Category: Liverpool

Liverpool Venues 33 to 35

I shall return this week to my ongoing review of the 2025 Liverpool Sound City event, with our next port of call being Liverpool Kazimier Stockroom. As I have discovered when writing these scouse based blogs their background stories of the venues never seem to be simple. So, this particular tale commences with the much touted original arty Kazimier venue in Wolstenholme Square.

The venue opened in 2007 in an old mirror-lined club owned by local boxer John Conteh and came complete with an octagonal dancefloor, outdoor space and a top-deck bar and it was the size of the Titanic. It finally bowed out in some particular style on New Years Eve 2015 after a self-created sci-fi themed Escape to Planet Kronos party with one hundred and eighty performers. A mere four months later alongside Nation, the original home of Cream, the whole area was razed to the ground under the banner of gentrification plans.

Kazimier Stockroom. Image Credit liverpooltheatres.com

A regular performer there was the in-house carnival techno act The Krunk Band. They chose not to perform on stage, instead they mingled into the crowd whilst booting out their tunes and included a mishmash of trumpets, percussions, barrel organ and accordions in their sound. Other bands to play there include Sleaford Mods, Blossoms, Buzzcocks, Miles Kane, Michael Head and The Harlequin Dynamite Matching Band.  

Then in 2016 the newly formed Kazimier Collective opened up a new venue on Regent Street near to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse. The three storey building comprises of two events spaces, the basement one called Substation, and some artist studios. It was named The Invisible Wind Factory and has a 1500 capacity. Fat White Family, Ride and the Orielles have played there, and it has also been used for daytime rollerdisco events, thereby invoking unwelcome memories of Cliff Richard and Frank Spencer!  

The Collective then opened up the Kazimier Stockroom which is a multipurpose small site with a 100 capacity and alongside being an intimate showcase for fledgling local and national bands they also host film screenings and theatre shows. It has an open courtyard area, and its name derives from its location adjacent to Kazimier Gardens.  

Upon our arrival it took us a moment to find the venue which was located just off from the outside area behind an unmarked wooden door, it was a busy enclosed space and was absolutely sweltering. On stage was a young R&B singer called Immi Dash who was born in Scotland to British and Trinidadian parents, raised between California and Slough and now resides in Liverpool, sounds like an eventful journey!  

Arts Club. Image Credit tagvenue.com

We then moved onto the nearby Liverpool Arts Club on Seel Street, a venue that has existed since 1928 and was before that date The Liverpool Royal Institution. Its original remit under the new banner was as a social club before morphing into a live music venue. Prior to its current moniker it was known also as The Barfly, The Masque and East Village Arts Club.

In the early part of 2023, like many other similar establishments it faced closure, but was subsequently thankfully saved from that ignominious fate by the Manchester based Tokyo Industries. That particular company also own Gorilla, The Deaf Institute and Factory 251 and brought that previous expertise and a major regeneration to this venture. Early gigs by The Wombats and Two Door Cinema Club served to cement its reputation back on the live circuit.

The venue has three individual rooms, the first is the lobby which is utilised as a club space with a capacity of 200 punters. The second is Liverpool Arts Club Loft which has a live maximum of 550 people. When we attended there, we saw a Manchester act called Cooper T who are a duo comprising of two producers Kong and TMNMS. They sported brown shell suits and matching balaclavas and were verging on the grime genre, not dissimilar to Sleaford Mods, a band who has always left me cold, though the crowd around me appeared to be lapping it up!

The Florentenes. Image Credit youtube.com

Along a linking corridor brought you to Liverpool Arts Club Theatre, which was my preferred venue of the two and has a capacity of 550 and the space reminded me of the old Preston Polytechnic venue. First up we saw a local singer called Neil Noa and then later in the day Florentenes. The latter three piece were from Manchester and astoundingly young with the two guitarists aged eighteen and the drummer only fifteen. They reminded me in parts of The View, early Strokes and The Vines and they created a very pleasing racket!  

Liverpool Venues 31 to 32

On the days when I am navigating my way back to Lime Street train station after a visit to the Liverpool office, I quite often skelp down Mathew Street, where you enter into an alternate ‘Beatleland’ area with music assailing your ears at every point.

Towards the bottom of the road is Liverpool Grapes Inn which resides in a building that dates back to 1804. There is little documentation on the earlier hostelries that were in that very spot. Considering how busy the thoroughfare is today; it is remarkable to recall that in the early 1960’s it was only pub on the whole street, and in those days, it was surrounded by warehouses.

Grapes Inn. Image Credit creativetourist.com

It was a customary watering hole for the young Beatles after their regular Cavern gigs as the club at that point was unlicensed. There is a famous photo of them in the Inn circa 1962 with what looks like pints of Mild! It was for a short period the Famous Grapes and like many others, including the Dog and Partridge at Didsbury, was renamed the Beautiful South when the said band went on a month long promotional tour.

It has been through many refurbishments, but they have always endeavoured to retain the original features, some which continue to be discovered to this day. On the day I passed there was a tour party being entertained by Eddie and Edie on a makeshift stage in front of the pub, they were somewhat predictably singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

I have just learnt that the song was given its debut in the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and is in fact sung twice at separate occasions in the production. This being prior to the universally famous cover by Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, which then was further adopted by the Liverpool fans on the Spion Kop at Anfield.   

Beatles having a bevy. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

Returning now to my Sound City Festival 2025 review and having quickly adopted a lessons learned from having accessibility issues to the Jacaranda we headed next door in good time for the next band in the Liverpool Shipping Forecast. It was previously a Flares branch pub and looks like it has been open since 2010 in its current format.

There is a welcoming wood panelled main ground floor bar and then there is the upstairs space (known as the Top Deck) which stages mainly DJ events with the likes of Calvin Harris and Mark Ronson having played there in the past. They have held periodic vinyl fairs, and their kitchen is linked to Ruby Jean’s diner, which churns out ‘Americana’ tucker (basically anything unhealthy).

The lavatories used to have a special touch in that the actual shipping forecast, first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1925, was piped into them, alongside relaxing sounds of waves and seagulls. However, the kit was subsequently stolen, and I shall respectfully refrain at this stage from any Scouse ‘hub cap’ references!    

Shipping Forecast. Image Credit creativetourist.com

Our destination was reached by heading down the steps into The Hold venue which has a capacity of 200 and it fits perfectly into the archetypal category of a sweaty cellar bar, in a good way!  The brickwork is exposed with a low wooden beam roof, which served to enhance the acoustics, however you do face the inevitable ‘pillar viewability’ challenge.

Despite the venue size they do admirably attract a decent level of band with Ghostpoet, Four Tet, Deary, Futureheads and Pulled Apart by Horses having graced the stage there. The main bar was not open that day, but thankfully they had some cold cans available at a pop-up table bar.

On stage was a young Liverpool singer/songwriter called Dylan Robert (no prizes for where his first name derived from!). He commenced his musical journey at the age of ten when he played guitar with his best mate Ben Harper. These two chaps have stuck together as Ben is now his producer. He also had a shared passion with football but a broken collarbone at the age of eleven resulted in him turning 100% down the musical path.

He had progressed up onto the main bill from a spot on the Sound City showcase roster in 2024. He has already released a slew of singles and I enjoyed his set, where he reminded me a little bit of another Liverpool act Shack.