Situated halfway down Oldham Street next to the Dry Bar is the Mint Lounge. I have visited there six times and all those attendances have been part of a variety of multi wristband events.
It was an interesting venue as it is a basement nightclub in its normal ‘day job’ role. Upon entry you head down two flights of stairs which opens into a bar area before heading through the stage. The loos are an adventure as to access the Gents you walk through the Ladies which I am sure will have generated some interesting banter in the past.
My first visit was to see Mimas on 19/10/14 who were a decent Danish post rock band. The following year we went to see the highly touted Kirin Leonard who Marc Reilly had been extolling. Now maybe we missed something but the three of us in attendance were significantly underwhelmed and we scampered off after 3-4 songs to watch something more enjoyable.
In May 2016 I saw Will Joseph Cook, a pop artist from Tunbridge Wells. Later that year we ensured we were in situ to catch a full set by PSYBLINGS. At a previous event I had only caught a couple of tracks. They were in the garage rock genre and they terrific and exuded so much energy into their performance. We had a parlay with them afterwards and they were lovely down to earth lads.
A couple of years after I saw Joel Baker from Nottingham and my final attendance was to see Alice Jemima, a singer songwriter from Devon.
Further down Oldham Street is the Central Methodist Hall and this venue was for a couple of years the ticket distribution point for the Dot to Dot Festival. At the 2016 Dot to Dot festival myself and Dave Keane were endeavouring to snare all the twenty venues on the roster for that day.
We landed at the venue at some point in the evening to find them having major sound issues. We headed off to tick off a couple more venues and returned about half an hour later to find the situation unchanged. Thinking that our fates were sealed regarding our quest to complete the ‘Full Monty’ of venues, we hung around for 10 minutes.
Then unexpectedly the scheduled act Laureen Aquilina, a singer from Bristol, took to the stage and announced due to the evident constraints she was going to sing acapella. A commendably brave move but by jove she pulled it off with aplomb as she had a superb strong voice.
Ticking this venue off enabled us to head off to the final venue Texture. This is a late bar located on Lever Street with a ground floor space and a balcony vantage point. The band in question were called Blooms.
I have been to the venue a couple of other times to see Speak Galactic, a lo fi band from Sweden formed by Owen Thomas, who formerly lived in Brighton. The other being Rev Rev Rev, an Italian shoegaze band who I had high hopes for but unfortunately, they just weren’t loud enough and struggled against the annoying backdrop of chatter in the room.
I used to like going to the Night and Day young James. I saw The Noisettes, Echoboy, Northern Uproar and Gossip there. Cool venue with a chilled out vibe. Good location for Piccadilly Train Station too.