I have travelled up to Newcastle many times with work traversing regularly over the scenic A66 from Kirkby Stephen to Scotch Corner where at the services by the roundabout they used to have the coldest M&S in the whole of Christendom. It became a tradition on those trips that from that very store I would purchases a Roast Beef and Horseradish Sauce sandwich!
Despite these sojourns I surprisingly never attended a gig in the Toon until 2011. When Mogwai announced their tour for that year we naturally hit the Manchester date on 26/02 and decided to follow that up with the Gateshead gig the following evening. Thus, on the Sunday the established Mogwai trio of Uncle George, John Dewhurst and I headed from Preston back to Manchester where we had returned from 12 hours earlier and then caught the onward train to Newcastle Central.
Mogwai on stage. Image Credit The Upcoming.
Whilst on the train, a chap was asleep in an aisle seat opposite and the person next to him nudged him as we were approaching the next station and he needed to exit the train, the aisle chap proceeded to open his eyes for a millisecond and then fell asleep again. In the end we had drag him to his feet to allow the other person out, Mr Sleepy then bumbled about briefly with us enquiring about his welfare and eventually got at the station himself. To paraphrase an old Northern idiom, ‘there is nowt so queer as folk’!
On arrival we decamped to our digs at the Premier Inn at the Quayside. Shortly after in a local boozer we watched the culmination of Birmingham’s dramatic win over Arsenal in the League Cup Final, and also on that day was a World Cup cricket match between England and India resulting in a tie as both teams scored a remarkable 338 runs each. I also recalled us visiting the Vineyard pub where literally the only beer option was Duvel, so we swiftly headed elsewhere.
We were navigating the city for the first time and despite everything I had previously heard about Newcastle and the Bigg Market etc we seem to end up in a blind spot and encountered a dearth of boozers but did eventually find a couple of watering holes.
The gig was in Gateshead Sage Stage Two within the futuristic looking building, which was facing us on the opposite side of the River Tyne. The Sage was opened in 2004 at a cost of £70m as a concert and music education hub and links in with Gateshead Quays development alongside the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Millennium Bridge. Besides a regular roster of gigs from every genre it has hosted party political and NUS conferences.
The venue is home to the Royal Northern Sinfonia Orchestra and has three concert spaces, Sage One with capacity of 1640, Sage Two with 600 capacity and a smaller rehearsal hall.
Gateshead Sage. Image Credit Pinterest
It was a very impressive setting and within Stage Two we were encased in the small standing area right down the front within the maximum blast radius of the sonic noise emanating from the stage. ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’ was my fave track on the night and we topped the evening off with a curry in a nearby restaurant. The following morning, we bizarrely nearly got mistaken for some local dignitaries for a TV interview outside the hotel, but after sidestepping that we headed for the train home.