After serving a wonderful apprenticeship for five years at GKN, going on to designing vending machines at their vending division for ten years by day and playing drums in the band Sub Zero the band I decided in 1985 to start a career in the music industry.

I had learned a lot in the band and built up a lot of contacts as in addition to playing drums with the band I also booked the gigs, maintained the band’s PA system, drove and maintained the van, humped all the gear into venues. and looked after the finances. I set up and financed a small record label with a distribution deal to release the band’s only 7” single Out of the Blue, with the b-side Too Many Nine To Fives. This was a final effort to kick start the band; it didn’t work and the singer/bass player left for pastures new, so after a last S gig at the Wulfrun Hall in 1985 with the final line-up of Sub Zero my drumming days were over. I never played again.

My job at GKN was well-paid and secure but I was not happy there so I decided to take the leap and start my own business in music. I handed my notice in at work and I remember walking out of the office for the final time on a Friday night with a tear in my eye, not really knowing what was in store. On the Monday I was in London cutting a 12” single, Shadow of Love, with Birmingham reggae band Beshara.

My office and base was the front room of my parents house in Quarry Bank and I named the business Sub Zero Music after the band. I had their PA system so at the same time started hiring that out for bands around Birmingham and the Black Country, running the record label by day and PA hire by night.

My next recording project was a little bizarre. Through a mate of mine Dave Vale, who ran the Different Disguises recording studio in Cradley Heath I met Barry Hipkiss, a music teacher from Summerhill School, Kingswinford, who had written a Christmas song, At Christmas Time.

I’ve always had lots of mad ideas so with my contacts I got football legend Emlyn Hughes OBE, gymnastics star Suzanne Dando and he Kingswinford Junior Choir to record the song at Dave’s studio. produced by Noddy Holder. Can you imagine those celebs arriving at Dave’s studio on an industrial estate in Cradley Heath? I had all the local press wanting interviews and pictures.

I thought the end result was good, I employed a plugger which cost me £750 to try to get radio but we only got one play on Radio 1’s Steve Wright in the Afternoon. This project basically cost me all the savings I had built up GKN. I did various other recording projects but after losing all that money knocked the label on the head after a year or so. It was costly but a great experience and I learned a lot.

The PA hire side of things progressed steadily, I got a bank loan to buy new gear and spent the next several years building up that side of the business. I got too big for my parents’ front room and garage, so in about 1988 I purchased and moved to industrial premises in Dudley then a couple of years after that to larger premises in Cradley Heath. At our peak I had 2x 7.5 tonne trucks and a client base included theatres, colleges, universities across the UK with bands like The Commitments, Counterfeit Stones, Jake & Elwood’s Blues Brothers Show and the Circus Of Horrors, to name but a few. I also started manufacturing flight cases , which was quite successful. It was seriously hard work but again it was a great experience and kept me in touch with all the live music going on around the country.

Then in 1992 an old schoolfriend, John, had taken on the lease of the Robin Hood pub near the Merry Hill Centre. This had previously been run by Ray Hingley, who developed the Citizens Theatre, home to the Black Country Night Out, in a large function hall on the back of the pub. This was only a stone’s throw from where I lived in Victoria Road so I went down to take a look at what he was doing. He took me into the Citizens Theatre and I immediately said, “This would make a great live music venue.“

I had some spare PA and lighting gear and I told John I could put on some live concerts to help him get bums on seats. We did a deal where I would put on the concerts, book all the bands, look after the sound and lighting, do all the advertising and he would run the bars. The room and the premises needed a lot of work, which I paid for, but I was convinced I could make it work.

The Robin R’n’B Club opened on 9th April 1992 with a local all-star band called The Journeymen, featuring such great musicians as Mike Sanchez, Trevor Burton, Jim Hickman and The Red Lemons brass section. Noddy Holder officially opened the venue, the second night featured local soul legends Soul Survivors, both nights were rammed and the whole wonderful experience was the start of a very exciting journey into the unknown.

Things got off to a great start with the venue. I started booking two nights a week with some really great local bands – Steve Gibbons, Trevor Burton, Curtis Little Band, Climax Blues Band, Quill, Big Town Playboys, Vincent Flatts, Stan Webb’s Chicken Shack and others, most of which went on to play with us for the next 25 years.

Then not long after we opened, the council had a complaint about excessive noise coming from one resident on the housing estate which was behind a tall grass bank on the other side of the dual carriageway outside. It was frankly ridiculous but the council slapped a noise abatement notice on me which ordered us to close at 10.00pm. This really could have finished us off before we’d started so I employed a specialist solicitor with sound experts to put a case together and we took the council to court.

To cut a long story short and after much worry we won the case and the council ended up paying our legal costs which was about £7,000. The abatement notice was lifted and we lived to fight another day.

The next obstacle to overcome was my old friend John, who ran the bars, held the alcohol licence and lived on the premises. We would have a concert on and there was no beer. It turned out that he had got in financial difficulties and couldn’t pay the brewery so to keep everything going I started loaning him some cash.

This got out of hand so eventually we approached the brewery and I personally took on the ten-year full lease of the Robin Hood and employed a live-in manager to run the bars. This was a huge gamble; the full repairing lease was a massive commitment but thankfully it all worked out in the end.

News of the venue started to spread and we ended up on the circuit of live club venues. I got more adventurous and booked more nights a week with some great higher-ranking British bands. These included Wishbone Ash, Nine Below Zero, the Hamsters, Roger Chapman (ex-Family), Midge Ure, Ian Hunter, Chris Farlowe, Jon Martyn, Peter Green, Trapeze with Glenn Hughes, George Melly and Steve Harley to name but a few.

These were really great, exciting times featuring hundreds of awesome gigs, all with a tale to tell. In the mid-nineties the tribute band phenomenon began; my first such was with Jean Genie, featuring John Mainwaring as David Bowie. He was incredible, his vocals, look and costumes were quite unbelievable and as a Bowie fan he blew me away.

Following on came acts like the Counterfeit Stones, Bootleg Abba, Limehouse Lizzy, T-Rextasy, Australian Pink Floyd and Achtung Baby (U2). These bands were the top league tributes, with wonderful production and they pulled in a huge new clientele. I can honestly say that if this phenomenon had not happened venues like ours would not have survived. These tributes continued to feature at The Robin today.

The venue continued its success, not without many worries along the way, but I was now booking great international bands from around the world – Albert Lee, Al Stewart, Canned Heat, Mountain featuring Lesley West and Corky Laing, John Wetton (Asia/UK), Manfred Mann’s Earthband, Luther Allison, Tony Joe White and Walter Trout to name but a few. I am also very proud that we played a part in nurturing some great new talent who went on to become true international artists including Joanne Shaw Taylor, Aynsley Lister and Ian Parker.

But the Robin story was only just beginning.

Keepin’ Music Live- My Story by Mike Hamblett chronicles my life and every gig from the Robin 1 from 1992 and Robin 2 until I left the business in December 2018. It’s available from my website
mikehamblett.com.