Manchester Venues 201 to 202

This week I will complete the tale of my night in Manchester on Friday 29th August 2025. In a couple of recent blogs, I outlined the five new venues I had sourced and attended, and the evening finished with a sixth by making my debut visit to the Manchester Skate Park (known locally as the pump cage).

In 2001, there was a blanket ban on skateboarding introduced into the public spaces of Manchester. In reaction to this announcement a then 23 year old chap called John Haines co-founded a new venture called Projekts MCR and worked with Manchester City Council to fundraise and take ownership of underused land under the Mancunian Way. They transformed it into a 1400 square metre thriving skate, scooter and BMX park which also doubles as a community hub and is utilised by over 20000 people annually, most under the age of 35 and a quarter being female skaters.

Manchester Skate Park. Image Credit rideukbmx.com

They initially concentrated on the core logistics by obtaining funding for ramps, floodlights, heating and the obligatory café. They persevered for three years to obtain a long term lease and commendably gathered a further £2m in funding from various sources to expand and improve the site. It is now the largest community led skatepark in the UK with a core staff of 26 people.  

In those two intervening decades skateboarding has burgeoned as a sport to the extent of it debuting as an Olympic event at the 2020 Beijing games. The park is in the south of the city and lies five minutes’ walk from Piccadilly train station and it is in my eyes a perfect urban location for such a venture where you can go and embrace your inner Avril Lavigne!   

Around 2022 I initially became aware that they were also starting to stage gigs at the park, the roster concentrating in the main on guitar bands in synch with the backdrop. In March 2023 I endeavoured to make a visit as part of a double gig venture as I was also in attendance at an event at Gullivers that night, but in the end, I couldn’t make it work.  The site was a niche hidden venue until they raised their profile via inclusion on the roster of the Manchester Psych Festival.

 

Avril Lavigne in Sk8er Boi phase. Image Credit tapeciarnia.pl

So, on the night of my visit Marcus and I mulched down to the venue and encountered a very slow moving queue to enter the site. We grabbed an aperitif and encountered our first challenge as to where to position ourselves. An obvious constraint of a skate park is that it contains many peaks, hills and hollows which serve to restrict your viewing capability.  

For the support act we were literally perched on the side of a slope and throughout the evening we were wary as to where we stepped as there were many ‘ankle wrenching’ risk points, especially more so after a couple of scoops!

The first band on stage were Keo for which the main nucleus is the Keogh brothers (Finn and Conor), hence the name, who have music in their bloodstream as the majority of their childhood was spent touring around UK, Ireland and USA with their dad’s one-man music and comedy show. They were in a school band called the Deverills and honed their craft with tireless busking. On the night they provided a decent slab of grunge noise.

In the gap between the acts, we managed to upgrade our position to a raised platform with infinitely better views. The headline band were Gurriers, an act who took their name from the Irish term for a lout or a street urchin. They initially met and formed in Dublin in 2020, but their initial inertia was stalled by the pandemic. However, they continued to remain productive and prepped their material via numerous zoom calls and were thus ready to play their debut gig on Halloween 2021 at Dublin’s Workman’s club. They followed that by releasing their first album ‘Come and See’ in 2024.

Gurriers. Image Credit gurriers.net

I would concede they were not the most original band I have ever seen live, but the counterpoint is that they created some cathartic noise and most certainly had an energetic stage presence illustrated by one of the guitarists at one point perching off the gantry.   

One of the access routes in and out of Piccadilly station is via the busy footbridge which arches over London Road. As you head downwards towards Aytoun and Canal Street you can view to your left Manchester Piccadilly Park Square which is an open area ringed by retail units including the requisite phone repair shop.

When heading that way one evening to catch a train home I noticed they had set up a temporary stage in the square and there was a local artist called Sammy performing in front of a small audience.  

Gigs From Abroad Part 26 – Berlin

In April 2024 we decided to have a sojourn to the intriguing vibrant city of Berlin, which arguably has a more varied yet brutal history than any other European city. Berlin was originally founded in the 12th century and over the years there was the bubonic plague, involvement in the Thirty Years War which destroyed a third of the city, a thwarted revolution and horrendous sanitary conditions in the late 19th century, all fairly standard stuff!  

Hitler was appointed the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and used the Berlin Olympic games in 1936 as a Nazi showpiece. I won’t belabour the barbaric activities in the city during World War 2 but will move onto the 36 consecutive nights of bombing undertaken by the RAF in March 1945 that dropped around 80,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. A month later Hitler committed suicide and Berlin capitulated to the Allied Forces.  

Post war it was divided into four quarters with American, British, French and Soviet sectors and that infernal wall was built in 1961 before it later fell in 1989 and a year later both sides of Berlin were finally reunited. John F Kennedy visited in 1963 and made his solidarity speech with the famous line ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ translating as ‘I am a Berliner’.

Many movies have used the city as a backdrop including ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’, ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ and ‘Bridge of Spies’. Famous Berliners are the actresses Marlene Dietrich and Nastassja Kinski, composer Andre Previn (Preview!) and Olympic ice skater Katarina Witt.

Nina Hagen. Image Credit vintag.es

On the musical spectrum it has three major opera houses, six symphony orchestras, MTV Europe’s base and ‘The Godmother of German Punk’ Nina Hagen was born there. Between 1976 and 1979 David Bowie and Iggy Pop decamped there together to seek solace and recover from their drug addictions. Iggy released his first solo record and Bowie recorded his Berlin album trilogy of ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’.

We landed there on a Wednesday evening and managed to locate our compact rented apartment in the Rosenthalerplatz suburb of the city. We spent the duration of our stay on the eastern side of the city, and I liked the grittiness and durability of those areas. On our first evening we pottered out locally and in our debut bar they only accepted cash and I admired that healthy disregard for the new order.  We found a fine Italian restaurant which had made good use of the grand old building and had grandiose lavatories. We also visited the 100 Gramm Bar near to the subway station.

Over the next two days we trogged many miles and visited all the tourist attractions including Checkpoint Charlie, Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island and the remnants of the wall. The most impressive and heart wrenching was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe monument with the different size of statues to resemble the fallen. It encompasses a gigantic area of nineteen thousand square metres, and you could literally lose yourself in that vast maze!

Memorial of the Murdered Jews in Europe monument. Image Credit TripSavvy

We also headed into the impressive cathedral (Berliner Dom) and I surprised myself by heading up the winding stairs to the top, though couldn’t then wait to head back down as I now really struggle with heights. My vertigo affliction being such a significant sea change from the 14 year old Jimmy who trotted all the way up the Eiffel Tower without a care in the world! We sallied over to the bohemian East Kreuzberg but unfortunately did not have opportunity to visit the Ramones Museum, the area itself reminding me of Manchester’s Northern Quarter.

One of Gill’s long standing aspirations has been to actively head to a European city for a gig, therefore naturally her wish was my command. We first chose a band and then proceeded to check Jesus and Mary Chain’s roster and targeted a show at Berlin Huxleys in the Neukolln suburb of the city.

There was from the early 20th century a concert hall called Neue Welt which contained two halls, with capacities respectively of 1500 and 3000. Hitler spoke there in 1930 and in 1960 it evolved into a rock venue before closing in 1982. Acts to play there included Jimi Hendrix, Dio, Whitesnake and The Clash. It swiftly reopened as Huxleys with one singular 1600 capacity hall which has also staged boxing matches, fashion shows and tattoo festivals.

The location was thankfully only a short commute of about five metro stops from our digs, so we circled past to check the show times and then went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for some tea and a couple of pre-gig bevies.   

It was a terrific venue despite one obstreperous numpty positioned near the bar and Mary Chain were in fine form. Whilst we were scouring the city earlier that day, I was opining that it would be great if they played ‘Reverence’ and they met that wish by playing a full length version in the encore. It was the 10th time I had witnessed them and was one of my favourite performances of theirs and was also Gill and I’s 400th gig together.   

Huxleys. Image Credit neuwelt-berlin.de

The following evening, we visited the busy Berlin Hackescher Market where we saw a local performer called Jurgen and also Berlin Hackescher Parist where we viewed an act called Bonnie and Clyde. We flew home on Saturday lunchtime, which was also Grand National day, and managed to finally obtain a signal to lay a bet near to the airport. We watched the race on the train home from Manchester airport and straight after wished that the bets had been prevented by the European restrictions!