Lancaster Venues 20 to 22

This week, I am continuing the tale of my inaugural visit to the annual Lancaster Music Festival on a bruisingly cold day in October 2023. The next haunt on our list was Lancaster Cornerhouse located on the junction of New Street and Church Street; a stone’s throw away from the Sun Hotel. The Cornerhouse, formerly Paulo Gianni’s and Sphere Bar, went through a major transformation in 2018.

The driving force of the reformation was Gemma Rowlands from nearby Cockerham, who had previously worked at the site in Paulo Gianni’s days. She then converted it into a gin style palace with a restaurant with accompanying comprehensive menu, a plethora of craft beers and live music offerings from Thursday through to Sunday.  

Lancaster Cornerhouse. Image Credit lancastercornerhouse.co.uk

When we arrived, the place was extremely busy, and we navigated the queues to obtain an aperitif from the bar. We grabbed a seat before being politely moved on as we were inadvertently squatting in the restaurant area! On a small stage in the corner of the main room we encountered a local three-piece band called the Beets. They had ensured they would have maximum exposure across the day by volunteering to play a remarkable seven venues across the city in an overall time span of eleven hours!       

A five-minute walk away brought us to our next port of call which was the Lancaster Royal Kings Arms Hotel.  The place has considerable history in that the Grade II listed building was originally constructed in 1625 and revamped in 1879 after a habitual great fire (arsonists abounded everywhere in that era!). Many royals stayed there and in its early days it was owned by King Louis XIV.

The local archives contain a letter that was sent from Carlisle to the hotel on 11th September 1857 requesting that a room be booked there for a certain Mr Charles Dickens who would be accompanied by his friend Wilkie Collins. They also requested a comfortable dinner (tea in the North!) for two persons at half past 5.    

Lancaster Royal Kings Arms Hotel. Image Credit blog.conferences-uk.org.uk

They were in a midst of a walking tour of Cumberland at that stage which was chronicled the following month in Dickens ‘Household Words’ under the title of ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices’. The hotel is also cited as the location that Dickens scribed ‘The Tale of the Bridal Chamber’ and there remains to this day a ‘Dickens Suite’.

We had been in splinter groups for a couple of hours, but we all reconvened here. There was an excellent band on stage called Native Cult who were also playing several shows on the day. The duo hailed from Barrow and had a pot pourri of influences in their sound. Following there we grabbed some much needed tea and a sit down at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant next door.   

Our next destination was Lancaster Atticus on King Street which initially came into being in 1974 as a bookshop coffee bar above Probe Records in Liverpool. Probe Records is an interesting tale with its initial commencement as an independent underground/hippy establishment and it then morphed into a punk site when it moved to a new location, as a result of their new address being in close proximity to the legendary Eric’s venue.

Many future musicians were employed there including Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Paul Rutherford, Pete Wylie from the Mighty Wah! and Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. The final named was renowned as faithfully adopting the house ethos of issuing ‘constructive criticism’ when parlaying with customers and thus influencing their selections! Julian Cope references the shop in his ‘Head On’ autobiography and the band meetings that took place there with Ian McCulloch when they were in The Crucial Three together.

They set up a record label Probe Plus whose most famous signing was undoubtedly Birkenhead’s Half Man Half Biscuit, a band who refreshingly took a break from the music business between 1987 and 1990 as they didn’t want to become ‘too successful’! They also famously turned down a slot on The Tube Channel 4 TV show as it clashed with a Friday night Tranmere Rovers match.

Half Man Half Biscuit. Image Credit pinterest.co.uk

The shop struggled for a spell through the initial downloading era, but the vinyl renaissance has boosted their turnover, and the record store remains to this day in its current location in the Bluecoat Arts Centre.

The Atticus name was chosen as it has literary connotations but is also useful alphabetically, from a commercial viewpoint, on any book shop listings. They opened a second shop in Lancaster in the 1990’s which subsequently closed in 2001.

The original owner Tom Flemons then returned to the area in 2014 to reopen the store as a not for profit enterprise supporting the Tasikoki Animal Rescue Centre in Indonesia where he had previously volunteered. At this stage it also expanded to incorporate a coffee bar. When we wandered past there was a band called Bay Big playing who are a large host of musicians who play a repertoire of Swing, Jazz and Latin.    

Manchester Venue 156-Peer Hat

In a previous blog I reviewed AATMA, a venue which is literally buried away on an upper floor in a building off Faraday Street behind Stevenson Square in the Northern Quarter. Situated to the ground level and the street side of that very same building is Manchester Peer Hat.  

The pub first appeared into the world in 2017 run by a couple of self-proclaimed unsuccessful musician brothers named Mike and Nick Kenyon. They were both originally in the band Politburo who were likened to Dead Kennedys and played many gigs at the now defunct Roadhouse and Hard Rock Café venues when they were in their pomp. Another co-owner is Dom who also runs the aforementioned AATMA.

Politburo. Image Credit Louder Than War

The hostelry is a bohemian haunt and is a proper throwback to a student style pub back in the day in that it is a welcome and hospitable place and has a fine varied jukebox. The house motto is ‘Omnio sub petasum’, and for those whose Latin is rusty or non-existent like moi, that translates as ‘Everything under the hat’.

Like many low budget places, they really struggled through Covid but thankfully survived that challenging period. They have hosted some unique events, including a HAUNT Manchester ‘Black Christmas’ event and the Manchester Folk Horror Festival in 2018 and 2019. They have also had art exhibitions and in 2018 one included a feature from the Manchester Gothic Arts Group (M:GAG), thankfully not MAGA!

In the middle of the ground floor space, some vertiginous steps take you down to the music venue with a cosy capacity of 120. I do have a fondness for cellar venues and this one is a belter and they also seem to always have good sonic sound down there, all of that resulting in it being worthy of inclusion in my Top 10 Manchester favourite venues.   

The Peer Hat. manchestersfinest.com

They have fairly regular gigs, and they achieved a coup with their first ever event being none other than Thurston Moore, but they had no functioning bar at that stage, so they served him beer out of a bucket of ice! I have attended there six times in total, the majority of these being part of multi venue wristband events such as Dot to Dot or Carefully Planned Festival. On my first visit there as part of the Off the Record Festival in November 2017 I saw a local artist called Billy Bee.

Six months later the band on stage was Jade Assembly, a rock band from Bolton who formed in 2008. They are proud Boltonians and are closely linked to the local football club with songs such as ‘Our Town’ and ‘Burnden Aces’. Their music is still played over the tannoy at Bolton Wanderers matches and they signed their first record deal on the pitch at half time during one of the matches.

The band had a fervent following nicknamed the ‘Jade Army’. After a slew of singles, they released their debut album ‘One Last Time’ in 2023 which coincided with them calling it a day after fifteen years and they appropriately played their last ever two gigs at the local venue, The Ramp in Horwich. 

My next appearance was in November 2018 where we caught an early set from Red Rum Club, who had only formed a couple of years earlier and was also a year before they released their debut album ‘Matador’. They have gradually risen in profile since with their fourth LP ‘Western Approaches’ in 2024 reaching number 8 in the UK charts.

They hail from Bootle in Merseyside and cite their hometown as an influence on their sound with the seafaring, industrial aspect of the area. On the night their El Mariachi style songs were excellent and thoroughly enjoyable, and the thunderous sound combining with a sweaty venue created a communal treat.

Red Rum Club (twice!). Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk   

I visited again in May 2019 where I saw Women You Stole, a Manchester band driven by lead singer Hayley Faye. I would class them in the garage rock vein, and they released a fine debut single ‘Shake’ around this time but sadly don’t appear to be still active. They were supported by post-punkers Document who named themselves after the stellar REM album of that name.  

A couple of months later was my only visit there to see a standalone gig. The band on show was my one time thus far watching the excellent Helicon. The band derive from Jesus and Mary Chain East Kilbride territory and were initially formed by brothers John-Paul and Gary Hughes. Their self-titled album was recorded in 2017 at Mogwai’s Castle of Doom Studio on Glasgow and their 2023 album ‘God Intentions’ won the prize of ‘Psych Lovers’ Album of the Year’.  They were superb and the intimate venue played to their strengths.

My most recent visit in April 2022 was to see Priceless Bodies who are now a Manchester based lo-fi duo made up of twin sisters Viv & Bianca Pencz. Their name was drawn from a line by 19th century French poet Rimbaud and their musical influences derived from being disgruntled teens in Vancouver, Canada which was known locally at the time as ‘No Fun City’!