the contemporary ‘B-Town’ scene. This relatively new scene
reflects the modern indie crowd and the current Birmingham live music circle.
‘Forget Madchester, it’s all about the B Town Scene’ 9
B-Town is the term given to a collection of indie bands based in and around
Birmingham who caught the attention of music journalists throughout the country.
Active scene participants have adopted a grunge like style, montaging second hand
clothing and vintage trainers that imitate the sense of un-perfection and youth culture
that B-Town reflects though its early raw sound and lyrical content as evoked by
Peace’s ‘I wish I had perfect skin’. For some, B-Town is a derogatory term suggesting
that journalists aren’t taking the Birmingham music scene seriously and see this wave
of successful bands as just a fad.
In her on-going project Kane documents the bands that are at the forefront of the
scene such as Peace, Swim Deep and Jaws in local venues such as The HMV Institute,
Wolverhampton Civic Hall and the recently closed Ooblek.
9 King, A. (2012). Forget Madchester, it’s all about the B-Town scene. Available: http://www.inde-
pendent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/forget-madchester-its-all-about-the-b-town-
scene-8207631.html.)

33. Aidan Mooney
Aidan Mooney is a graphic designer from London based in Birmingham. Working for
and with various community interest companies such as Project Birmingham and
City of Colours. With a strong passion for promoting the arts, he plans to continue
a creative path in Birmingham after finishing his Graphic Communication degree at
Birmingham City University.
behance.net/aidanmooney
instagram.com/aidantmooney
Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research
(BCMCR)
BCMCR was established in 2009 as one of Birmingham City University’s 13
research centres, in order to develop excellent research as a core activity within the
Birmingham School of Media, a part of the Faculty of Art, Design and Media.
At the moment, BCMCR has over 30 research-active staff and 30 research degree
students who are led by Paul Long as Director with Nick Webber as Associate
Director.
Activity in the BCMCR is based around the collaborative work of five research teams:
Popular Music Studies; Cult, Gender and Sexuality; History, Heritage and Archives;
Journalism, Activism, Community; Cultural Ecologies. BCMCR aims to produce
distinctive, collaborative work within the field of media and cultural research.
The ethos of BCMCR is that research is a collaborative enterprise, that work should
have impact within the field and society as a whole, and that it is important that staff
make individual and collective contributions to furthering the discipline and the
academic community which sustains it. This approach is characterised both by the
way staff work within the centre and in research teams, where investigations and
publications are often jointly developed, and in the way staff work with individuals
and organisations outside the university.

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