From my own page, a couple of weeks back: My friend Brian Parsons is currently unwell with a Brain Tumour, so I wanted to share happy memories I have of him - starting before I even knew him. Apologies for my inability to embed. In the 1970s High Street in Birmingham city centre was a very different vista. If my memory does not deceive me, for some years the Co-op superstore was on both side of the middle of that street. Waiting at the bus stop, the air would be full of the smell of Hot dogs and boiled hamburgers, from one lone cart. Most saturdays, I would head in to town to wander round clothes and record shops, grab a game of pinball or space invaders with friends. For all the nostalgia people speak of, heading in to the last quarter of the century, Birmingham, like so many city centres, was a drab affair. With one difference. Can any of you remember the first time you heard a school of samba bateria?. This is that most distinct memory of 1970s Birmingham for me, it was hearing Brian (some time most likely between 1976 & 79) with a whistle in his mouth, leading a group of drummers and a lone West Indian saxophonist with dreadlocks (Gaelle was also in the group, she mentioned on a recent mutual visit). I looked at that picture in the park on here and wondered against all odds if that was him in the picture. Probably not. But what a beautiful assault on the ears, that passionate orchestration of ten to twenty young people with Brian out in front, in his trademark Hawaiian shirt of the time. In that bus queue, a Jamaican Matron and myself would connect by involuntarily finding ourselves wiggling hips to the infectious live rhythms. Several years would pass and I would find myself in the mid 80s back from London, looking for somewhere to call home on the border of Balsall Heath and Moseley. Working in Aston University Library in the day, volunteering at Birmingham Jazz and the Triangle arts centre by night (the two would converge in gigs for Pinise Saul & Dudu Pukwana & the like). In addition, some of my Black mates and myself started putting on Brums first warehouse parties. These were mainly fuelled by 1st Generation Chicago House and 70s funk & soul. I would meet Brian at the Triangle, and you know how he is, he can chat with anyone. we soon found common ground in a love of Ruben Blades. Brian would show up at any tropical tinged concerts Birmingham Jazz put on. One especially memorable example was a night when Brian & Richard Sealy attended a Flora & Airto gig at the short lived Ronnie Scotts, and had sneaked in some extra percussion and their whistles. The band were visibly delighted with the level of audience participation, and Airto made special note of it between numbers. Brian always felt free to pop in with artwork for flyers, and I would let Aston Uni subsidise a little bit of photocopying and guillotining for the early Bongo Go nights, and almost inevitably he became one of the Djs we booked for the warehouse parties, in some empty unit behind Digbeth. He came in to see me the one time with a smirk on his face. He had been summoned by the local tax office for an unexpected bill. When challenged to his level of earnings for djing, he had said that there was hardly any money in it, and that he had had very few gigs that year. He then went on to tell me of the look of delight on the short bald tax officers face as he slapped all these photocopied fliers and a few posters for good measure on his desk, revealing every gig Zuppa Inglese of the Bongo Go collective had performed at. They came to an agreement. Money was a low priority for him then, so he just laughed it off. Not long after, I would be on the door of Moseley Dance centre with my girlfriend and his Asian friends Sab & Rita taking ticket money off hundreds of locals that filled that bouncy ballroom once or twice a month. We had some weird acts on between the DJ sets, which were basically Brian plus guests. Happy days - should I say nights?. I suspect he was the reason behind Trish & I visiting West Africa for our most ambitious holiday, him having introduced me to Star Band de Dakar, and he certainly delighted in our listening together to Senegalese bands on cassette when we returned, bought in markets alive with the smell of dried giant sea snail and Palm Oil. He pointed out how these acts would make it big and head off to Paris to remix the tunes with heavy backbeat, ruining their originality for him. I went to live in Ireland in the next decade, and on my return to another part of England, had not made contact with many old Brum friends, such is the time pull of raising children & earning a living, but going in to the Amberley Court room and sitting down to chat about those early days last week was as relaxing and bittersweet fun for me as much as him. Big Love to you Brian, a bright splash of colour in my life
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 19:33:26 +0000
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