Tag: Bob Dylan

Manchester Venue 139 – Maxwell Hall

I am returning this week to the tale of the 2024 Sounds from the Other City Festival (SFTOC). Within Salford University between 1964 and 2004 there was a thriving venue in the University grounds called Manchester Maxwell Hall. The Maxwell building containing the aforementioned hall was officially opened in 1961 by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip. The upper hall staged the gigs with a capacity of 1000 seating and a balcony above of a further 220 capacity. I once sat in that very balcony area whilst attending one of my talented wife Gill’s many graduation ceremonies.

The opening band to play on the 25th of March 1964 was Dave Berry and the Cruisers at a cost of six shillings, they were so named based on the lead singer’s admiration of Chuck Berry. They are not to be confused with Marvin Berry and the Starlighters, the fictional musician and Chuck’s cousin from the original Back to the Future movie!  Other acts to play there include The Who, Black Sabbath, U2, New Order, The Kinks, James and of course The Smiths!

Marvin Berry and the Starlighters. Image Credit backtothefuture.wikia.com

One story goes along the lines that Paul McCartney and the Wings rolled up in a van in 1972 and asked if they could play as the band had just recently formed and were engaged on a practice tour. The tickets were priced at 50p with half going to the band and the other half to the University. Blondie also famously graced the stage in 1978 and there is an iconic picture that only emerged in 2017 with Debbie Harry draped in the actual poster for the gig.

In the 1990’s the allure of the venue waned due to the introduction of competing venues in the city with Charlatans having the honour of playing the final gig there on 20th December 2004. There then followed an utterly mystifying gap of fifteen years before an extensive refurbishment plan was touted within the £800m Salford Crescent Masterplan to restore the venue to its former glory but like many other schemes I assume it was then scuppered by the pandemic.

Debbie Harry embracing Salford Uni. Image Credit blogs.salford.ac.uk

Five years later the venue was belatedly chosen as one of the locations within the 2024 edition of SFTOC, which rekindled talk of possibly rebooting the venue. The layout of the venue reminded me of Whitehaven Civic Hall.

On the day we attended we saw a jaunty slightly surreal Welsh six piece called Melin Melyn (translates as Yellow Mill). They sing in their native language and have been cited alongside other artists in a movement named ‘Cool Cymru 2.0’. The driving force of the band are the original members Gruff Glyn alongside Garmon Rhys, who also double up as a pair of professional actors, the former garnering credits in Dr Who, Poldark and the Royal Shakespeare Company.  Their music I would describe as a pot pourri of folk and surf rock.

Maintaining the Welsh theme, we also caught the end of Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals) headline set who was promoting his latest solo album ‘Sadness Sets Me Free’. He is ambidextrous and somewhat bizarrely plays left-handed on an upside down right handed guitar. He has tried his hand at scripting opera and also provides vocals to the Mogwai track ‘Dial: Revenge’ off their Rock Action album. He curtailed his show with a nod to Bob Dylan’s video for Subterranean Homesick Blues via the usage of cue cards with audience prompts for applause etc.      

Maxwell Hall. Image Credit bbc.com

There has been a spate of other venues in the near vicinity including a former horse racing track at a site called Castle Irwell which was sold onto the University in 1960’s. It first evolved as a student village and then the old racecourse members stand was converted into the popular Pavilion Bar and Nightclub (known locally as the Pav) under the ownership of the Students Union.

Bands to have played gigs the Pav include Texas, Pulp and Atomic Kitten before its closure in 2009. The village at Castle Irwell subsequently closed in 2015 after a half of century of providing housing for approximately 40k students. Sadly, a year later there was an arson attack which created such a huge fire that at one point 50 firefighters were in situ utilising pumped water from the nearby River Irwell. Housing has since sprung up on that original site. 

Pulp flyer from their 1992 show. Image Credit pulpwiki.net

There were also events at the Student Unions Building in the 1970’s and 1980’s but the only recorded gig I could track there was a performance by Heart! I am sure there must have been other higher quality gigs there. The final one to note is the Salford College of Technology where local legends Joy Division once graced the stage in 1978.

London Third and Fourth Trip

My brother moved down to London in 1988 to attend university and I headed down for a visit in November of that year. We met at Euston then went to see a film called Lapland before catching a train back to his digs in Woolwich.

That night we headed out to the Woolwich Tramshed right outside Woolwich Arsenal station. We went to the University bar prior to heading to the venue on the main square.

I was very excited to see that they had Boddingtons on draught because you never saw it more than 30 miles from the Strangeways brewery at that point, but upon tasting it I realised why that was the case. You can take a lad out Preston….!

The venue was a small little playhouse with cinema seats and was a quarter full. There was an ok support act who modelled himself a bit too literally on Billy Bragg.

The main act was a Bristol band called Blue Aeroplanes of whom I thought the lead singer resembled David McComb of the Triffids. In the best traditions of Happy Mondays, they had a male dancer gyrating throughout the set, who was an exhausting spectacle. It was quirky intelligent stuff and they were enjoyable.

The venue appears to be still in existence but is a performance theatre only now.

See the source image
The Blue Aeroplanes. Image Credit pennyblackmusic.co.uk

I headed down for another weekend in February 1989. On the Friday we headed out to the Camden Falcon. En route, I called Red Rose Radio from a phone box to discover PNE had lost 2-1 to Southend. On arrival we had a couple of refreshing pints of cold Tennants Extra in the smoky bar.

The Falcon was a large pub with a little corridor leading to the venue, the venue itself consisted of a room painted black with no windows and a very small exit, arguably sitting high on the fire hazard scale. Unsurprisingly I read afterwards that people fainted regularly when the venue was full. Thankfully the venue was at best half full the night we attended.

The main act was an unremarkable band from Chatham in Kent called the Dentists. My overriding memory was for some obscure reason the lead singer kept bashing his head on the microphone. We left before the end of the set and had a couple of more bevies before the midnight train home.

The pub closed in 2002, before conversion into residential use.  

See the source image
Camden Falcon seen better days. Image Credit soundofpen.com

The following day we went to watch a Mike Leigh movie High Hopes in Leicester Square before deciding to head out to Finsbury Library in Islingon. We embarked at Angel tube station which always seemed then to be a cold, dark and windswept location, somewhat Salfordesque at that stage which was appropriate to the music acts we were heading to see.

The large library was built in 1967 and I think we captured one of what were rare musical events within the building.    

Within a boiler room under the library, holding a twice monthly residence were Ewen McColl and Peggy Seeger. Both were seeped in the folk tradition, Ewen who penned ‘Dirty Old Town’ and father of Kirsty and then Peggy renowned protest singer, daughter of Pete who allegedly cut the cable on Dylan when he went electric and was also a link back to dust bowl poet Woody Guthrie.

It was an all seated very informal venue with about 30 punters there and they served Ruddles bitter in cans. The duo played a few folk and American protest songs and played a witty track about what jobs would be available after a nuclear war. They then invited people to come up and play, one punter playing a form of reed pipes.

It was a privilege to catch Ewen as he sadly passed away later that year.  

After an hour they took a break and after purchasing a NUM funding miner’s strike tape we headed off into the dark Islington night.