Category: Manchester

Manchester Venue 135 – Bread Shed

On the opposite side of Grosvenor Street from the Deaf Institute venue you will find the Sand Bar. This is one of the many hostelries within the Oxford Road corridor, but it is a singular Manchester institution and one of my fave places to visit. It came into existence in the mid-90’s and I have been attending there for pre-gig drinks for many years. It is housed in an old industrial mill with an olde world feel and has an unprepossessing and almost hidden entrance. They have always served fine beers and was the first place that I was aware of that stocked continental lagers and was the location of my first sampling of the Bavarian Schneider Weisse wheat beer!  

Manchester Sand Bar. Image Credit flickr.com

On the next corner is another watering hole with the previously very simplistic name of ‘The Pub’. It is housed in a Grade II listed building, and they regularly have quiz nights and open mic nights, this one being more of a sporadically visited hostelry. A recent artistic addition to their side wall in May this year was a large mural of Kurt Cobain. At the back of this pub for many years there was a nightclub called the Zoo, now a singular music venue called Manchester Bread Shed.

I first visited the venue in its Zoo nightclub phase as part of the Dot to Dot festival event in 2013 and the act on stage was Beans on Toast which is the stage name of folk singer Jay McAllister who derives from Braintree in Essex. He is a prolific musician and has recorded fifteen albums since 2005 and has a liking for releasing them on his birthday of 1st December.

The Bread Shed. Image Credit designmynight.com

To be honest, he was not my cup of Yorkshire Tea though there were many punters in there who were lapping up his performance. On a personal front, my day improved dramatically immediately after as I caught a startlingly good Wolf Alice set across the road in the Deaf Institute.

In August 2017 the site rebooted as the Bread Shed and the owners Stonegate Pub Company spent £450k on upgrades. The unusual name derived from the history of the building as in the 1900’s it was the Duncan & Foster bakery site. This was also reflected in the attached pub revising its name to the Flour & Flagon. It was set up as an events space with a 480 capacity and beyond the live music they also reinstated the XS Malarkey comedy night that had for a short period been rehomed at the Comedy Store.   

Prior to attending a Fontaines DC gig at Gorilla in 2019 I cheekily blagged my way into the venue and caught a portion of a pretty woeful Iron Maiden tribute who were at the same low calibre level of the ‘legendary’ Damascus gig (my third ever gig) at Preston Clouds in 1984!   

My next visit was in October 23 where Marcus and Anita attended with Gill and I. Marcus had some ticket issues on the door but managed to negotiate his way in. The band we had come to see was the Boo Radleys who I was witnessing after a 29-year sabbatical as I had not seen them since two gigs in 1994. They were on a rotating joint headline tour and were the support on the night and were in excellent form with the fabulous ‘Lazarus’ being performed towards the end of their set.  

The headliners were Cud who are an electro indie band from Leeds who I had surprisingly never seen before. They formed in 1987, broke up in 1995, but reformed again in 2006. In their first incarnation they undertook a cover of Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’ which garnered a number 20 position in John Peel’s festive fifty in 1988. Their lead singer is Carl Puttnam who can be marmite to some people, and I honestly didn’t approach them with high expectations. However, these chaps could play and were seriously good fun, reminding me of the vibrancy of Electric Six’s live performances.   

Cud band. Image Credit 3loopmusic.com

My latest visit was in April this year to see the ska/punk sounds of Snuff for the eighth time. Just when I was thinking the audience were very quiet on the first three tracks and not resembling an archetypal Snuff crowd they then played ‘Soul Limbo’ cricket theme, and the place went ballistic! So much so the instantly created moshpit had a kick back and Uncle George was knocked back onto the floor and temporarily flattened, but he is literally made of Teflon so bounced straight back up again! I had a rare foray into the pit myself for a few tracks and as ever thoroughly enjoyed their show!    

Manchester Venues 133 to 134

The Manchester Retro Bar is located on Sackville Street, at the other end of Charles St from the Joshua Brooks pub and Factory 251 venue. It is situated underneath the train line at the mid-point between Oxford Road and Piccadilly. It is actually listed under the auspices of Manchester University as it resides in their North Campus area which houses the school of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. It is close by Vimto Gardens where the unusually large Vimto bottle and associated fruit is housed, which can clearly be seen when scooting past on the train.   

Vimto Gardens. Image Credit mikkitiamo.com

It was originally called the Swinging Sporran, which was an archetypal biker’s rock bar. Due to its proximity, UMIST students also frequented, and it was the site of very early sets by the Chemical Brothers, who at the time were called the Dust Brothers. The Retro Bar has a modernist vibe and would not feasibly look out of place within a 1990’s housing estate as it is essentially a pub built into a car park!  Gill and I stayed once at the hotel next door, now called Pendulum, in the days of affordable hotels in Manchester before they skyrocketed to the London prices now in place. 

The Retro has a bar area at the ground level where they once filmed a concert scene in the Cold Feet TV series when John Thomson played drums for his son’s band. Downstairs is a 120 capacity club and live music venue which hosts regular shows. The Retro Bar closed for a spell in 2017 but was subsequently reopened later that year under the name of Hive. Perhaps living up to its original name I did discover that in the last couple of years Tiffany and Spear of Destiny’s 40th anniversary tour took place there with Kingmaker scheduled for September.  

Retro Bar. Image Credit trustinns.co.uk

I had walked past the venue many times and noticed there was a live band scheduled to play on 28/02/13 when I was in town. Thus, after a Joy Formidable show at the Ritz I dragged Uncle George along to grab the opportunity to pay a visit prior to heading up to Piccadilly for the last train. The act that night was a local combo called Paper Tigers.  

My second and only other visit was as the first venue of the Dot-to-Dot multi venue wristband event on 24/05/19. The act that afternoon was a 3-piece from Cheadle called Elephant and the Rider. They had an indie angular sound and had only issued a couple of EPs at that stage. They have just recently released a couple of further singles which are starting to garner some radio airplay and interest from BBC Introducing.

If you travel further down Sackville Street across Whitworth St West, you reach Manchester Tribeca located in the area of that name which skirts both Chinatown and the Gay Village much as it does in the original incarnation in New York. The literal translation of Tribeca is Triangle below Canal. This was our second location of the same Dot to Dot event referred above.

In a continuation of the attempted New York replication, the bar is multi-tiered with a mezzanine area by the entrance with comfy sofas then onto a raised area by the bar. Downstairs, in a bizarre twist you will find a lounge bar with real beds, appropriately named B.E.D! They also have additional spaces called Blue Lounge and Purple Lounge and there are regular DJ sets at the weekend running into the wee small hours.

Tribeca Bar. Image Credit licklist.co.uk

When we visited, we grabbed a stop in the upper bar with a view down to the makeshift stage which was located in front of the huge bay windows with the afternoon sun filtering through, it created a bonny vista.

There was a decent local singer/songwriter called James Holt playing. He had a challenging start to his life as he was diagnosed with bilateral moderate to severe hearing loss at the age of four. However, he didn’t let this define him by subsequently graduating with a first-class honour’s degree and MA in Music Composition at the University and Salford and then launching a musical career. He has recorded at Abbey Road Studios and has been cited as ‘fresh and exciting to listen to’ by the producer Brian Eno.