Tuesday 12 February 2013

THE BIRMINGHAM VIBE




I have 3 different music magazines bearing the name "VIBE" - one is from Birmingham, UK, another hails from the USA and the third comes from Dundee, UK.
I'll start with the Birmingham Vibe as shown above.
This magazine cropped up on the scene in 1993 and was more of a quality fanzine rather than being your customary publication so to speak, complete with Xeroxed pages, but they had a fine team of enthusiasts making a great job of the mag.
It covered jazz, African, hip hop, soul, latin and funk, with the emphasis on the dancefloor, so the content consisted of album reviews, DJ playlists, record label rundowns, clubbing & gig updates as well as presenting in-depth articles on a variety of musicians.
The image on top is a display featuring some of the tasty artwork they had on their covers, however, by the time they reached issue 17 in 1996, it was the end of the run.
Incidentally, they changed their name to "UK Vibe" by issue 16 and these days they have a very nice website up & running under this title.
The ad in the middle comes from another magazine called "Soul Vibe" and dates from 1994.
The bottom picture is a few bits of correspondence I found from back then.
The grey items are subscription renewal reminders and the white sheet is a reply I got when I asked them if I could buy copies of the first 4 issues. I didn't get my hands on Vibe until around issue 5 and so missed out on their earlier issues.
Unfortunately I was out of luck on this occasion too - they had all sold out!

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