Tag: Billy Bragg

Manchester Venues 79 to 81

Heading into Didsbury Village down Wilmslow Road from the East Didsbury side brings you first to the Crown Pub. This establishment was cited for flouting the COVID rules and was shut down for over a year before recently reopening under new ownership. Nearby to there is the terrific Sangam Indian restaurant which I have frequented many times.

Closer to the metro stop lies the Fletcher Moss pub, previously the Albert, which I must pay homage to as it is a proper old-fashioned boozer with fires on in the winter and a large beer garden to bask in during the summer months. It has always been run by the Hyde’s Brewery and is firmly entrenched in the ‘Blue side of Manchester’ camp, so much so they lay buses to and from the Etihad for Manchester City games on match days.

A hundred yards away on School Lane you would find the Manchester Botanist. This establishment was previously a Wetherspoons pub called the Milson Rhodes before in 2016 becoming the 12th branch of the Botanist chain. The Botanist pubs all have an inviting cosy layout, on my first visit there it was more in the restaurant domain, but they have recently recalibrated to having a larger drinking only area.  

The Milson Rhodes, predecessor to the Botanist. Image Credit ssmcamra.co.uk

I have seen five musical acts here, the first two being a local singer/songwriter called Liam. The third being an unnamed band and the remaining couple being a geezer called Piano Man who tinkled away in the background with laconic deliveries of easy listening cover songs, though he did have a fine singing voice. The last of these attendances was the cold Christmas Eve just passed.

Many of these pubs referenced are quite often listed in either the original or updated Didsbury Dozen. This is a renowned list of twelve commended places to visit though attempting all of them on one evening could be detrimental to your health!

Picking up the route again on Wilmslow Road brings you the Dog and Partridge. Recently Paul Heaton of Housemartins and Beautiful South fame generously placed money behind the bar of 60 pubs to celebrate his 60th birthday, including this establishment. Also, In the last year he ensured the prices at his gig at the Manchester Arena were capped at a reasonable level to consider the impact of the current cost-of-living crisis, much like Billy Bragg did all those years ago where he had stickers on his albums to pay no more than £4.99. All in all, Mr Heaton sounds like a thoroughly decent principled geezer!

Next door is the Dockyard, previously the Stokers where in an extremely busy setting I watched the 2018 World Cup England Quarter and Semi Final matches. The owners at this point also ran their sister pub of the Plough in Heaton Moor.

A couple of strides away is Rudy’s Pizza restaurant which was previously Rafa’s Tapas where on 30/11/17 we perched on seats on the street opposite Manchester Didsbury Library to watch the Christmas light switch on (even Santa arrived on a fire engine!) which also included a set from the Didsbury Brass Ensemble.

Didsbury Library. Image Credit wikimedia.

On the same side of the road as the library is the Station Pub owned by Marston’s brewery where they host music three nights a week, but I have not yet seen an act play there but I have sampled their fine Guinness and sat in their cosy back room watching the Masters Golf.

Opposite there is the Manchester Head of Steam, a pub chain of eight venues created in 1995 that is owned by Cameron’s Brewery based up in Hartlepool. The Didsbury branch opened in February 2018, and I twice have seen a young folk singer called Callum Rory Norton play there.

Gigs Abroad Part 6 – Hamburg

The annual lad’s trip in March 2011 returned to the fair country of Germany, this time to Hamburg. The city has had its fair share of travails over the centuries, great fires, cholera outbreaks, carpet bombing in WW2 and even a significant flooding in the 60’s which took many lives. It is now a modern cosmopolitan city that it is probably the most touristy place we have visited on our trips.

As we boarded the plane, there was a huge group of lads dotted around in the seats heading out on a stag day, I can’t remember the chap’s name so for simplicity let’s call him Smithy.

We arrived about mid-afternoon on the Friday and passed through the Hauptbahnhof main station en route. Much to our infantile amusement there were posters for Shaun Das Schaf (Shaun the Sheep) and Rory das Automobile (Rory the Racing Car) which we chortled about over the weekend!  

Directly from the hotel we bounced into the first bar we passed whilst heading into the centre of the city. The mein host, on hearing our accents smiled and proceeded to open a back room and ushered us in for us to discover that it was full of dubious war paraphernalia.  

To increase our discomfort, he then proceeded to boot up the jukebox and put the ‘Sink the Bismarck’ track on! We made plans to escape after a quick beer, but due to a communication breakdown we ended up having to have another drink there. It was rapidly turning into a strange start to the weekend.

The centre of town was a little tacky to be fair and Smithy’s stag boys were spotted in the Reeperbahn area. Within that area was the Hamburg Reeperbahn Academy situated on Hans-Albers-Platz.  

Hamburg Reeperbahn Academy. Image Credit www.hans-der-kanns.com

We wandered in and discovered that were was a function room behind the bar which served as a disco, nightclub and live venue and stayed open to the eye-popping time of 7am. They regularly have original or covers bands playing. The place had a decent vibe to it and a band called Darryl and Pals were on stage when we attended.

Directly next door was another bar called the Hamburg Ranch House which we pottered into and saw an act called Wild Touch who were apparently a regular band on the local circuit since 2004.

The overriding news story of the weekend was the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima in Japan. Around this time, I kept harking back to the prophetic line of Billy Bragg of ‘And the incident at Tschernobyl proves the world we live in is very small’ from his 1986 track ‘Help Save the Youth of America’.

On Day 2, we made a visit to one of Europe’s most famous football teams St Pauli’s stadium, located in the dock area of the city. They are arguably recognised more for their unique social culture than their football and they are quantified as one of ‘Kult’ clubs. They generate a strong affinity from supporters far and wide due to their commendable left-wing politics and have distinctive skull and crossbones on their merchandise.

St Pauli Stadium. Image Credit portalsinfoblog.blogspot.com

Nearby to the ground we found a superb pub, arguably one of the best bars I have ever been into which we christened the ‘St Pauli Bar’ as I cannot recall the actual name. The nearest musical comparison to the St Pauli ethos would be punk and ska and this was booming over the sound system and the clientele had such character and there was a nice modicum of ‘edge’ to the place.

St Pauli had just recently managed to gain promotion to the Bundesliga, the highest division, where they were now playing their city rivals Hamburger SV in the Hamburger Stadtderby. I was chatting to a genial local lad who had attended the derby only twenty-three days earlier where they had remarkably beaten their much bigger rivals in their home stadium, this was locally such a big deal that he was almost in tears while reciting the memories of the match.

To grab a local comparison, it would be on the scale of Stockport reaching the topflight and going on to win at Man City or Man United. We spent a terrific couple of hours in this establishment. When we boarded the flight home the next day, it was abundantly clear that Smithy’s stag do crew had been pushing the envelope all weekend and they were literally shells of their former selves!