Year: 2024

Manchester Venue 114 – Albert Square Festivals

One of the most famous buildings in Manchester is the neo-gothic Town Hall which obtained Grade 1 listing status in 1952 and currently houses Manchester City Council and other local government staff. The town hall was completed in 1877 after a nine-year build and the small matter of the usage of 14 million bricks! It contains within the Great Hall, which is adorned with Ford Madox Brown’s Manchester Murals, there is also the impressive Clock Tower which is 85 metres high which even has a singular name for the clock bell, Great Abel. 

Manchester Town Hall. Image Credit citybaseapartments.com

The Town Hall’s resemblance to the Palace of Westminster resulted in it being used as a location for the original 1990 version of House of Cards and the BBC drama State of Play. The venue was in fact used to announce the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.

However, a report in 2014 highlighted the urgent need for modernisation and essential repairs to be undertaken on the building. Subsequently it was closed to visitors in 2018 to undergo a £330m renovation. I have read in the last month that due to ongoing pandemic impacts and the rise in pricing of materials the original completion date has pushed back from July 2024 to provisionally summer 2026.

The building faces St Peters Square to the South and Albert Square to the North. Due to its size and location, the latter named has been used for events and public gatherings including memorials commemorating the Manchester Arena bombing.

It is also a perfect site to host music events so in July 2018 I attended Manchester Albert Square Festival Hall when the 9-day Manchester Jazz Festival was taking place. I grabbed a couple of opportunities to dive into the site for some bonus gigs when heading from work to Manchester Oxford Road station for my commute home. On the first occasion, I saw Minor Swing and on the second I witnessed Squid Ink.

Manchester International Festival. Image Credit ilovemanchester.com

In March 2019 they also had a St Patricks day festival gathering around Cheltenham races time, and I saw the Ceilidh Boys at that soiree. A couple of months later when attending the Dot-to-Dot festival I managed to catch a bonus act called Gobe Band there at a separate event taking place on the square as they were not part of the festival roster of my event.

In 2019 the bi-annual Manchester International Festival took place with the hub location being Albert Square. It was a relaxed set up with lots of food outlets and a couple of real ale tents and with music starting at noon I also had a sally over at lunchtime on the days I was in the office. They set up the music stage under a covered marquee with comfy seats and I always had room when I visited, but I heard it was extremely busy when The Orielles and Working Mens Club played a late evening set there.    

The Orielles. Image Credit soundofbrit.fr

Thus, my first attendance was on 05/07/19 when a group of us were in town and we headed to the site and happened to see House of Ghetto. On my next visit I witnessed Chloe Foy, a singer-songwriter from Gloucestershire who subsequently released her debut album ‘Where Shall We Begin’ in 2021.

The following day there was a Welsh oriented bill hosted by 6 Music DJ Huw Stephens. He introduced a Welsh-language pop band called Gwilym (translates as William), who sounded like they have been influenced by their forebearers Super Furry Animals. Mary Anne Hobbs also hosted a 6-music show on the festival site in a temporary DJ booth and there was the obligatory appearance from the omnipresent John Robb.

The following week I saw a seven-piece local band called Kara. On the lunchtime the next day I witnessed a solo singer Matthew Whitaker and after work the artist was Hannah Ashcroft, a local indie lass who has collaborated with Beth Orton and had support slots with BC Camplight and the Lathums.

My final appearance was when I met up with Gill and we grabbed some tea on the site. Playing that day were acts called Aim Sky High and One Little Atlas who are a local two-piece dream pop combo. They had an ethereal sound and have composed a couple of film scores and have had the opportunity to play at unusual venues such as John Rylands Library and the Whitworth Art Gallery in the city.

Gigs from Abroad Part 14 – Lubeck

The annual lads trip returned to Germany in March 2017 to visit Lubeck. The city is in Northern Germany and is South westernmost city on the Baltic Sea coast and was originally part of the Hanseatic League and created its own Lubeck law in 1226 and remarkably retained its status as an independent city right up to the eve of the Second World War in 1937. During the war it had the dubious privilege of being the first German city to suffer a significant RAF bombing attack, where 20% of the city centre was destroyed.

Lubeck panorama. Image Credit fotocommunity.de

Lubeck old town is Germany’s most extensive UNESCO World Heritage site and quirkily has the highest number of tall church towers worldwide, with 6 church towers exceeding 100 metres. The city is also famous for Lubeck Marzipan, which has a museum dedicated to it. They also had the honour of hosting the G7 conference in 2015.

There was an art scandal there in the 1950’s where a restorer was tasked with renovating old paintings rediscovered after World War 2, but he rather cheekily painted new works and passed them off as restorations. This scam was not discovered until decades later and the writer and Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass covered the tale in one of his novels in 1986, Gunter being a nearby Lubeck resident in his later years. 

Lubeck Marzipan. Image Credit blogspot.com

They have their own regional airport in Lubeck, but we travelled through Hamburg International Airport and the commute was very easy as the train line lies on the Vogelfluglinie which could take you if you wished to all the way through to Copenhagen.  

It was our first trip abroad since the Brexit vote the previous year and I recall it generated a discussion topic with one bar owner with us disavowing responsibility for the decision as not one of us had voted for it. One of the worst implications of Brexit is the creation of unnecessary impacts on musicians touring to Europe with additional expenses caused by extra red tape requirements of multiple visas that is now enmeshed within this process. This could have been so easily averted with a small amount of enlightened thinking when our government was negotiating the agreement, but averted it was not!

On the second day we undertook our traditional train trip, in this instance this was a short commute to the 19th century seaside town of Travemunde, which as the largest ferry port on the Baltic Sea has direct connections with many Eastern European countries.

It was wall to wall sunshine on our visit and we ensconced ourselves in an outdoor area of an Italian restaurant for a few drinks and resultant pizzas. We watched a huge car transporter ship passing by in the dock and one of our party who shall remain nameless tripped up entering the building and nearly took out the dessert display cabinet!

We returned late afternoon and had a sally around Lubeck and admired the old-fashioned vibe of the city, despite going into one somewhat dubious bar where there was brazen drug dealing clearly taking place in the establishment.

We visited Lubeck Finnegan’s which is an Irish pub located on Mengstrasse within the old town overlooking the River Trave. Whilst we there an artist called Steve Highway was playing, not to be confused with the similar named Irish Liverpool footballer of the 1970’s!

Lubeck Tonfinks. Image Credit veganfreundlich.org

We then traversed on to Lubeck Tonfinks Kulturecafe & Bar which is a multipurpose establishment which is a café by day and an inviting cosy bar at night. They also have a book exchange, readings and exhibitions alongside live music. On the night we attended there was a local band called Maces playing. The bar was in a busy area of town that regretfully we only discovered late on Day 2 so we may have to return to investigate another time. Half of us headed home the following morning while the other half kept rolling on to nearby Kiel for a New Model Army gig that evening.