Birmingham Live Music Venues
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Birmingham is the UK’s second city and many fantastic music venues for people to see gigs and concerts. The best venues for this are the following;
O2 Academy
The new O2 Academy in Birmingham is where the former Dome Nightclub was located, which is conveniently situated near to both the Bullring and Arcadian in the City centre. Like the former Academy venue, the new venue has a multi-room operation with the main room having a capacity of 3,009 (of which there is a dedicated 600 capacity seated area) and two other rooms, the O2 Academy 2 with 600 and O2 Academy 3 with 250.
However in an improvement to the old academy, the venue has been designed to allow all three venues to be in use at the same time. Therefore the venue now has a full capacity of 3,859.
HMV Institute
After a £4 million refurbishment of the old Digbeth Institute (in Digbeth), the new HMV Institute reopened its doors on the 18th September 2010. The venue has already staged gigs by Mark Ronson and Kate Nash since it has been opened and is a new rival to the O2 Academy. The 2,400 capacity music venue has three rooms: the main auditorium with a 1,500 capacity, a smaller room for 600 people and the 300-capacity room known as ‘The Temple’.
LG Arena
The LG Arena (otherwise known as the National Exhibition Centre), is a multi-purpose complex that is well-known for staging concerts by major artists, such as Queen, Lady GaGa, Guns N’ Roses in the past – on account of it’s very large 16,000 capacity. The venue is actually based in Solihull, near to junction 6 of the M42 motorway.
National Indoor Arena
The NIA (otherwise known as the National Indoor Arena) is located alongside the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line’s Old Turn Junction and opposite the National Sea Life Centre in Brindleyplace. The venue has played host to a diverse range of artists such as Oasis, Coldplay, Prince, Destiny’s Child, and Paul McCartney, with artists such as Gorillaz and Elbow due to perform there. The capacity is able to seat up to 12,700 people.
Smaller Venues
The Flapper was described in music magazine the NME as ‘the epicentre of Birmingham’s indie scene’, which is situated by the NIA on Kingston Row. Hare & Hounds is also a small venue that hosts acts of all musical genres – but has a great reputation (like The Flapper) for putting on gigs by small new indie artists, like recent gigs by I Blame Coco and Girls. The Glee Club (which is a comedy club) is also known to host live music.
Andy Parker is the editor of Midlands music and entertainment website Electric Banana. The website offers a Birmingham gig guide and Birmingham music venue listings.
