Tag: Carefully Planned Festival

Manchester Venue 82 – The Castle Hotel

The Manchester Castle Hotel located at the top end of Oldham Street was built in the late 18th century and began trading as a public house in 1816 and it is estimated the grand olde world interior complete with Victorian tiles and mosaic floor dates as far back as 1897. It has had many previous monikers including The Crown and Sceptre, The Crown and Anchor and The Clock Face.

Manchester Castle Hotel. Image Credit Flickr.

There has always been a musical ethos within the pub incorporating the involvement of John McBeith who went on to launch the Roadhouse venue, fondly remembered by me as being the first venue I ever saw Mogwai. The Castle was also the site of a famous John Peel interview with Ian Curtis in 1979 and Fall’s Mark E Smith also chose the pub as a meeting point for some of his abrasive monologue interviews.

The pub fell on tough times and closed in 2008, before subsequently being refurbished and reopened with a linkage to its sister pub Gulliver’s across the road and has gone from strength to strength since that date.

Despite being a fairly small hostelry, they have incorporated an eighty-capacity venue off the corridor to the rear of the pub. Facing the small door entrance is the mixing desk and the stage is to the right, and I must say it is one of the most cramped areas I have encountered when a gig is sold out!

I have attended eleven gigs in total with only the first one being where I have paid a singular ticket to see the band, the others being part of other multi wrist band events such as Carefully Planned and Dot to Dot Festivals.

Thus, on 23/10/11 I saw Veronica Falls who were a four-piece formed in London in 2009. They formed from previous bands The Royal We and Sexy Kids and are still active though sadly their drummer Patrick Doyle died in 2018. They first came to my attention via their excellent debut single ‘Love in a Graveyard’ which was a combination of C86 meets the Raveonettes, and they were good fun in a live setting.   

Veronica Falls. Image Credit Clash

Three years later, Space Blood were in town, a two piece slightly jokey instrumental combo from Chicago and I would place them in the math rock vein, and they have a couple of albums on the books. The following year I witnessed bands called Face, Georgio Tuna  and The Stay Aways, an all-female four piece based in Brighton and London. 

In 2017 I saw a young rapper called Tobi Sunmola from Nigeria, who moved from the country of his birth at the age of 17 and is now living in Manchester. The following year I saw Grand Prix and Thyla, the latter being a four-piece dream pop band who all met while attending university in Brighton. When one of their original guitarists departed in 2021, they decided to call it quits and their final ever gig was at the Hope and Ruin in Brighton on 25/05/22.

In May 2019 I saw another four-piece band called SUN SILVA who initially got together whilst at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Six months later I witnessed Winnie and the Rockettes, a funk and soul band who have supported Chaka Khan and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and have also headlined the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. My latest and only post-Covid visit thus far was in April 22 to see a Manchester band called Another Country $$$$.

Manchester Venues 68 and 69 Gullivers NQ – Part 1

Located squarely at the top end of Oldham Street you would find the distinctive green fronted Gullivers NQ, one of the stalwart venues of the Northern Quarter. It has a fair old history dating back to 1865 and has an interesting background, at one point existing as a jazz club and a transvestite bar.

It has had several names, once a Wilsons brewery house called the Albert Hotel, then latterly The Grenadier before the ever-reliable JW Lees brewery took ownership and renamed it Gullivers sometime in the 1970’s.

Gullivers NQ. Image Credit tasteofmanchester.com

I have discovered that in Manchester there is a proliferation of small breweries, many around the back streets near Piccadilly station, however a lot of them, for example Cloudwater serve cloudy and citra beers. Though I would never turn one of these down if offered, because that would be downright foolish, I do prefer the more traditional ales and thus JW Lees served in Gullivers and a more local pub nearby me, the Parrswood hits that very spot.    

It is an archetypal grass roots venue and alongside live music, has spoken word, theatre, film screenings and comedy events. The pub has a homely traditional bar leading you into a back room and downstairs venue. The pub sits squarely across the road from another principal and sister venue the Castle.

It has regularly been utilised as a hub point for picking up tickets for multi wrist band events such as Carefully Planned, Fair Play and Off the Record festivals, these festivals accounting for many of my attendances at gigs in this establishment.

It contains two venues, the first accessed down a thin corridor at the rear of the building is the Gullivers NQ Lounge, mainly for acoustic acts with a capacity of 40, though it feels highly populated when only half that number are in residence.

I have attended there four times, the first at Dot-to-Dot Festival in 2016 to see Lyon Apprentice, a folk duo originally from Melbourne who were residing in Manchester at this time and recording in their home studio. 

Later that year, we uncovered a diamond by witnessing an early performance by Katherine Priddy, a folk musician from Birmingham. She was a captivating engaging presence with a distinctive guitar style, dark lyrics and hypnotic voice, a rare treat!

Her stock rose exponentially in the intervening years with her debut ep receiving considerable airplay on Radio 2 and 6Music with folk behemoth Richard Thompson naming it as his ‘best thing he has heard all year’ in MOJO magazine, being so singularly impressed he invited her out onto a support slot on his upcoming tour.

Katherine Priddy. Image Credit birminghamreview.net

Her first appearance at Cambridge Folk Festival garnered her with the Christian Raphael Award, a prize awarded to one deserving developing artist from the festival each year. Her debut album ‘The Eternal Rocks Beneath’ received critical acclaim and she then backed that up with a sold-out national tour.   

Eighteen months later I witnessed singer-songwriter Kate Anita, who around that time released a single called ‘Human’ accompanied by a documentary video which showcased her interpretation of the culture and community within her home city Manchester.  

My final attendance there was to see local Manchester artist Lindsay Munroe, who produced some honest unflinching music with strong vocals epitomised by her debut single ‘Split’. I heard shades of Mazzy Star and Sharon Van Etten in there, the latter I later discovered is a big fan of her output.