Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 98 to 101

As I am sure regular readers of this blog can attest, I have always been a huge advocate of attending Manchester venues. This is even though for my first 49 years on this Earth I was living in Preston, which has involved an extraordinary number of train ride commutes, quite often in challenging circumstances due to Northern Train’s incompetence. Don’t even start me on their brazen temerity relating to a staggeringly unjust penalty notice I received from them recently for making the ‘catastrophic’ error of buying two singles instead of the intended purchase of an open return for virtually the same price!   

My first Manchester venue back in the mists of time in 1985 was the Apollo with the 10th being the short-lived Planet K in the Northern Quarter which I first visited in 1999. The 25th followed in 2011 with the Castle and the 50th was the Sound Control downstairs club venue in 2013.

The dramatic spike in numbers of venues visited on the numbers between 25 to 50 was in no small part to my attendance at several multi venue wristband events including Dot to Dot and Sounds from the Other city (SFTOC) festivals and it became a personal mission around then to see how high I could increase the overall number to.

When we relocated to Manchester in 2017, I had at that stage reached 76 venues and I knew the much sought after century was a question of when not if and I have since rolled on to run past over 150 and counting Manchester venues.   

At SFTOC they utilise a central gathering area of the Regent trading Estate located behind Islington Mill where they have drink and food outlets and have acts performing in the Manchester Regent Trading Estate Car Park. In 2017 I saw the local artist Dub Smugglers and the following year witnessed an act called Kiss Me Again.    

Manchester Regent Trading Estate Car Park. Image Credit soundsfromtheothercity.com

In a more recent year, they based the whole festival site around the Regent Estate, I didn’t attend that year, but I saw the feedback was unfavourable as punter’s preference was to have a suite of venues dotted all around, and they have not since repeated that experiment.

The other three venues in the vicinity are very novel as they based in the warehouse units which I am assuming are normally working areas at other times and can imagine they could have been fine sites for Acid House gatherings back in the day!

The first and largest one we visited was Manchester Unit 5 Regent Trading Estate. The first band I saw there was HMLTD, an art punk band from London town whose original moniker was Happy Meal Ltd. They were a vibrant bunch, and their garb embraced the 1980’s New Romantic era. The following year, I witnessed another London jazz infused artist called Laura Misch.        

HMLTD. Image Credit nme.com

When in attendance at the SFTOC 2018 event I reached my 100th Manchester venue which was a big deal for me as it had taken 33 years to achieve that aim, the venue itself was Manchester Unit 2 Regent Trading Estate. I was hoping and praying it would not be a limp act to celebrate this milestone and thankfully the music gods were smiling on me!

The band was an upcoming Australian artist called Hatchie and her backing band and they produced a terrific slab of dream pop which was perfect for the occasion. I attended the festival again this year and we saw an excellent set from the C-86 infused shoegazers The Early Mornings, who turned out to be the band of the day.  

Hatchie. Image Credit vrtxmag.com

The other area was the smallest one on the Reform Radio Stage within Manchester Unit 4 Regents Trading Estate where I have seen Bennett is Coming and a Spanish soul singer with African roots called Femme Fatene.

Manchester Venue 95 to 97 Chorlton – Part 2

In May 2009, we watched PNE lose again in the play offs, this particular time to Sheffield United and post-match the discussion turned to attending another event on the weekend of the play-off final. Thus, a couple of weeks later Uncle George, John Dewhurst and I took a car down the old M63 to South Manchester and found some cheap digs near Old Trafford football ground.

We then purloined a cab over to Chorlton and I recall visiting the Sedge Lynn Wetherspoons pub which used to be an old billiards hall. The venue we were gravitating towards was the Irish Club on High Lane, which was originally founded in 1956 to serve the local Irish community. In more recent times, it has had numerous financial difficulties and was put up for sale in 2020, and its future remains very uncertain.

It held numerous community activities and also hosted comedy nights with Peter Kay and John Bishop performing in the building. It also periodically had gigs on and the week before our attendance Sad Day for Puppets played there, whose debut album I thought was a decent output. I do recall however the NME reviewing the gig and inexplicably scoring it 0 out of 10, which withstanding the fact of personal preferences aside as there are bands I really do not like, I would never provide a score of zero for a live performance!  

The venue reminded me of a large doctor’s surgery house, in a good way. Firstly, there was Chorlton Irish Club Acoustic room where I saw a set by Manchester band Bugs in Ember who were at that point crafting their debut album ‘Take These Bones’.

Chorlton Irish Club. Image Credit the businessdesk.com

Next to there was the Chorlton Irish Club Downstairs stage and first up was a five-piece from Matlock called Bicycle Thieves. They were followed by Marple boys the Dutch Uncles who had only formed the year before and were just releasing their self-titled debut album. They have links to the afore-mentioned local football club of West Didsbury and Chorlton and have in fact performed a promo on the pitch and their post-punk sound is still going strong as they are now six albums in. 

The Dutch Uncles on the pitch. Image Credit The Quietus

On the Chorlton Irish Club Upstairs stage we initially saw LoveLikeFire who were an enjoyable San Francisco dream pop band.  The main act was Pains of Being Pure at Heart, a shoegaze band from New York. I was always a huge fan of this band and treasure their self-titled debut album and this performance was very early in their career and about their sixth date in England and first in Manchester.

Refreshingly and in the spirit of old Manchester International days, they only took the stage at 11.45pm and were leaning on the wall next to me just prior to their performance. They were always best where they had oodles of volume and they were thankfully pretty thunderous in that regard that night.

They opened with my fave track ‘Contender’ and were spellbindingly good and were clearly taken aback by the hugely favourable and noisy audience reaction, at subsequent performances they always referenced this special night. They understandably only played about a 35 minute set as that encompassed all the tunes they had at that stage. After the show I managed to sweet talk a bouncer into letting us into a local late bar for a last drink before our 1am taxi pick up.   

  

Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Image Credit beardedgentlemenmusic.com

I have thought about this event after the fact and it ticked so many boxes for me with the multiple self-contained venues, a discerning likeminded crowd, great music, and late performances which  places it firmly as a Top 20 gig in my all-time list!