Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 50 and 51

Now, I have endeavoured where possible to review all the venues in a chronological order, but I must say I had to check back in the Jimmy archives to ascertain which was my 50th venue in Manchester. It transpires that it is Joshua Brooks which is a pub on Princess St opposite the Garratt pub and on the adjacent corner to the FAC251 venue, located in the old Factory Records, a place I have not yet managed to visit.

When I checked back at the nomenclature for the venue, I unearthed that Joshua Brookes (JB) was an Anglican chaplain born in Cheadle Hulme in 1754 and seemed an unremarkable chap apart from the fact that his father was nicknamed Pontius Pilate by the virtue of his violent temper.

JB is portrayed in a Mrs Linnaeus Banks novel The Manchester Man that follows the life of a Manchester resident, Jabez Clegg who also had a public house on Oxford Road named after him. There is also a quotation from that novel that forms the epitaph on the tombstone of Factory Records founder Tony Wilson. 

    

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Joshua Brooks pub. Image Credit foodanddrinkguides.co.uk

The pub opened in 1993 and has a ground floor craft ale bar with a small music space downstairs which lays claim to being the Chemical Brothers first ever residency when they were at the University in the city.

My first visit was on 24/05/13 as the night’s last venue at the Dot-to-Dot festival prior to catching the late train at Piccadilly Station. The band in question was Story Books but to be fair, they weren’t particularly memorable though I did remember them saying they had undertaken a hellish journey traffic wise from somewhere down South and just arrived in time for their 11.30 pm slot.

My second and final musical encounter was prior to an Arab Strap gig at the Ritz when we heard a local synth band called DENOVA playing, and we managed to catch a portion of their performance.  

My personal choice of site for buying gigs tickets is ENTS24 as I have always found them very reliable and infinitely less corporate than Ticketmaster. Alongside their ticket distribution they regularly list unusual venues that you tend not to find on other sites. Thus, every time I attend a gig, I always have a gander to see if there is a sister event the same evening.

So, on 30/10/11 prior to a F%**$d Up gig at Sound Control we headed to an innocuous looking unit near the Oxford Road end of Charles St, opposite the new Circle Square development. It looked like a generic office space but when you headed down the stairs to the Base Bar you entered an Aladdin’s cave of an all-day punk event. It seemed to be a very short-lived venue as I never saw any other events listed there, but it was a privilege to attend something that resembled a hidden guerrilla gig.   

Annoyingly the last band had just finished their set, so we camped at the bar and the next band up were a local four-piece called Dangerous Aces who were a very high-octane punk band, and they were fabulous fun. The other band we witnessed was a long-standing group from Macclesfield called Kirkz. We bade our farewell but what an interesting noisy interlude it had provided!

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Dangerous Aces debut album Deny all Responsibility. Image Credit collective-zine.co.uk

Manchester Venues 48 and 49 – Yes

In the early days of my Manchester gig going career in the mid to late 1980’s there used to be a requirement for a designated driver on the trips because of the sheer inadequacy of the train timetable. The most visited venue at that stage was my favourite ever Manchester venue International 1.

The route used to take us from the M62 through Prestwich visiting a choice of Holts’s houses the White Horse and the Friendship Inn at the traffic lights, then a couple of Boddingtons pubs The Grove and the Brewers Arms underneath the Boddington’s brewery and adjacent to Strangeways Prison. Once we had traversed through the city and China Town, we could stop for a final drink at either The Garratt on Princess Street or the nearby Lass O Gowrie on Charles Street.

The Lass O Gowrie is a grand old pub in the traditions of other city pubs Peveril and the Peak and Britons Protection. The walls are decked with period pictures of Manchester and it is a real ale haven and they used to serve their own beer called Log 36 and Log 42. There is a decking area at the rear of the pub overlooking the River Medlock originally opened by comedian Johnny Vegas.

For a short period in the 90’s I used to watch Coronation Street and on one anonymous Tuesday night pre-gig we wander in to see the whole cast in the pub. The chap who played Jim McDonald who used to lean on the Rovers Return bar was in the exact same pose thereby encapsulating life imitating art! On that theme I know there have been bands who reference film characters and events. I recall a Japanese death metal band called Keyser Soze named after Kevin Spacey’s enigmatic character from Usual Suspects and another act called 1.21 Gigiwatts from Back to the Future!

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Jim McDonald leaning on the Rovers Return bar. Image Credit The Mirror

In the Corry script they would often say they were going to the new restaurant on the precinct, so in this regard the new venue on the precinct would be on the next corner from the pub! In September 2018 a former auctioneers house and printers press was converted into a four-storey music venue called Yes. Commendable local promoters Now wave were the instigators in this venture.

It houses two gig venues, serves tidy looking pizza in the ground floor bar, and has a roof terrace containing a NASA approved sound system which can be spied from the train running between Oxford Road and Piccadilly stations 

I first visited the 1st floor venue Yes Pink Room on 31/01/19 where the décor matches the name. It has a capacity of 250 and it has a cosy feel to it. The band in question were Swearin who are a lo-fi Philadelphia four piece. They had first crossed my threshold when I picked up their terrific sophomore album Surfing Strange released in 2013, which comes recommended.

The band is led by alternate lead vocals from Kyle Gilbride and Alison Crutchfield, the later also has a solo venture called Waxahatchee, who somewhat confusingly sometimes support Swearin on tour. I thoroughly enjoyed their live performance. My other visit there was to see Art Brut who were not in the same class and were very disappointing fare. 

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Manchester Yes Venue. Image Credit getintothis.co.uk

On the night we saw Swearin they finished quite early, so we headed downstairs to the Yes Basement and managed to negotiate a half price entrance fee to catch the end of soul singer Otto Hardman’s set. It is a decent venue in its own right, more in the lounge core mould and has a smaller capacity of 60.