Manchester Venues 147 to 148 – Royal Northern College of Music

As you progress down Oxford Road towards the Academy venues you reach the traffic light junction with Booth Street West and on that very corner is the Manchester Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). Just beyond there is a recently developed retail area containing a Brewdog outpost and a branch of the omnipresent fast food chain Five Guys.

Across the road from the RNCM for many years resided the Phoenix public house, previously Barney McGrews, situated under the precinct. I can find records of the Phoenix being around since the 1970’s and in those days, it was a punky biker venue where upstairs they held sweaty club nights under the Tangled or Acid Rock monikers.

Phoenix pub. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

Live music was staged there from 1977 onwards on the Bass Charrington pub rock circuit roster. There are scant details of bands but can find evidence of Aqua, a Burnage High school band, (does that scenario sound familiar?) who played there the following year with Graham Massey of 808 State in their ranks. They are absolutely not to be confused with the other band with the same name who release ‘Barbie Girl’ a couple of decades later!  

It was a renowned student haunt due to its proximity to the universities. It became more of a drum and bass venue in the 1990’s and Clint Boon, Mani and Piccadilly Records used to undertake DJ nights there.  Around the time I visited, it had morphed into an ‘It’s a Scream’ chain pub with bright yellow frontage and was in a very tired state by then. It subsequently closed its doors for the final time in 2011.

The RNCM was officially opened in its current location on 28 June 1973 and was a fusion of the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM), which opened in 1893 with original principal being Sir Charles Halle and the Northern School of Music, founded in 1920.

Its remit encompasses musical education and contains two thriving public performance venues alongside a smaller recital room and theatre, the latter two spaces are utilised in the main for educational and conference events. The college was subject to a £7.1m refurbishment in November 2014 across all areas including a new lighting rig and sound equipment. Previous alumni naturally contains many illustrious conductors and composers and also Howard Jones!  

RNCM. Image Credit Royal Northern College of Music.

The first venue I will cover is the Royal Northern College of Music Concert Hall which has a fixed seating of either 443 or 598 with an additional balcony setting raising the maximum capacity to 710. The layout ensures that all of the seating encircles the stage in the middle of the room and ensures a good view from all vantage points. They have a constant diverse roster of performances and previous acts to play there include Adele, David Byrne, Hugh Laurie, Halle Orchestra and Jarvis Cocker. Filming has also taken place there for television shows Waterloo Road and Question Time.

My first attendance was in November 2013, and I had an unusual journey there. On the day I needed to attend a workshop in the glamorous location of Telford, thus caught a train from there direct to Manchester and met up with the rest of the crew in the Joshua Brooks public house. I recall we also visited the Sand Bar and naturally gravitated to our usual nearby noodle bar for some tea.

As you enter the RNCM building there is initially a bar and café area before you reach the venue hall at the end of the corridor. They adopt a similar policy to the Royal Albert Hall where you could not take drinks into the venue and if returning from a comfort break you had to wait until the current track finished before you can grab your seat again.

The act that day was the incomparable Mark Lanegan, personally one of my Top 5 favourite vocalists with his gravelly ‘lived in’ unique delivery. He was touring his recent album ‘Imitations’ which featured cover versions of tracks by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nancy Sinatra and John Cale.

On the night he undertook an excellent version of Bobby Darin’s ‘Mack the Knife’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Satellite of Love’, the latter especially poignant as Lou had recently passed away. I have just read this week of a hugely emotional concert held with guest artists to celebrate what would have been Mark’s 60th birthday, he is sorely missed.

Mark Lanegan. Image Credit mubi.com

I had one other attendance there a couple of years later to see Mercury Rev and I spotted John Robb in the audience. The band were in a particularly noisy mode that evening with some guitar heavy tracks in the set, which suited me down to the ground!

The other venue is the Royal Northern College of Music Theatre which has fixed seating capacity of 600 plus the option to have additional removable pit seats. This is a more traditional ‘cinema style’ setting and I have visited there just the once in October 2023. We went to see a play called New Dawn Fades which chronicles the story of Joy Division which contain live songs with a full band. It is written and directed by Brian Gorman who also takes an acting role as Factory boss Tony Wilson.  It was pretty well made but the second half of it leading to Ian Curtis’s suicide was understandably very bleak viewing.

Gigs from Abroad Part 19 – Nuremberg and Bamburg

In 2019 the annual lads trip gravitated over to Nuremberg, a city which is the second largest in Bavaria. It is encompassed on three sides by a huge forest and the other by a vegetation area with the quaint name ‘garlic land’. It had the honour of having the first steam-hauled railway in Germany in 1835 linking it with the nearby city of Furth under the auspices of the Bavarian Ludwig Railway, the route is covered today by the U1 Subway.

Nuremberg vista. Image Credit TripSavvy

There is a dark side to Nuremberg’s past as due to its geographical links to the Holy Roman Empire it was utilised as the location for the huge Nazi party conventions which became known as the Nuremberg rallies, the first taking place in 1927. On 2 January 1945 it was carpet bombed by the allies where ninety percent of the city was destroyed in an hour and was then recaptured in April 1945 after an intense ground troops battle. It was therefore the natural location for the Nuremberg trials that took place immediately after the war in the Palace of Justice which somehow had survived undamaged during the bombing.

The city rose again from the ashes and thankfully there remains many remnants of the walls and towers, and of course there is the obligatory castle! It also contains a bonny and evocative old town area where I recall us finding an excellent bar at the top of a steep incline, and I took a liking to the city itself. Famous Nurnberg alumni include the acclaimed actress Sandra Bullock who was educated in the city via a German mother and American military father who was stationed there.  

Also on that list would be musician Kevin Coyne who had an interesting life commencing from being born in Derby in 1944. Between 1965 and 1968 he spent three years as a psychiatric nurse at the renowned mental institution Whittingham Hospital in my hometown of Preston. Alongside this he was developing musical aspirations in the folk-blues domain and his first band Siren was signed to John Peel’s Dandelion Records label in 1969.

He also had the unusual accolade of appearing at an alternative festival in protest against the 1975 Eurovision Song Contest in Stockholm. He once turned down a meeting with Elektra Records to discuss the possibility of replacing Jim Morrison in the Doors. He was pals with Virgin label mates John Lydon and the Mekons and one of his bands contained Zoot Money, subsequently the musical director of the 1987 TV series Tutti Frutti featuring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson. The other band member was Andy Summers, latterly of the Police.  

Kevin Coyne Razorblade picture. Image Credit rootsvinylguide.com

In 1985, after a nervous breakdown and ongoing alcohol issues he relocated to Nuremberg, where having finally ditched the demon drink, he continued to maintain a prolific recording and touring schedule alongside furthering his books and painting outputs.

His enigmatic approach could be exemplified by the album cover for his 1977 release of ‘In Living Black and White’. On the front cover he is seen smiling and artistically bowing to an invisible audience whilst the back is the same photo from the rear where you can see he is holding tightly an open straight razor. He lived there until his death in 2004. The reason I have catalogued his extended story is that at the end of the day despite opportunities he is the tale of another aspiring underground artist, who could be a mirror of many others who have peppered the musical historical landscape without any meaningful recognition over the decades.

Nuremberg is also the start point for a unique annual music event called the Techno Train Nurnberg. The high-speed rave train leaves the city with DJ’s, punters and high-quality sound systems on board and then travels non-stop for seven hours through Bavaria until it lands in Munich, where an after party takes place. Most definitely not my cup of Yorkshire, but it certainly quantifies as a novel event.  

A common theme on the lad’s sojourns is to always include a day trip and, on this occasion, we undertook a 40 minute train journey over to Bamberg. The old town there contains 2400 timber houses situated in the old town and that has been badged as an UNESCO world heritage site since 1993. The most famous ‘local’ resident would be Willy Messerschmitt, the aircraft designer who had some planes named after him and their most famous band in my view would be the turn of the decade punk band Go Faster Nuns.

Go Faster Nuns. Image Credit youtube.com

Bamberg also had a lot of character, and we had a good sally around and traversed up another steep hill, this time without any reward as the bar we were scouring for was subject to seasonal hours and as a result not open. Back in the town, we visited a bar called Bamberg Mercator Di Sappori and witnessed a local band called Endlich Samstag