 Tonight
is a rather hot and muggy night in the 2nd city
but I’m off to Digbeth to see some Ska.
Arriving at the venue, the area looks closed,
the road is closed for re-surfacing and so we
circle the block only to come round to where we
started to find a random open door with noise
coming from inside. We follow it in and it leads
to a dark and damp smelling room, but there's
this nice little stage in the corner with an odd
band playing.
The Sick Boys club are on stage and this 5 piece
are a local band and they are weird. The singer
looks wasted (I never did find out if he was wasted
or just acting that way) and the rest of the band
look odd with the guitarist looking like he went
to a wedding got drunk and jumped on stage to
randomly show off, but they play a mixture of
ska based songs that incorporate a bit of crooning
and skat into them. It’s a weird mix off
old and new which goes down well. They play a
nice mix of the Danger Mouse theme tune slowed
down into the cantina song from Star Wars. They
sound well and mix up instruments from bassoons
to sax to keys, its funky this sparse crowd seems
to be having fun watching.
 There’s
not too much of a wait between bands as they change
over, this small stage now has to house 7 band
members from Imperial Leisure and obviously they
are too big for this stage. The band consists
of 2 singers, a trombonist, guitarist, bassist,
keys and drums. And it sounds excellent! Its ska/punk/dub
it’s fast paced and gets this small crowd
feeding out the palm of their hand. The room could
probably hold 100 people, and there are about
40 people here, 7 of which are on stage and 5
where in the band before, so it’s not very
well attended, this is probably why there in this
venue as it was meant to be at the HMV institute
originally. But this doesn’t mean they’re
not any good it just means they need more press
as they’re awesome! There set is fun and
a blast, everyone is dancing and the band move
around this tiny stage like it was the main stage
at the academy, they own it. They burst into I'm
in love with landlords daughter and it’s
sang like the room was full, as everyone sings
at the top of their voices. They play a great
set, lots of highs and no lows. They should be
playing bigger stages for sure, so get behind
the British Ska scene, it was once massive in
the midlands no reason it can't be again, especially
on these hot nights with bands like this!
Sick Boys Club - 2.5/5
Imperial Leisure - 4/5
Review By James Daly
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