Author: jimmyc1968

Manchester Venues 186 to 187

Manchester Central Libraryis situated facing St Peters Square. It was constructed back in the 1930’s and was designed as a columned portico building in the style of the Pantheon in Rome. It was officially opened by King George V in 1934 with the writer of ‘Dirty Old Town’ Ewan MacColl ensconced in the crowd.

Manchester was ahead of the curve in being forward thinking as the first local authority to provide a free public lending facility in 1852 and the opening was attended by an illustrious writer called Charles Dickens. The library then had several homes before landing at the permanent location cited above. It is now classed as a Grade II listed edifice, remarkably alongside a fellow 237 others in Manchester.

Manchester Central Library. Image Credit Time Out.

There was an extensive £40m refurbishment in 2010 which included resolving asbestos issues which appears to be a common issue with structures of that generation.  Prior to the renovation work the Library Theatre Company was in place in the basement, but the area was restructured as part of the library with the Theatre moving into the Home complex on First Street.

The Library Company had an illustrious history with Patrick Stewart (Jean Luc Picard) appearing in Billy Liar there in 1963. Others to tread the boards are Amanda Burton, Julie Walters, Bernard Hill, Liam Neeson and rather bizarrely John Noakes.

Many folk bands played the intimate 312 seat space in the mid-1960’s including the Spinners, The Oldham Tinkers (remarkably still active) and the Moston Brook Clog Dancers. Additionally, one of the city’s music shops ‘Rare Records’ put on lunch time shows for a spell.

It is now the second largest library in Britain and there are collections dedicated to the author Elizabeth Gaskell and the composer George Handel. There are also large spaces called the Shakespeare Hall and the Great Hall.

The Oldham Tinkers record cover. Image Credit oldhamtinkers.com

Beneath the latter, at one stage there were four floors full of shelfing totalling 35 miles length and contained an astonishing one million books. The humungous library brings to mind the remarkable ‘The Book That Wouldn’t Burn’ tome penned by Mark Lawrence. Methinks, that would take a little while to read your way through that lot!

During his school years the Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess was a regular visitor. Very periodically gigs have been staged including Slow Readers Club and Every Everything in 2014 and in 2016 Thurston Moore had a book tour date there and naturally Noasis performed earlier this year.

Another area is the Manchester Henry Watson Music Library named after the local composer who donated his works to the library. It contains one of the largest assemblages of sheet music and was opened in 1947 by Sir John Barbirolli, who was the conductor of the Manchester Halle Orchestra.

I have only crossed the threshold into the impressive building a couple of times, the first being for a photography exhibition and the latter to attend a show in the afore mentioned Music Library where I saw a combo called Jam Crew playing, whilst I listened and mulched around the bookshelves.  

The aforementioned Manchester St Peters Square was in the late 17th century located on the fringes of the town of Manchester with three open sides, one wending its way down to the River Medlock. St Peters Church was then constructed, and the square was named in 1801.

On Monday 16th In 1819 the area gained national attention for all the wrong reasons when a large crowd of approximately 60k protesters gathered to demand parliamentary reform. Astoundingly at that juncture only 11% of adult males had the right to vote, let alone women!

They were met with a staggeringly disproportionate show of force when the 15th Hussars on horseback were ordered to disperse the crowd which they did with sabres drawn. In the resultant carnage, 17 people were killed and around 700 people injured.

The shameful events were subsequently coined the ‘Peterloo Massacre’, the name being a nod to the Battle of Waterloo which took place four years earlier.  I recall in 2019 a memorial statue was designed and installed commemorating the 200 year anniversary.   

Nowadays, it is a busy transport hub with a large metro station with four platforms located there which was initially opened in 1992.

St Peters Square. Image Credit greenblue.com

When I was traversing the square a couple of years ago, I noticed there was a random event taking place on a temporary stage in one corner. I discovered the lass performing a short promo set was a K Pop artist called Mirai, who has appeared in bands called ael and The Hoopers.   

Gigs from Abroad Part 24 Copenhagen – Part 2

This week I am detailing the second part of my visit to the fine city of Copenhagen in June 2023 for which we were treated to ‘cracking the flags’ sunshine throughout. On the Friday night we made a visit to the remarkable Copenhagen Tivoli Gardens which is situated directly opposite the central train station.

Tivoli dates back to 1843 when the founder Georg Cartensen received royal permission to open the gardens. One of the earliest visitors was Copenhagen resident Hans Christian Andersen, who garnered inspiration afterwards for his fairytale ‘The Nightingale’.

Tivoli Gardens. Image Credit copenhagentickets.com

The current pantomime theatre which was constructed in 1874 is Tivoli’s oldest building and there were musical performances that took place driven by local composer H.C. Lumbye which including 800 polkas, waltzes and gallops! The overall site is also the second oldest operating amusement park in the world behind Dyrehavsbakken, which is also situated in Denmark.

It has over 4 million visitors per year and is a huge area spaced over fifteen acres and contains four individual roller coasters. When I was younger, I was fascinated by the bright lights, noise and abundance of different rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and I had many trips there, once seeing the comedian Les Dawson and his daughter on the Corkscrew.

That allure has faded a little as I have got older, but I am still a bit of a sucker for funfairs, and Tivola has that in spades. There is respite from the rides with many green spaces and pathways that you can meander your way down.

On the musical front there is the Tivoli Concert Hall which has performances from some of the prime performers in classical music and the Tivoli youth guard also play there. During the summertime they have a live music programme named Fredagsrock (Friday Rock) so naturally we had to attend on that day! Previous acts to play include the Smashing Pumpkins, the Beach Boys, Pets Shop Boys, Kanye West and Raveonettes.

After we grabbed a cold beverage at one of the many kiosks, we settled down on the grass to watch an artist called Emma Sehested Hoeg, who is an actress and writer. She has more recently become a singer and provided some dream pop in the mould of fellow actress Scarlett Johansson. After the gig we pottered into the adjoining large food hall to grab some tea.

Mojo Blues Bar. Image Credit youtube.com

I had already undertaken some prior research and sourced another interesting venue, so we exited from the back of the park and weaved down some back streets to reach Copenhagen Mojo Blues Bar. The venue was created in its current name in 1993 and has a very busy schedule with music taking place seven nights a week.  It is primarily a late night blues site but does encroach into other genres as it stages soul, zydeco and bluegrass evenings and also has Thursday night jam sessions.

We arrived about 10pm but the place was only just booting up, so we had a choice of seats and then the 130-capacity room got busier as the night progressed. It was a fantastic old fashioned place and had the traditional grizzled but highly proficient artists playing. The band we saw was Copenhagen Slim and the EK Pones.

Slim has been playing on the circuit for a couple of decades and has surrounded himself with a fine band and they were on to their second set of blues rock tracks around midnight when we decided to call it a day and shuffled back out into the warm night.  

Our final port of call on Day 3 was a sojourn to the remarkable Freetown Christiania which was formed in 1971 when a posse of young squatters and artists took over an 84 acre old military base. They created what has been described as an ‘anarchic enclave’ or as I viewed it a ‘permanent Glastonbury’. As you enter you pass under a sign saying, ‘You Are Now Leaving the European Union’ and they have their own flag and individual currency.  They have around 900 permanent residents, some of them now third generation.

Christiania. Image Credit WorldAtlas

There was a 1976 protest track penned by Tom Lunden of flower power combo Bifrost which translates in English as ‘You cannot kill us’ which became the site’s unofficial anthem. In 1989 the Danish parliament legalised Christiania, however It has not been plain sailing with several drug and gang deaths over the years. Its main thoroughfare Pusher Street had an open illegal trade of cannabis until it was closed down in 2024.

Within the complex are three music venues, Den Gra Hal (Grey Hall), Christiania Jazz Club and Loppen which are all located near to the city entrance to the site.  It is a humongous area, and we walked the majority of the ‘streets’, before gravitating back to the main areas where there are bars and food vendors.

On the day of our visit the Copenhagen Christiania Jazz Festival was in full flow, and we witnessed a band called Good for Nothing playing on a suitably makeshift stage. That evening we had some drinks and grabbed some tea at a floating boat restaurant in the nearby Nyhavn area of town.