Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For anybody growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s, 70s and 80s and who moved away, coming back to the city only on the odd occasion is almost like visiting an alien world, a world that has changed beyond recognition in the days when the old Bull Ring Market dominated the skyline, when records were bought in handy shaped brown bags containing 10 singles for a pound, even if you didn’t know what you were getting till you unwrapped them like some weird and sometimes fruitful version of Pass The Parcel, and where walking down Digbeth High Street and up towards Deritend only meant that you were running the gauntlet of watching Trevor Francis or Alan Curbishly play at St. Andrews or you were on your way to take in some music at the Old Institute or The Dubliner.

Times change, Birmingham, like Liverpool, has undergone massive transformations in its structure and perhaps character; what has not changed is the abundance of local music talent that keeps giving to an audience, that keeps gratefully persisting in its rock heritage and throws nuggets of pure gold into the mix every so often just to make sure those coming to the city know that Birmingham is still a big deal when it comes to the love of a well-played tune.

For Dominic Crane, a man who found himself in the heart of the Midlands at the start of the 1980s, a turbulent time, arguably a time of decay, deterioration and rotting decline he has become interwoven into the fabric of the music culture that haunts the streets of Birmingham, when the city would proudly boast the likes of E.L.O., Jeff Lynne. Ocean Colour Scene, The Moody Blues, The Move, Duran Duran and Black Sabbath. The Ghosts never pass on; they just become more revered and sometimes get added too with acts like The Twang and the musical intelligence that resides within Dominic Crane.

Opening the night for Liverpool’s Ian McNabb is not easy, even in your home town. Ian McNabb is a very big draw, a man whose comes armed with a smile and a guitar and who will leave with your heart neatly tucked away under his sleeve, to get the crowd warmed up for Ian McNabb takes music ability on which everybody can trust and in which none but the hardest cynic with an inflated sense of self would deny Dominic Crane of being able to do.

Quite rightly Mr. Crane opened up the night with a song dedicated to the small village like area of Mosley, an area steeped in history and in which the track gives the idyllic part of Birmingham a sense of fun. So Mosley is one of those songs that demand to open up a set, it places the gig in its natural home, the place where Heavy Metal was born, the idea of the River Rea meandering close by to the end of its border at Moor Green, of the long since moved on Rugby Club. It is a song that is Birmingham through and through.

With other tracks being performed such as Blackart, Cool With Everything, the superb American Tan, Good News For The Paperboy and Baggage Man, Dominic Crane proved, if proof were ever needed that his night supporting Mike and The Mechanics when they last played at the 02 Academy in Birmingham was no flash in the pan, this is a man for whom more recognition is needed. That the delightful pace of his guitar and additional musicians on harmonica and double bass are so natural, so elegant on the ears that like The Move, Jeff Lynne and Black Sabbath, he is an integral part of the music machine that beats beneath the heart of Birmingham.

Ian D. Hall