Month: October 2022

Manchester Venues 71 to 73

One of the inherent joys of moving to a brand-new area is continuing to discover new establishments. When we first moved to Manchester in September 2017, we missed on our initial scouting trips the existence of a couple of public houses and adjoining restaurant on Wilmslow Road just after Fletcher Moss Park in East Didsbury. The restaurant around the time, previously the Fat Loaf pub, was a fine Mediterranean tapas called Olive and Vine before closing in 2019 and reopening as Jajoo Indian which has had a chequered history with alleged staff welfare issues.

The boozer directly across from there is the Didsbury which is a former coach house and retains many of its original 18th century features with wooden beams and open fireplaces. It sits on the site of a much older inn, the Ring of Bells which originates back to 1644. The story goes that Bonnie Prince Charlie camped nearby with his army in 1785 recovering after his defeat at Derby (not in a football match!)

It has a very large beer garden at the front, which has recently been refurbished and used to be the location of Didsbury Village Green. The pub is now a Brewers Fayre establishment and serves fine gastro pub fare and was one of the ‘Covid hero’ places for me and thus I hold it in high regard.

I recall us sitting outside in the midst of the lockdown with a couple of friends in our pre booked seats, shivering at 9.30pm in the cold night air but refusing to go home until our time window had expired! One time, I just missed a music act there once as we decided to leave whilst they were still setting up their equipment, but maybe next time!

Literally next door is the Didsbury Ye Olde Cock Inn, and the name provides the very obvious clue to its previous cock fighting history. The building has references back to 1235 and it has had a couple of major refurbishments in bygone times. In the 19th century it had a haunted reputation where the servants refused to sleep on the premises. The owner installed iron gates at the time at the entrance to the adjoining gardens which became locally known as ‘the Gates to Hell’.  The pub gained Grade II Listing in 1974 and the current Greene King owned pub has an olde world feel.

Ye Olde Cock Inn to the right and the Didsbury to the left. Image Credit Flickr.

The pub though always seems to have an unnecessarily disorganised vibe to it which tarnishes its allure, hence not a place we visit regularly. However, on one of our sporadic attendances on 11/11/17 we saw a decent young local singer called Jessica Kemp, who has some Radio 2 airplay and counts Clint Boon amongst her fanbase.   

Further down Wilmslow Road towards Didsbury Village takes you past Didsbury Park. The park being one of the first to be built in the city and was redesigned to include two bowling greens. Reputedly there are rumours of an air raid shelter being located below the football field and it is a pleasant spot on a sunny day.

At the Didsbury Festival alongside competitions for the waggiest tail (dogs!) they utilised the small Didsbury Park Stage, which is arguably more of a park keepers storage area. On this very ‘stage’ were Tinfoils, an enjoyable local three-piece garage punk band.  A month later, at another event I saw an act called Peters Sounds play on Didsbury Park Green (the football pitch!).

Didsbury Park. Image Credit Pinterest.

Glasgow Venue 5 – Hampden Park

My overriding preference of venue would always be the smaller one man and his dog establishments where you are more liable to catch lean and hungry bands on their way up, though very occasionally I have to bite the bullet and attend larger auditoriums and stadiums to be able to see certain special bands who only play at that level. Neil Young is one such act and I first witnessed him in 1987 at the soulless Birmingham NEC, the other two times I watched him were fortunately in festival settings.

The other combo is AC/DC who I am a huge fan of despite them essentially being a two bars blues band at heart, but they do perform it with such volume and aplomb. I first saw them at Manchester MEN Arena in 2001. Their next British tour was eight years later in June 2009, and we dawdled when the tickets were released, and the tour ended up being sold out. The gig gods were smiling on us though when additional tickets were available for the Glasgow Hampden Park date, and we summarily snapped them up.   

Hampden Park. Image Credit urbanrealm.com

The first challenge was to locate a bed for the night as no city centre accommodation was available, thus resulting in our digs being a train ride and a further mile walk away (it is always further away than it looks on the map!). We visited a couple of bars down Stockwell Street near the River Clyde and the city’s pubs were highly populated as 52k gig goers were in town.

They were unsurprisingly playing AC/DC on the jukebox in the Scotia Bar, and we then frequented the Clutha & Victoria Bar, the pub where four years later there was the horrendous police helicopter crash resulting in ten fatalities. Thankfully the establishment was rebuilt and is thriving again.

Clutha and Victoria Bar. Image Credit blogspot.com

As the stadium was about three miles out of town, we hailed a taxi, which due to the heavy traffic could only reach the outskirts of the arena area. On disembarking the cab, I suddenly had an overwhelming crippling urge to spend a penny, I am sure you have all been there! I picked up pace, but the ground never seemed to arrive and then somewhat inevitably we discovered our entry gate was on the far side of the stadium. Finally, access to the venue was achieved and mission accomplished to enable me to actually think clearly again.     

The original Hampden Park was built in 1873, taking its name from the nearby Hampden Terrace and the first international match there in 1878 was a 7-2 win over England. In 1883, the national stadium was moved a few hundred metres east and then again further south in 1903 to its current site, always with the same name. The original site is now covered by railway lines.

The current Hampden (Pairc Hampden in Gaelic) has a population of 51,866 and over its timeline there has been a plethora of different sports played there including rugby union, athletics, tennis, baseball, speedway, boxing and American football. The first music concert was Genesis and Paul Young in 1987 and U2, Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones have graced the stage there.    

Having booked late tickets, we expected to be in a corner or in the gods, but we were astonished to discover terrific centre stage seats with a superb vantage. The Subways were supporting and did a sterling job with their high-octane performance; however, they were always to be outdone by the main act as they possessed their own individual sound system.

AC/DC opened with a thunderously loud two-minute cheeky video before launching into their current single ‘Rock N Roll Train’ off the Black Ice album, the whole sold out place literally erupted. At that very moment I almost saw the benefits of a stadium gig with the shared communal atmosphere, but only almost.

For over half of set, they were spellbindingly good and even at their advanced age were still kicking the butts of many younger wannabe acts. Towards the end there some spinal tap moments, but that is only me being slightly picky. ‘Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be’, ‘Hells Bells’, Dog Eat Dog’, Highway to Hell’ were glorious, with the highlight being ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.

After we left the stadium there was a claustrophobic passage of old thin alleyways which brought back slightly unpleasant memories of football crowd crushes in the 1980’s and I was glad when we had navigated through that area. We considered catching a train, but local station Mount Pleasant was absolutely packed to the gills, so we undertook the hour walk back into the city.

We had a further drink in the Clutha beer garden as it was a balmy summer’s evening before a late drink in Nice and Sleazy on Sauchiehall Street. The final venue of the day was a Noodle Bar across the road before a cab back to the hotel completed a rather fine day.