Tag: Bruce Springsteen

Manchester Venues 179 to 180

It recently came to my attention that there are Thursday night live music events in a couple of hostelries in Didsbury village. So, on the 15th May this year I enrolled Marcus for a jaunt around the streets and also to have an overdue catch up over a couple of cold brews. When I first moved over to Manchester we did visit the Manchester Art of Tea a couple of times on Barlow Moor Road, but I had not frequented for a while so made that our initial meeting point.

Art of Tea. Image Credit spottedbylocals.com

The café bar is owned by Ryan Thompson and Karen Schofield who after working in a suite of Manchester bars decided to open their own business in 2010 in the location of a former record shop. Within a month of opening, the establishment had signed up with the Manchester Food and Drink festival. It is a cosy little European style establishment with a long narrow main room on entry with a scattering of seats outside.

They operate as a café during the daylight hours with tidy breakfasts and tempting fresh cakes before morphing into an informal bar in the evening and additionally they have the quirky touch of a display of tea pots that have been donated to them. It also doubles up as a picture framer and a second-hand bookshop with a further room at the rear displaying their current selection.

In 2014, they began to stage Thursday Music nights with an open mic and also featured bands. The events were organised by the local musician and promoter Matt Hibbert, and they ran for a spell of five years. He also set up specific ‘Artist tribute’ nights and hosted amongst others Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young evenings. A couple of regular performers in that period, namely Ayanam Udoma and Chloe Jones apparently appeared on the Voice TV programme and the former was chosen to be coached by Tom Jones.   

Ayanam Udoma. Image Credit thesun.ie

On my arrival on the night, I discovered a ‘Jimmy bonus’ as unbeknownst to myself I had happened to land on a rebooted Music evening. The place was very busy, but we purloined a couple of continental beers from the bar and managed to squeeze onto a small table at the back.

First up to the microphone was the new promoter and local singer called Emily Mercer who performed a short acoustic set. Her first musical foray was at the age of 13 when she played guitar in an emo band before she decided that the piano was now her instrument of choice. She was also one of the co-founders of the Manchester Women Songwriters collective. She has appeared at the Manchester Jazz Festival and has also released a slew of singles.  

We decided to hang around for the next act as they were playing in quick succession, which transpired to be an acoustic two-piece with the distinctive name of Jimmy Page XI. The main singer has been performing on the local circuit for around three years, and they played some jaunty upbeat tunes with active audience participation including the punters sat outside the open doors.  

As you walk back to the junction and turn left into Wilmslow Road there was for a short spell a bar called Juicebox but after that closed it was reopened as a cocktail bar called Bunny’s Outpost. This is the latest outlet of the Bunny’s Dive Bars chain and adds on the four existing branches located in the city centre.

Saints and Scholars. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

Just beyond there and prior to reaching the library you will find Manchester Saint and Scholars, which has been a bar and restaurant situated in very that spot since approximately 2008. I can only assume the name derives from Irish history where in the 5th century following the collapse of the Roman Empire the country managed to stay immune from all the resultant European turmoil. As a consequence, on an intellectual and artistic front they entered into what is now described as ‘Ireland’s Golden Age’ which then derived the title of ‘Insula Sanctorum et Doctorum’ which translates as the Island of Saints and Scholars.

There are a few outside tables and a small bar area when you enter the ivy clad building which opens out into a larger main room where we have dined a couple of times. The venue also contains worryingly wonky stairs up to the lavatories. On the evening of our visit a band called Ceilidh Boys were playing a chilled set in the function room area.

Glasgow Venue 5 – Hampden Park

My overriding preference of venue would always be the smaller one man and his dog establishments where you are more liable to catch lean and hungry bands on their way up, though very occasionally I have to bite the bullet and attend larger auditoriums and stadiums to be able to see certain special bands who only play at that level. Neil Young is one such act and I first witnessed him in 1987 at the soulless Birmingham NEC, the other two times I watched him were fortunately in festival settings.

The other combo is AC/DC who I am a huge fan of despite them essentially being a two bars blues band at heart, but they do perform it with such volume and aplomb. I first saw them at Manchester MEN Arena in 2001. Their next British tour was eight years later in June 2009, and we dawdled when the tickets were released, and the tour ended up being sold out. The gig gods were smiling on us though when additional tickets were available for the Glasgow Hampden Park date, and we summarily snapped them up.   

Hampden Park. Image Credit urbanrealm.com

The first challenge was to locate a bed for the night as no city centre accommodation was available, thus resulting in our digs being a train ride and a further mile walk away (it is always further away than it looks on the map!). We visited a couple of bars down Stockwell Street near the River Clyde and the city’s pubs were highly populated as 52k gig goers were in town.

They were unsurprisingly playing AC/DC on the jukebox in the Scotia Bar, and we then frequented the Clutha & Victoria Bar, the pub where four years later there was the horrendous police helicopter crash resulting in ten fatalities. Thankfully the establishment was rebuilt and is thriving again.

Clutha and Victoria Bar. Image Credit blogspot.com

As the stadium was about three miles out of town, we hailed a taxi, which due to the heavy traffic could only reach the outskirts of the arena area. On disembarking the cab, I suddenly had an overwhelming crippling urge to spend a penny, I am sure you have all been there! I picked up pace, but the ground never seemed to arrive and then somewhat inevitably we discovered our entry gate was on the far side of the stadium. Finally, access to the venue was achieved and mission accomplished to enable me to actually think clearly again.     

The original Hampden Park was built in 1873, taking its name from the nearby Hampden Terrace and the first international match there in 1878 was a 7-2 win over England. In 1883, the national stadium was moved a few hundred metres east and then again further south in 1903 to its current site, always with the same name. The original site is now covered by railway lines.

The current Hampden (Pairc Hampden in Gaelic) has a population of 51,866 and over its timeline there has been a plethora of different sports played there including rugby union, athletics, tennis, baseball, speedway, boxing and American football. The first music concert was Genesis and Paul Young in 1987 and U2, Bruce Springsteen and Rolling Stones have graced the stage there.    

Having booked late tickets, we expected to be in a corner or in the gods, but we were astonished to discover terrific centre stage seats with a superb vantage. The Subways were supporting and did a sterling job with their high-octane performance; however, they were always to be outdone by the main act as they possessed their own individual sound system.

AC/DC opened with a thunderously loud two-minute cheeky video before launching into their current single ‘Rock N Roll Train’ off the Black Ice album, the whole sold out place literally erupted. At that very moment I almost saw the benefits of a stadium gig with the shared communal atmosphere, but only almost.

For over half of set, they were spellbindingly good and even at their advanced age were still kicking the butts of many younger wannabe acts. Towards the end there some spinal tap moments, but that is only me being slightly picky. ‘Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be’, ‘Hells Bells’, Dog Eat Dog’, Highway to Hell’ were glorious, with the highlight being ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.

After we left the stadium there was a claustrophobic passage of old thin alleyways which brought back slightly unpleasant memories of football crowd crushes in the 1980’s and I was glad when we had navigated through that area. We considered catching a train, but local station Mount Pleasant was absolutely packed to the gills, so we undertook the hour walk back into the city.

We had a further drink in the Clutha beer garden as it was a balmy summer’s evening before a late drink in Nice and Sleazy on Sauchiehall Street. The final venue of the day was a Noodle Bar across the road before a cab back to the hotel completed a rather fine day.