Nottingham Venues 1 to 3

The reason for my initial visit back in 1992 was that we on the Sugar trail. After seeing them in Leicester on the Friday, we had a Nottingham date with them on the Saturday night.  

Fiona was not in attendance at the gig as she had a family wedding. We chilled during the day and then headed to Steve and Steph’s to eat pizza and watch Ghostbusters. Steph was telling us about having a meeting and photo with Bob Mould in a record shop that afternoon.

We jumped on a bus and had a couple of beers in Jacey’s Bar and then headed into Nottingham Trent Polytechnic at 9.15pm just before the band hit the stage. It was a traditional Uni type venue and was the only time I visited there and looking now at the history it doesn’t display any gigs beyond mid-90’s, so I must have been at one at the latter ones. Nirvana and Teenage Fanclub played there in it’s heyday.

Steve was the coat monitor as the remaining three in the party headed to the front. The sound was instantly better than the previous night resulting in a huge moshpit which obviously I dived into, resulting in a stunning bruise on my ribs the next day!

They were thankfully one of these bands that juggled the setlist which always adds variety to the proceedings if you see them more than once on the same tour. Standouts were ‘A Good Idea’ and ‘Fortune Teller’. Five minutes after the set conclusion, Bob wandered past where we were standing.

My brother headed down to London the following night to catch them at the Town and Country Club and I caught them two weeks later at the Boardwalk in Manchester, so we completed pretty good coverage between us on that first tour.

My next musical jaunt was to Nottingham Rock City on 18/10/97 to see Spiritualised supported by Steephill Jack. It turned out to be my only visit to the Main Hall.

Nottingham Rock City. Image Credit Rock City

Rock City is a somewhat fated venue as two other scheduled gigs there didn’t happen for different reasons. One to see Kyuss (forerunners to Queens of the Stone Age) was missed due to illness and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club annoyingly cancelled their show on the day of the gig.

It has always been touted as a much-vaunted venue, but it seemed a fairly unremarkable place and the gig tended to wash over me as well as the chilled Spiritualised vibe didn’t have its tentacles out that night.

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Spiritualised live on stage. Image Credit giggingni.com

However, the fates turned in our favour as we headed out post-gig and discovered a band mid-set in the Nottingham Rock City Basement Hall. It took a second to recognise who was playing but soon realised it was those incendiary lovable South London scamps Snuff kicking up a storm!

They were jammed into a small hall with a monster sweaty moshpit. The 30 minutes we managed to catch was superb. The highlight was at that particular point in time they were bringing up local punters to the stage to guest vocal, perhaps selected via their fan club. The local talent absolutely nailed a terrific version of Snuff’s cover of ‘I Think Were Alone Now’.

This resulted in turning what had been a slightly tame gig into a very fun bonus encore!

Nottingham Miscellaneous

At some point in 1992, my brother after a period of nomadic existence moved to and still resides in Nottingham. Thus, for a period of 25 years we frequented just shy of 50 random venues for gigs in and around the city.

This curtailed around 3.5 years ago when I had to cut off all contact with my brother and parents for reasons that currently look irreconcilable. Anyone close enough to me to know the circumstances will know that I had no choice or the decision to walk away was one that I would take lightly.

So, back in the mists of time my first trip over to Nottingham was at the back end of 1992. On my arrival in the Robin Hood city I was imbued with a powerful sense of déjà vu but in a comforting way despite never having visited previously.  

From Preston there were two main travel options, one via M61, M62 and M1. That journey route was once dramatically delayed by my placing diesel into a petrol car necessitating in breaking down and being towed back followed by an engine drain, we arrived rather late that day – heigh ho!

The other route was via the M6 and A50 which became my preferred option, though it once took me a tortuous 4 hours to travel to Stoke. This resulted in a decision that on future journeys I would never set off any later than noon on a Friday. Vaguely interesting fact on that route is that it traverses across 6 separate counties – namely Lancashire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and finally Nottinghamshire.

Conversely if you got a clean run on either route, you could complete the journey in just over 2 hours. Trains were not an instantly viable alternate as any cross-country route in England is challenging. John and George once took the train and had a horror journey epitomised by the train running at about 5mph from Sheffield to Nottingham through outposts like Chinley!

For a time, Sean lived in a flat off Mansfield Rd which resulted in many visits to the Peacock and the Golden Fleece pubs followed by visits to the Chand, a cheap and cheerful Indian, which is sadly now long gone.

He then lived at Gedling, which was a bit further out of town. I recall there was a Cheesecake shop nearby, which regretfully we only frequented once.

His main dwelling for years was a property in Forest Fields. At the bottom of his road were the meadows where the Goose Fair, a huge travelling funfair, is held every October. One on my trips coincided with the fair visiting and I can confirm it was on a colossal scale. He had some interesting boozers nearby which will be covered in future articles.

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Goose Fair in Nottingham. Image Credit visit-Nottinghamshire.co.uk

A few years after he moved to that area a tram network was created and a stop built 5 minutes’ walk from his dwelling which served to inflate his property valuation. It also made the commute to and from the city an easier proposition or was alternatively about a 30-minute walk.   

Alongside music, Nottingham trips have also been synonymous with football. There were a couple of trips to watch North End at Chesterfield, one involving purchasing a beverage at the ground called Tea of Life that was so insipid it was rechristened Tea of Death! The other involved a visit to the Crooked Spire pub prior to the game which remains one of the most threatening pubs I have ever frequented.

We visited Notts County where we performed daylight robbery to win 3-2 with an injury time winner created by a wonder cross from Lee Cartwright. There were also 2 visits to Forest, one an uneventful draw, the other the most staggeringly inept display of refereeing by Barry Knight resulting in inevitable defeat and us finishing with 9 men.

Now, please don’t tar me as being myopic when it comes to the men in the middle as I can only think of 2 other occasions in around 1000 PNE games I have viewed where I would contend referees have adversely affected the result.

One final soccer reference would be during the 2002 World Cup when games were played at odd times due to South Korea and Japan being the hosts. So, one Sunday we headed to a rum Irish club called Greyfriars on the edge of town to watch Republic of Ireland v Spain with a 12.30 dinnertime kick off.

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Greyfriars Club in Nottingham. Image Credit dgcars.co.uk

The curtains were closed, and the place was packed, resulting in a belting atmosphere and Guinness flowed freely before the Irish eventually and unfortunately lost on penalties. We stumbled out half cut about 4pm and the mid-afternoon sun was absolutely blinding!