Author: jimmyc1968

Manchester Venue 191 Gorilla – Part 1

On Whitworth St, directly opposite Manchester Ritz and within a literal stumbling distance from Manchester Oxford Road rail station you will find Manchester Gorilla. The venue is uniquely situated under a railway arch and was previously the arts, theatre and comedy site The Green Room back in the 1980’s. On the comedic front Alan Carr, Steve Coogan and Caroline Aherne graced that stage and James and Doves played early gigs there.

When that business closed the Trof Group took over the running and Gorilla initially opened its doors in 2012. Its future looked extremely perilous during the pandemic, but thankfully a new owner was sourced and that saved the day, and it is now linked to its sister site of Deaf Institute nearby on Oxford Road.

Gorilla. Image Credit discover.ticketmaster.co.uk

There is a tidy little bar at the front of the venue but there is no access from there to the gig space, apart from sometimes being directed by ‘Rock Steady’ to exit gigs through this bar area. The actual entrance is around the corner under the tunnel, and a few stairs brings you into the main room with a 550 capacity. 

It is a well laid out space with a merchandise stall to the left and the extendable/removable stage at the bottom of the room. However, like many other locations it can be arguably too busy when at full capacity, presenting logistical challenges when trying to access the two bars and even move around!  It also has a raised platform at the back of the hall with a smattering of elevated seats.

It generally provides good sound and local lad Johnny Marr talks very warmly about the venue and has actively encouraged his peers to include a touring date there. They have regular club nights with promoters such as Guilty Pleasures and Now Wave.

I have attended eighteen gigs there over the years with my first show being British Sea Power in April 2013. I have now seen them six times in total, and this was my second sighting 11 years after I discovered their unique stagecraft at the Leeds Festival in 2002. I recall them being introduced on stage by 6 music DJ Marc Riley.

Near to the culmination of the set, I nipped to the loos which are positioned behind the stage and encountered a chap dressing up into an eight-foot polar bear outfit. Before you ask, nobody had put anything suspicious in my beer, it was actually a tradition the band had at the stage of their career where a couple of bears would parade around the mosh pit during the encore!   

The bears and the band in action. Image Credit NME.

A month later, I returned as the venue was part of the roster for the sorely missed multi venue Dot to Dot festival. On that particular day I saw the aforementioned Marc Riley faves Teleman. The original germination of the band was the three members Pete Cateermoul and the Sanders brothers, Johnny and Thomas who were part of Pete and the Pirates. After they disbanded, they were joined by drummer Hiro Ama and became Teleman in 2011. I have always thought they have an intriguing sound, and they lived up to that in a live setting.

Also performing were the Wildflowers who were formed in 2012 and based in Brighton and Bristol. The driving force is main songwriter Siddy Bennett and her sister Kit who had an interesting bohemian upbringing via living on boats, caravans or in protest camps. They have a country punk sound and were coined in the early days as ‘Punk Dolly Parton’s’. Their breaking moment was a set they played at South by Southwest festival in Austin Texas that inspired Detroit label Original 1265 Records to sign them up. I could hear diverse elements in their sound ranging from Mamas and Papas to White Stripes.  

Next up was the old troubadours Nada Surf where the gig was completely sold out and they were touring their latest album ‘You Know Who You Are’ and were in as fine form as ever as they have now amassed a quality back catalogue. 

In August 2014 Gill and I headed over to watch Joan As Policewoman, whose stage name was a homage to the 1970’s television cop show called Police Woman starring Angie Dickinson. Her actual name is Joan Wasser who was adopted at a young age and was musically precocious as she had piano lessons at the age of six and violin tutelage at the age of eight. She started her professional musical career in the Boston University Symphony Orchestra.

Joan as Policewoman. Image Credit blogspot.com

Then to paraphrase Neil Young around the time of his commercial peak of recording ‘Harvest’, who was quoted as saying ‘It put me in the middle of the road, travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there’. Joan adopted this ethos literally as she was jaded by the classical structure so did a full U-turn and morphed into being a member of various punk bands.

She suffered personal heartache in May 1997 when her fiancé of three years Jeff Buckley accidentally drowned in Memphis. At the time we saw her, she had just released her fourth solo album ‘The Classic’ but surrounded herself with a touring band for the live dates.

In March 2016 I saw Pelican for the second time after their staggeringly loud show a few years before at the Ruby Lounge venue across town. They are classed in the post-metal genre; there is literally a label for everything! They are entirely instrumental and produce long slabs of glorious brutal noise and three of their members are also part of the band Tusk. The show wasn’t as intense as the previous one, but still very good. 

Liverpool Venues 21 to 24

Liverpool Tess Riley’s is a hostelry that is situated on Great Charlotte Street. The history behind the naming of this boozer runs back to prior to the Second World War, so if you are sitting comfortably, I shall begin…

Back in the 1930’s an entrepreneurial lady called Tess Makin developed her initial business acumen when working on her mother’s market second hand clothes stall. On the occasional non-market days, she took it upon herself to travel over to the Wirral to pick up the stock. She became a dab hand at bartering with the affluent traders to obtain the best price before returning to the market and selling on the goods for a tidy profit. In 1947, she marries a chap called Joe Riley and they had four children together. Bear with me, I will get there eventually!

Tess Riley. Image Credit pubsgalore.co.uk

In 1970, when her kids had grown up, she retrained in the pub industry and undertook her apprenticeship at the Pig and Whistle and the Old Mona. She then took over the ropes as The Jester for five years before she bought the freehold of The Beehive in the Mount Pleasant area of the city in 1978.

Her novel approach of installed a free jukebox that only played songs from the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s captured the zeitgeist of the era and the once quite pub was transformed into one of the busiest places in Liverpool. They also staged live music at quiet periods and on Sundays where Tess herself would step up alongside the resident organist to contribute a couple of ditties. She was reportedly very glamorous, and this provided the launching pad for her retirement on board cruise ships.

Her eldest child Joan also moved in the family trade and ran a couple of successful pubs using the same tried and tested template. In 1996 they purchased a unit in the former Blackler’s building and then decided to name the pub in honour of her mother. It remains a lively place to this day thankfully staying away from karaoke, but they do have live music and on my one visit I saw a local lass called Annie perform there.

Directly above Tess Rileys is the Liverpool Central Sports Bar, which is a very popular wall to wall sports viewing establishment, but they also stage live music, and I once saw a local fella called Edwin play there.     

Celtic Corner. Image tripadvisor.co.uk

Nearby to there on the intersection point of Lime Street and Ranelagh Street you would find the Liverpool Celtic Corner. As I am sure you can glean from its moniker, it is another Irish based hostelry. It initially opened in 2017 taking over from the old retail site of the Army and Navy stores. It is a very large establishment with an enormous room downstairs and a function room for hire situated in the upstairs area.

There is an abundance of seating at the front for the sunshine days. It also had a mechanical rodeo bull that kicked into life every Saturday from 3pm but I believe that has been retired and sent to pasture a couple of years ago. There is a sizeable standalone stage, and I saw a decent local singer Lochlan undertaking a gig on that very stage.

Nearer to the main train station on Lime Street is located the Liverpool McHales Irish American Bar. The establishment is a single room bar and when I visited, I saw a singer called Michael perform there. Its history runs back to 1830 and at that point in time it was positioned on the other side of the street. It was initially closely linked to the nearby Empire Theatre and then became a very popular haven for US naval men during the First World War and was known as the American Bar or more colloquially as the ‘Yankee Bar’.

One urban legend is that there was a local prostitute called Maggie May (or Maggie Mae) who used to frequent the bar, and she later featured in a skiffle folk song telling the tale of her robbing a ‘homeward bounder’. The latter term relating to a sailor coming home from a round trip. The song is potentially crafted from a similar 1856 American slave song called ‘Darling Nellie Gray’.

Maggie May songs EP with a picture of the old thriving Liverpool Docks. Image Credit ebay.co.uk

The 1950’s version referenced featured a direct reference to Liverpool in the lines ‘Oh, dirty Maggie Mae, they have taken her away, and she’ll never walk down Lime Street anymore’. The composer Lionel Bart used the tune and back story to devise a musical called Maggie May set in Liverpool Docks, which ran in a London theatre for two years.

The most well-known recorded version was by the Vipers Skiffle Group in 1957, but the BBC decided to ban it because of the lyrics ‘sexual content’. There were also covers by the Searchers, the Spinners and a 40 second edition by the Beatles which serves to curtail Side 1 of their final album ‘Let it Be’. Rod Stewart also stated this song was an inspiration for his No 1 hit of the same name.