Category: Manchester

Manchester Venue 191 Gorilla – Part 1

On Whitworth St, directly opposite Manchester Ritz and within a literal stumbling distance from Manchester Oxford Road rail station you will find Manchester Gorilla. The venue is uniquely situated under a railway arch and was previously the arts, theatre and comedy site The Green Room back in the 1980’s. On the comedic front Alan Carr, Steve Coogan and Caroline Aherne graced that stage and James and Doves played early gigs there.

When that business closed the Trof Group took over the running and Gorilla initially opened its doors in 2012. Its future looked extremely perilous during the pandemic, but thankfully a new owner was sourced and that saved the day, and it is now linked to its sister site of Deaf Institute nearby on Oxford Road.

Gorilla. Image Credit discover.ticketmaster.co.uk

There is a tidy little bar at the front of the venue but there is no access from there to the gig space, apart from sometimes being directed by ‘Rock Steady’ to exit gigs through this bar area. The actual entrance is around the corner under the tunnel, and a few stairs brings you into the main room with a 550 capacity. 

It is a well laid out space with a merchandise stall to the left and the extendable/removable stage at the bottom of the room. However, like many other locations it can be arguably too busy when at full capacity, presenting logistical challenges when trying to access the two bars and even move around!  It also has a raised platform at the back of the hall with a smattering of elevated seats.

It generally provides good sound and local lad Johnny Marr talks very warmly about the venue and has actively encouraged his peers to include a touring date there. They have regular club nights with promoters such as Guilty Pleasures and Now Wave.

I have attended eighteen gigs there over the years with my first show being British Sea Power in April 2013. I have now seen them six times in total, and this was my second sighting 11 years after I discovered their unique stagecraft at the Leeds Festival in 2002. I recall them being introduced on stage by 6 music DJ Marc Riley.

Near to the culmination of the set, I nipped to the loos which are positioned behind the stage and encountered a chap dressing up into an eight-foot polar bear outfit. Before you ask, nobody had put anything suspicious in my beer, it was actually a tradition the band had at the stage of their career where a couple of bears would parade around the mosh pit during the encore!   

The bears and the band in action. Image Credit NME.

A month later, I returned as the venue was part of the roster for the sorely missed multi venue Dot to Dot festival. On that particular day I saw the aforementioned Marc Riley faves Teleman. The original germination of the band was the three members Pete Cateermoul and the Sanders brothers, Johnny and Thomas who were part of Pete and the Pirates. After they disbanded, they were joined by drummer Hiro Ama and became Teleman in 2011. I have always thought they have an intriguing sound, and they lived up to that in a live setting.

Also performing were the Wildflowers who were formed in 2012 and based in Brighton and Bristol. The driving force is main songwriter Siddy Bennett and her sister Kit who had an interesting bohemian upbringing via living on boats, caravans or in protest camps. They have a country punk sound and were coined in the early days as ‘Punk Dolly Parton’s’. Their breaking moment was a set they played at South by Southwest festival in Austin Texas that inspired Detroit label Original 1265 Records to sign them up. I could hear diverse elements in their sound ranging from Mamas and Papas to White Stripes.  

Next up was the old troubadours Nada Surf where the gig was completely sold out and they were touring their latest album ‘You Know Who You Are’ and were in as fine form as ever as they have now amassed a quality back catalogue. 

In August 2014 Gill and I headed over to watch Joan As Policewoman, whose stage name was a homage to the 1970’s television cop show called Police Woman starring Angie Dickinson. Her actual name is Joan Wasser who was adopted at a young age and was musically precocious as she had piano lessons at the age of six and violin tutelage at the age of eight. She started her professional musical career in the Boston University Symphony Orchestra.

Joan as Policewoman. Image Credit blogspot.com

Then to paraphrase Neil Young around the time of his commercial peak of recording ‘Harvest’, who was quoted as saying ‘It put me in the middle of the road, travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there’. Joan adopted this ethos literally as she was jaded by the classical structure so did a full U-turn and morphed into being a member of various punk bands.

She suffered personal heartache in May 1997 when her fiancé of three years Jeff Buckley accidentally drowned in Memphis. At the time we saw her, she had just released her fourth solo album ‘The Classic’ but surrounded herself with a touring band for the live dates.

In March 2016 I saw Pelican for the second time after their staggeringly loud show a few years before at the Ruby Lounge venue across town. They are classed in the post-metal genre; there is literally a label for everything! They are entirely instrumental and produce long slabs of glorious brutal noise and three of their members are also part of the band Tusk. The show wasn’t as intense as the previous one, but still very good. 

Manchester Venues 188 to 190

The Manchester Didsbury Salmon of Knowledge is situated on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury village. It has had previous incarnations under the names of Dockyard, Stokers Arms, O’Neill’s and Times Square. In the early 90’s it was listed under the latter name and was a Bass Brewery house serving in my view the worst beer ever, the infernal Stones Bitter. It changed in 1996 to O’Neills and was for a couple of decades a traditional ‘Irish pub’.

The Salmon of Knowledge. Image Credit geograph.org.uk

In 2014 the ownership moved over to the Stokers Arms, and it was under this derivation I first encountered the establishment, and it was one of the first pubs we visited after our relocation to Manchester in 2017. It was a decent sized pub and had a battered charm about it and I recall having some tidy pub grub there.    

It has always been a good spot to watch sport thus Marcus and I were in residence there in the balmy hot summer of 2018 to watch England’s World Cup quarter final win over Sweden. We returned trying to play the ‘lucky pub’ card for the semi-final, but it didn’t work out as we then witnessed the slightly unfortunate defeat against Croatia. On both occasions the place was packed to the rafters.   

The further changes in ownership did not materially change the layout of the pub, the latter being the second branch of Salmon of Knowledge to open alongside the original version located in the Northern Quarter.

One welcome addition though was the introduction of live music staged on a small area near the front door. I have seen two acoustic acts performing there, one called Sally and Steve, and the other was Electro Gang. 

Diagonally across the road at the traffic lights there has always been a large unit on one of the Wilmslow Road/Barlow Moor Road corners. The building was previously the Clock Tower pub, then a branch of Zizzi before morphing into a steak joint called Cau. The restaurant was in situ when we first moved to the area, but we never had a chance to visit and in 2018 it closed for good when the parent company Gaucho fell into administration.

Kennedys Bar. Image Credit kennedysirishbar.co.uk

Despite its prime spot, the site remained empty for 7 years though there were rumours in that lengthy time span of bar One Eight Six taking over but that never came to fruition. Unexpectedly in the middle of 2025, it was announced Manchester Didsbury Kennedys Irish Bar would soon be located there.  

It opened as a sister chain to the already established branch in Altrincham which was established back in 2021. The original branch also recently expanded by diversifying into a spare unit next door to the pub with the addition of an Irish Deli.  

The Didsbury version stirred up a veritable ‘fuss over nowt’ before it had even opened by painting the exterior in vibrant red paint, which generated plenty of clickbait on social media. They also stated publicly that they wished to stay separate and apart where they possibly could from the monorail of the recently renewed interest in the Didsbury Dozen pub crawl.

We first visited about a month ago and were supping the obligatory Guinness, though not as nice as the Station pub just down the road. It is a large open room bar, and they stage regular music, though the sound on entry that day was thunderously loud.

On a stage in a corner away from the entrance we saw there was an act called El Rey performing, who was born in Newry, Northern Ireland but then moved to Manchester to further a burgeoning music career. He was followed by a chap named Damon.

We then moved onto Manchester Didsbury Famous Crown which is farther down Wilmslow Road towards East Didsbury train station and which we have frequented a few times before. I have struggled to find the previous history but know it was previously a Greenall Whitley brewery house and can confirm it is a proper olde world boozer with some original features therein.

The Crown. Image Credit aboutmanchester.co.uk

The pub was a rather naughty child during covid by opening illegally which led to it being forcibly closed down. Post-pandemic it was subject to a £470K investment and refurbishment from pub operators Punch Pubs & Co before officially reopening on 01/10/2022. They now stage periodic live music and on that particular visit we encountered a local lass called Jenny performing who had a terrific voice.