Category: Manchester

Manchester Venues 153 to 155 – Caribbean Festival

One of the strengths of my hometown of Preston is that it has always been a multi-cultural city with a large proliferation of the Windrush generation amongst others settling there in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

As a result of this cultural background there were two thriving establishments dotted across the city, the first being the Caribbean Club in Kent Street which had a golden period in the 1980’s and 1990’s where I saw The Membranes, Snuff and Scream perform. The club is now long gone but Jalgos in the city centre remains, a venue where I once saw UK Subs play upstairs.  

Jalgos Club. Image Credit lep.co.uk

There is also every May bank holiday a large Caribbean procession on the Preston streets with colourful floats and steel bands with the end point of the parade being a festival gather in Avenham Park. The 50th anniversary version of this event took place in 2024.

When we relocated over to Manchester, I always endeavoured to make an appearance at their own festival. The actual start year of their event is somewhat disputed, some say 1970 and others say 1971, what is not in doubt however is that the location for the festival has always been the large Alexandra Park in the Moss Side area of town. It can’t be easily overlooked that the shindig has over the years sometimes had a chequered history with gang incidents, drugs arrests and even murder.  

The original British festival was held in London in 1959, in direct response to the racist riots that took place in Notting Hill and also Nottingham the summer before. The driving force and organiser was Claudia Jones who is now revered as the ‘mother of the British Caribbean carnival’.

A flyer for Preston Caribbean festival fundraising. Image Credit socanews.com

Her back story is fascinating as she was born in British Colonial Trinidad in 1915 before her childhood years in 1930’s Harlem in New York. As a black woman and a ‘communist’ she was victimised in the McCarthy post war era and was shamefully classed as a criminal and deported to Britain in 1955. She admirably became a strong advocate of fostering the local community and continued to fight the politics of the day and the inaugural festival was created four short years later. Ms Locita Brandy was Claudia’s equivalent in being the impetus behind the subsequent inception of the Northern version.  

Alexandra Park dates back to 1864 and was first opened to the public in 1870. There were at that time experimental usage from the architect Alexander Hennell of oval shaped and curved pathways, a raised walk and a half mile lime walk wide enough for horse drawn carriages. Additionally, one of the original park keeper’s homes, Chorlton Lodge still remains to this day.

The park was the location of the great Manchester Woman Suffrage demonstration of 24th October 1908 and several Rock Against Racism events took place there with a particular one on 15th July 1978 which featured both Steel Pulse and the Buzzcocks. 

Thus, on Sunday 11th August 2024 we decided to make our long overdue debut. Initial thoughts were to walk the 5 miles there, but a stiflingly hot day put paid to that idiotic idea. We travelled over on the metro and alighted at Withington tram stop which is a stone’s throw from those cemetery gates that Morrissey famously sang about, it was about a mile trek from there to the park.

Manchester Caribbean Carnival. Image Credit themanchestercarnival.com

There was extremely thorough security checks at the gate before we undertook a circuit of the huge site. Initially on the Manchester Caribbean Youth Stage we saw a band called Black Oxygen before catching up with Axis Attack on the Manchester Caribbean Jamaican Corner Stage.

There were fun fairs and vendors of all different shades including numerous rum bars which we swerved around. We did however hit one of the food stalls and sampled a terrific homemade curry which was served with rice and beans, salad and plantain. 

Now, in my time I have been to more loud gigs than you can wave a stick at, but the noise level there was astounding, and the bass was vibrating through to your very soul. We grabbed a spot on the grass but could not hear ourselves to have a conversation, so were virtually reliant on sign language. Whilst we munched on our food our ears were assailed by a chap called RJ on the Manchester Caribbean Main Stage.

Manchester Venues 151 to 152

I am blessed with my current geographical Manchester location as there are regular multi-venue events, the latest to spring up is the Years End Festival which took place at the tail end of 2024 and is based in the main down the Oxford Road corridor. The remit of the days roster was for it to contain up and coming bands and most were guitar based, which suited me down to a tee.

The downside on the day was the monsoon and high winds weather conditions which was a tad bracing! I have previously detailed the Retro Bar downstairs area in an earlier blog, but this festival allowed me to attend a gig in the Manchester Retro Bar Area for the first time. I enrolled my pal Paul to be my wing man, and we met up at that site after we had both separately obtained our entry wristbands from the pickup point.

As I trotted down towards the building it soon became evident that there was a noisy combo already ensconced on the stage. I grabbed a cold beverage and settled in to watch a band called Revivalry who are a thumping three piece from Grimsby. They had such admirable confidence which is remarkable when viewed against the fact that none of the members are above 17 years of age. The lead singer and bassist Josh Courfield who was belting out the tunes looked about 12!

Revivalry. Image Credit grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

They are understandably reliant at this stage in being ferried to gigs around the country in the back of a transit van by one of their understanding tolerant parents and they were chosen to be the youngest band ever to play the Main Stage at the 2024 version of the Kendal Calling festival. They are on Manchester label Cosmic Glue and have already garnered support slots with Reverend and the Makers and The Lathums.  

In a novel twist they climbed down into the crowd to play an acoustic portion of their penultimate track before clambering back onto the stage for the electric second half of the song with full audience singalong participation. They were overall rather fine fun and good luck to them in their potentially burgeoning careers.    

Now, I have always endeavoured to never replicate myself in these articles but I make no apologies now for referencing a tale I mentioned briefly back in the mists of time in the second paragraph of Blog 1.

Hacienda nightclub. Image Credit manchestereveningnews.co.uk

My first ever venue visited in Manchester should have been at the Hacienda nightclub as we had tickets to see Husker Du there in early 1985. There was though a fundamental stumbling block of having no means of transport to be able to get there and back as my brother was between cars, I was too young to drive, and the last train departed at 10.30pm.

Thus, I never got to visit the Hacienda though thankfully did manage to see Husker Du twice in the next couple of years after the unfortunate ‘gig that never was’. To be perfectly honest though I am not overly gutted on that score as despite the club admittedly having a brief golden period, reports from my peers who attended there to see Trouble Funk and Killing Joke amongst others thought it was always sparsely populated and a little bit of a dump!    

One of the co-owners of the Hacienda was Peter Hook, who in 2010 collaborated with the Hacienda’s original interior designer Ben Kelly to renovate and reopen the former Factory Records HQ on Charles Street and Princess Street, opposite the Joshua Brooks public house. It opened as a nightclub and also stages student nights and live music and retained its original name as Manchester FAC251.

Toy Car. Image Credit facebook.com

On entry, my first impression that it was smaller than I had envisaged it would be. The bands that day were playing on the ground floor space with a 400-capacity called Manchester FAC251 Basement. There are apparently two other rooms, the first floor Loft and second floor Boardroom, both with a 200 capacity.  

The room had a metallic nightclub vibe about it, which is always a slightly odd scenario when watching acts at the earlier daylight hour’s time of 5pm. The band on stage was a scouse jingle jangle collective called Toy Car who are a fledgling act who have only thus far released a handful of singles, and they provided an engaging and energetic set.