Tag: Adele

Manchester Venues 147 to 148 – Royal Northern College of Music

As you progress down Oxford Road towards the Academy venues you reach the traffic light junction with Booth Street West and on that very corner is the Manchester Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM). Just beyond there is a recently developed retail area containing a Brewdog outpost and a branch of the omnipresent fast food chain Five Guys.

Across the road from the RNCM for many years resided the Phoenix public house, previously Barney McGrews, situated under the precinct. I can find records of the Phoenix being around since the 1970’s and in those days, it was a punky biker venue where upstairs they held sweaty club nights under the Tangled or Acid Rock monikers.

Phoenix pub. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

Live music was staged there from 1977 onwards on the Bass Charrington pub rock circuit roster. There are scant details of bands but can find evidence of Aqua, a Burnage High school band, (does that scenario sound familiar?) who played there the following year with Graham Massey of 808 State in their ranks. They are absolutely not to be confused with the other band with the same name who release ‘Barbie Girl’ a couple of decades later!  

It was a renowned student haunt due to its proximity to the universities. It became more of a drum and bass venue in the 1990’s and Clint Boon, Mani and Piccadilly Records used to undertake DJ nights there.  Around the time I visited, it had morphed into an ‘It’s a Scream’ chain pub with bright yellow frontage and was in a very tired state by then. It subsequently closed its doors for the final time in 2011.

The RNCM was officially opened in its current location on 28 June 1973 and was a fusion of the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM), which opened in 1893 with original principal being Sir Charles Halle and the Northern School of Music, founded in 1920.

Its remit encompasses musical education and contains two thriving public performance venues alongside a smaller recital room and theatre, the latter two spaces are utilised in the main for educational and conference events. The college was subject to a £7.1m refurbishment in November 2014 across all areas including a new lighting rig and sound equipment. Previous alumni naturally contains many illustrious conductors and composers and also Howard Jones!  

RNCM. Image Credit Royal Northern College of Music.

The first venue I will cover is the Royal Northern College of Music Concert Hall which has a fixed seating of either 443 or 598 with an additional balcony setting raising the maximum capacity to 710. The layout ensures that all of the seating encircles the stage in the middle of the room and ensures a good view from all vantage points. They have a constant diverse roster of performances and previous acts to play there include Adele, David Byrne, Hugh Laurie, Halle Orchestra and Jarvis Cocker. Filming has also taken place there for television shows Waterloo Road and Question Time.

My first attendance was in November 2013, and I had an unusual journey there. On the day I needed to attend a workshop in the glamorous location of Telford, thus caught a train from there direct to Manchester and met up with the rest of the crew in the Joshua Brooks public house. I recall we also visited the Sand Bar and naturally gravitated to our usual nearby noodle bar for some tea.

As you enter the RNCM building there is initially a bar and café area before you reach the venue hall at the end of the corridor. They adopt a similar policy to the Royal Albert Hall where you could not take drinks into the venue and if returning from a comfort break you had to wait until the current track finished before you can grab your seat again.

The act that day was the incomparable Mark Lanegan, personally one of my Top 5 favourite vocalists with his gravelly ‘lived in’ unique delivery. He was touring his recent album ‘Imitations’ which featured cover versions of tracks by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Nancy Sinatra and John Cale.

On the night he undertook an excellent version of Bobby Darin’s ‘Mack the Knife’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Satellite of Love’, the latter especially poignant as Lou had recently passed away. I have just read this week of a hugely emotional concert held with guest artists to celebrate what would have been Mark’s 60th birthday, he is sorely missed.

Mark Lanegan. Image Credit mubi.com

I had one other attendance there a couple of years later to see Mercury Rev and I spotted John Robb in the audience. The band were in a particularly noisy mode that evening with some guitar heavy tracks in the set, which suited me down to the ground!

The other venue is the Royal Northern College of Music Theatre which has fixed seating capacity of 600 plus the option to have additional removable pit seats. This is a more traditional ‘cinema style’ setting and I have visited there just the once in October 2023. We went to see a play called New Dawn Fades which chronicles the story of Joy Division which contain live songs with a full band. It is written and directed by Brian Gorman who also takes an acting role as Factory boss Tony Wilson.  It was pretty well made but the second half of it leading to Ian Curtis’s suicide was understandably very bleak viewing.

Manchester Venues 115 to 117

As cited in a previously blog, The Band on the Wall has recently been refurbished with a new site for gigs outside their main venue room, with an 80-person capacity. Thus, at the culmination of a gig I attended there recently we walked out into the Manchester Band on the Wall Bar and discovered a bonus band on the small stage called Black Cat Lion. I am assuming they only commenced playing when the band in the main room had finished their set.

Band on the Wall. Image Credit propermanchester.com

The last time I encountered an occurrence like that was when leaving Nottingham Rock City in the late 1990’s after watching a Spiritualised set to discover to my utter delight that the South London punks Snuff were in the middle of a thunderous set in a function room downstairs. That night I dived into the already fully functioning mosh pit and thoroughly enjoyed the half bonus gig and the standout was their cover of ‘I Think Were Alone Now’ with the vocals provided by a selected chap from the aforementioned pit!

Situated in a very old area of the Northern Quarter is Tariff St. I have also previously covered the bars and venues on this evocative ‘mill town’ thoroughfare, but I had never yet witnessed a gig at the Manchester Whiskey Jar Upstairs Bar, only having attended gigs in the downstairs space. The Whiskey Jar is housed in a Grade 1 listed textile mill, and it lives up to its name by having around 350 varieties of the hard stuff available, with representation from many continents.

Whiskey Jar bar. Image Credit creativetourist.com

On the same night of the above Band on the Wall gig I was navigating my route back to Manchester Piccadilly station for the late train home, and my attuned ears could hear music at ’100 yards’, much like Father Jack of Father Ted fame who could pick up the distinctive sound of a Sauvignon Blanc bottle at the same distance! Therefore, I had no choice but to undertake a quick detour into the Whiskey Bar to catch the last 1.5 songs of the Blues Kids set whilst still allowing enough time to enable myself to make the scheduled train without excessive scampering!

In November 2019 I attended at the last minute the Off the Record festival, an event for unsigned bands that takes place in a suite of venues in the Northern Quarter. I picked up my wristband from the hub venue of Gullivers about 6pm and decided to weave down Tib Street to my first venue. As I walked down I was distracted by a sign outside Manchester Matt & Phred’s.

Matt & Phred’s opened in its current format of a Jazz and Blues late night club in 2010 and holds live gigs 6 days a week. It has an appropriate low lit intimate setting with a 200 capacity and apparently provides fine cocktails and tasty pizzas. In its previous guise in 2007 Adele played two gigs there in a fortnight window and to have graced the stage there also are Rochdale’s Lisa Stansfield, Wynton Marsalis, Ed Harcourt, Mumford and Sons, Daniel Johnston and George Ezra.

Matt and Phreds. Image Credit DesignMyNight.com

Due to the genre of the music, I couldn’t see myself ever paying for and attending a gig there and had only once previously been in for a drink in an afternoon setting. However, returning to the previously mentioned sign outside which was providing an invite to attend a free early gig which happened to be at the exact point I was walking past.

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth I entered the establishment and found a side wall to lean on. The act on stage were called Courteous Thief and transpired to be a folk singer who was a fisherman’s son from North Wales. He had already by that stage picked up support slots with Turin Brakes, Tom Hingley, Mark Morris and John Otway.