Month: July 2023

Glasgow Venues 6 to 7

In August 2014 I made another trip up the scenic West Coastline to Glasgow to see Mogwai with the usual ‘Mog trio’ of Uncle George, John Dewhurst and I in tow. It was a late arranged sojourn, so I had secured some slightly unusual accommodation as I recall it was linked to a church and located somewhere near Bath Street.

We fancied heading to a couple of different places on this trip but naturally prior to that it had to be music part 1 first, thus our initial port of call was Glasgow 13th Note Cafe. This bar was originally a pub on Glassford Street before moving to its current home on King Street in Merchant City in 1997, the original site has now become Bar Bacchus. The franchise subsequently then hoovered up a bigger club venue on Clyde Street and the 13th Note was then taken over by the Barfly group in 2002.  

13th Note Cafe. Image Credit wee-dundee.co.uk

Many of the local bands of the time, namely Bis and Urusei Yatsura played there, and it was famously the location of one of Mogwai’s very early gigs as detailed in Stuart Braithwaite’s engaging autobiography ‘Spaceships over Glasgow’ which I have recently consumed.  The chap who booked the bands was Alex Huntley who latterly changed his name to Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand fame, many of the gigs in the early days were free of charge.

The ground floor is a bar and a thriving vegan café, and the basement room is the music venue with gigs virtually every night. I had heard the local act The Vex were undertaking a Saturday afternoon residence so down we headed into the sweat box. They were a punk/new wave band and playing an epic 2 hour set which in our 30-minute portion we caught an excellent cover version of Cure’s ‘The Forest’, one of my fave tracks of theirs. 

We jumped on the subway at St Enoch’s station for a foray out to the West End of Glasgow where after a sally around the Botanical Gardens we visited the very grand building of Oran Mor for a beer, I have never yet managed to attend a gig there in the music room located upstairs. We then visited the ‘Harry Potter’ style street of Ashton Lane before undertaking the return journey and randomly jumping off at Bridge Street station.

Glasgow Oran Mor. Image Credit Pinterest.

We decamped into the Lauriestown Bar by the river, the Mogwai gig was taking place at Glasgow Richmond Park but when we asked for directions in the pub, we drew blank expressions from the resident punters. We decided to obtain a taxi number and our transport duly arrived. The taxi driver was also lacking in local knowledge and more intent on imparting his current employment woes on us, but we persuaded him to ‘do his job’ and we finally found the park about ten minutes before the show started!

Laurieston Bar. Image Credit tripadvisor.ca

Richmond Park was opened in 1899 and is a huge location of 12 hectares in size, and it appears the area is closed for major investment works at the moment as part of a regeneration programme. The event was part of a two-day shindig called the East End Social Last Big Weekend.

There was a partial marquee where Mogwai took the stage and apologised for drinks availability during the earlier sets, though they stated it had been beyond their control. They were as enjoyable as ever and post gig due to a dearth of taxis we undertook the long walk via Glasgow Green back up to Sauchiehall Street where we ended the evening with ‘one for the ditch’! 

Manchester Venues 89 to 91

One of the constants of Manchester gig going over the years has been the continuing existence of Manchester Thirsty Scholar, which is a hostelry that lies under the train arches at Oxford Road Station. Once you have navigated down the 56 steps outside the station you walk past the Salisbury pub and Zombie Shack and the Scholar is just to the right further up the cobbled steps. It was adjacent to one of my favourite ever Manchester venues, Sound Control which sadly closed a few years ago.

The Thirsty Scholar. Image Credit frenchysrant.com

I could not find any history reference to the pub, but I have been frequenting at least since the mid 1990’s and it may have been previously called Archie Bar. It was for a spell the only vegetarian pub in Manchester, and they had club nights in the Attic upstairs. It was for a sustained period our first meeting pub point on arrival before very often heading down Oxford Road to one of the Academy venues. It also doubled as the final port of call for a flying beer before scampering up the aforementioned steps to catch the last train.

It is a small cosy pub and has always had some decent ales on tap and regularly has Northern Soul nights with vinyl DJ Martin the Mod spinning some rarely heard 45’s. In more recent times it appears to have more of a jazz slant.

They regularly have live bands on who play on the raised area to the right of the bar, and I have inadvertently caught a few performances there, many after attending other gigs in the city. I have never paid to watch a band apart from attending one year when the venue was part of that year’s Dot to Dot festival roster.

The first band I saw there in 2013 was a rather woeful U2 tribute band. At the Dot-to-Dot event later that year I witnessed Ellie Rose who was a singer songwriter who napped a prestigious spot a couple of years later at the BBC introducing stage at Glastonbury and she released a suite of singles in 2019.

In 2017, Uncle George and I landed there after a Car Seat Headrest gig at nearby Ritz and there was a band on stage, who when approached for their name stated ‘We Don’t Have One’ so naturally that became their new moniker in the Jimmy annals. The remaining four gigs there involved house jazz bands.    

There is a decent sized sheltered beer garden outside the pub and in 2020 prior to seeing Ladytron at the Ritz there was a temporary Manchester Thirsty Scholar Outside Stage set up where I witnessed a chap called Acoustic Dave play. 

The Revolution bar chain has been trading since 1996 but the story began in 1991 when two friends opened a small bar in Ashton-Under-Lyne. This has now expanded to 69 nationwide outlets and also the spin off Revolution De Cuba bars. There used to be a Revolution in Preston on Main Sprit Weind which occupied the site of Lou’s Longbar, one of the first pubs I ever visited in my youth.   

Manchester Revolution Bar. Image Credit keytothecity.co.uk

There are currently three branches in Manchester, namely on Parsonage Gardens and Deansgate Locks and the remaining one is Manchester Oxford Road Revolution. I have naturally in my time visited all three sites! On the 29/04/16, Gill and I happened to visit prior to catching the train and an act called Ste and Cassey were performing in the corner of the pub.