Manchester Venues 151 to 152

I am blessed with my current geographical Manchester location as there are regular multi-venue events, the latest to spring up is the Years End Festival which took place at the tail end of 2024 and is based in the main down the Oxford Road corridor. The remit of the days roster was for it to contain up and coming bands and most were guitar based, which suited me down to a tee.

The downside on the day was the monsoon and high winds weather conditions which was a tad bracing! I have previously detailed the Retro Bar downstairs area in an earlier blog, but this festival allowed me to attend a gig in the Manchester Retro Bar Area for the first time. I enrolled my pal Paul to be my wing man, and we met up at that site after we had both separately obtained our entry wristbands from the pickup point.

As I trotted down towards the building it soon became evident that there was a noisy combo already ensconced on the stage. I grabbed a cold beverage and settled in to watch a band called Revivalry who are a thumping three piece from Grimsby. They had such admirable confidence which is remarkable when viewed against the fact that none of the members are above 17 years of age. The lead singer and bassist Josh Courfield who was belting out the tunes looked about 12!

Revivalry. Image Credit grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

They are understandably reliant at this stage in being ferried to gigs around the country in the back of a transit van by one of their understanding tolerant parents and they were chosen to be the youngest band ever to play the Main Stage at the 2024 version of the Kendal Calling festival. They are on Manchester label Cosmic Glue and have already garnered support slots with Reverend and the Makers and The Lathums.  

In a novel twist they climbed down into the crowd to play an acoustic portion of their penultimate track before clambering back onto the stage for the electric second half of the song with full audience singalong participation. They were overall rather fine fun and good luck to them in their potentially burgeoning careers.    

Now, I have always endeavoured to never replicate myself in these articles but I make no apologies now for referencing a tale I mentioned briefly back in the mists of time in the second paragraph of Blog 1.

Hacienda nightclub. Image Credit manchestereveningnews.co.uk

My first ever venue visited in Manchester should have been at the Hacienda nightclub as we had tickets to see Husker Du there in early 1985. There was though a fundamental stumbling block of having no means of transport to be able to get there and back as my brother was between cars, I was too young to drive, and the last train departed at 10.30pm.

Thus, I never got to visit the Hacienda though thankfully did manage to see Husker Du twice in the next couple of years after the unfortunate ‘gig that never was’. To be perfectly honest though I am not overly gutted on that score as despite the club admittedly having a brief golden period, reports from my peers who attended there to see Trouble Funk and Killing Joke amongst others thought it was always sparsely populated and a little bit of a dump!    

One of the co-owners of the Hacienda was Peter Hook, who in 2010 collaborated with the Hacienda’s original interior designer Ben Kelly to renovate and reopen the former Factory Records HQ on Charles Street and Princess Street, opposite the Joshua Brooks public house. It opened as a nightclub and also stages student nights and live music and retained its original name as Manchester FAC251.

Toy Car. Image Credit facebook.com

On entry, my first impression that it was smaller than I had envisaged it would be. The bands that day were playing on the ground floor space with a 400-capacity called Manchester FAC251 Basement. There are apparently two other rooms, the first floor Loft and second floor Boardroom, both with a 200 capacity.  

The room had a metallic nightclub vibe about it, which is always a slightly odd scenario when watching acts at the earlier daylight hour’s time of 5pm. The band on stage was a scouse jingle jangle collective called Toy Car who are a fledgling act who have only thus far released a handful of singles, and they provided an engaging and energetic set.

Gigs from Abroad Part 20 – Alicante

Alicante has always been viewed as a strategic military location and a singular key defence mechanism underpinning this is the existence of the impressive Santa Barbara Castle which was built in the 9th century and to this day still towers over the city. I can personally confirm it is a physically exacting trek up the hill to the castle, especially in baking sunshine! The city has an interesting lineage in that they have chronologically been inhabited by Iberian tribes, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Goths (thought they were peaceful!), Moors and latterly the Spaniards.

Santa Barbara Castle. Image Credit tripkay.com

In the 1960’s it began to generate the first inklings of a future tourist destination, and the city was transformed accordingly. Other nearby resorts followed suit, including Benidorm and the success of this new venture was assisted by the closure of the old Rabasa airfield and the corresponding building of the new modern El Altet Airport. Famous people from the city include the tennis players David Ferrer and Alex de Minaur and the black metal band Nahemah.

In 2018, to commemorate our fifty years on this earth, Gill and I decided to undertake two trips around our individual birthdays and on my milestone we decided on a jaunt to Alicante. I took a liking to the city as similar to Malaga it was a bustling modern city with a beach, promenades, marina area and the aforementioned castle.

We found some decent restaurants and a plethora of bars. On my actual birthday we had a leisurely lunch, and wouldn’t you just know it I had lined up a gig for the evening! We headed into what resembled the ‘Northern Quarter’ in the Southern area of the city and our ultimate destination was Alicante Sala Stereo.

On our first pass we thought the venue was closed but Gill reassured me that they would be operating on chilled European hours, and she was absolutely correct as it didn’t open its doors until around 10pm. When there is no live music on, it runs solely as a nightclub and is open between the quite frankly insane hours of 2.30am to 8.30am!   

Sala Stereo. Image Credit youtube.com

I cannot find much history of the venue, but it appears to be still thriving today and on music nights they generally concentrate on homespun acts. It was a homely brightly lit venue with a friendly local crowd. The capacity was 500 and they had the excellent novel touch of beer bottle holders on the side walls to safely house your ice-cold beverage. 

The initial act was a decent singer from Valencia called Sienna followed by a local musician called Olivia. The clock kept ticking and moved into the day after my birthday and still we waited for the main band. They finally pottered on stage around 1am which places it squarely in my latest ever gigs lists alongside Goldblade at Preston Aqualenium and Jesus and Mary Chain at Preston Clouds in 1985, the latter now feels like it was in an earlier lifetime!

The headliners El Mato a Un Policia Motorizado, also known as EMAUPM or El Mato who were created in La Plata in Argentina. Their unusual name derives from a line in a 1987 Spanish movie R.O.T.O.R and translates literally as ‘that boy just killed a motorcycle cop’.  They formed in 2003, and the driving force of the five-piece band is the vocalist Santiago ‘Motorizado’ and they have released five albums with their latest being ‘Super Terror’ in 2023.

El Mato a Un Policia Motorizado. Image Credit diariohoy.net

They were also chosen to contribute a cover of ‘Slippery People’ for a fortieth anniversary tribute album of Talking Heads ‘Stop Making Sense’ alongside artists such as Miley Cyrus, Lorde and Paramore. The record then debuted at the top of the Billboard Compilation Albums chart in August 2024.

The band cite their musical influences as Pixies, Sonic Youth and Velvet Underground amongst others, unfortunately they did not live up to that envisaged sound and to be honest they were a tad limp. Given the late hour I wasn’t too disappointed at this development as after a couple of tracks it allowed us to shuffle out and head back to our digs. On the walk back the town was just beginning to boot up into the busier hours of its nightlife. The following evening, we attended a tapas restaurant called Alicante El Rincon de Alma and saw a local singer called Juan.