Tag: Clint Boon

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.

Stockport Venue 1 – The Heatons

With the Manchester HS2 leg now officially aborted and as a result potential funds being freed up for other transport projects, there have been increasing rumours about extending the current metro terminus of East Didsbury all the way into Stockport. I believe this proposed route would cross over the River Mersey and traverse in via Cheadle.

The East Didsbury metro stop with its large car park is my nearest station and lies about 20 minutes’ walk away. From there you can begin to navigate up Didsbury Road past the Dog and Partridge pub and at that point you cross over into Stockport.  

The next touchpoint is the petrol station with an M&S attached where during the dark days of Covid, one of our treats was to visit there and purchase the frites and the fresh strawberries with meringues!  

You then reach the Griffin pub which is an archetypal old-fashioned boozer run by the local Holts brewery, which remains as one of the cheapest beers in Britain. It was built in 1831 and still contains two ornate shuttered bars and other original features.

As you continue up the hill you reach Heaton Mersey Bowl on the right which is a large green area containing a couple of football pitches. I recently discovered that a Moor Fest event was held there in 2005 were Mr Scruff, Tom Hingley, Mighty Wah! Clint Boon, A Certain Ratio and Howard Marks were on the bill. Viewing it now, it would be a natural amphitheatre for such a shindig, not dissimilar in layout to Avenham Park in Preston, but the records show that was a one-off singular event.

Moorfest Flyer. Image Credit mdmarchive.co.uk

If you continue down to the right, you arrive at Burnage Rugby Club where alongside the club they have a combined football/golf pitch and putt course. A couple of years ago they held an open-air movie night on the pitch with a screening of A Star is Born featuring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. When we visited Australia, we witnessed people queuing for a Rocky showing in an open-air cinema in glorious sunshine in Sydney Harbour. Our event was not in the same league, it was admittedly reasonably well organised, but the issue was the apocalyptic rain, and it was absolutely bloody freezing!

Back on Didsbury Road you then reach the Conservative Club where my political persuasion has ensured I have never crossed the threshold of any such establishment anywhere in the country. Back in Preston, there was once a family christening at the Con Club off Moor Park, and I was genuinely ill and could not attend but at least my ailment took a tricky decision off the table! The local club does have musical acts on, and my gig venue ‘addiction’ was briefly piqued, but the horrific calibre of acts, for example a Michael Buble tribute act at £20 per pop quickly quashed that thought!

Further up on the right is the Crown pub which has a raised beer garden which is a sun trap in the summer months, and it is a pleasure to sit there and while away a few hours with a Dizzy Blonde (the beer!). It is a proper old-fashioned establishment with wood beams, and I believe they used to do a fine Sunday lunch, but they have not had food on since pre-covid.

The Crown pub. Image Credit blogspot.com

There is an extremely steep cobbled incline by the side of the pub leading down to the river that bears an uncanny resemblance to the ‘Hovis Hill’ from the old 1970’s adverts, though the filming was actually undertaken on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury in Dorset. The hostelry was also used for a pub quiz scene in a recent episode of Cold Feet with the characters played by James Nesbitt and Robert Bathurst having a scrap on the aforementioned street.

A little further is St Winifred’s School where their choir had a moment of fame in 1980 with their number one Christmas single ‘There’s No Quite Like Grandma’, beating tracks by John Lennon and Jona Lewie to the top of the chart. The choir included the future Coronation Street actress Sally Lindsay.     

Back up opposite the Heaton Mersey Bowl is the Stockport Heatons. When I first visited at the back end of 2017 hunting a pub to watch a PNE match it was an interesting establishment called the Frog and Railway. Shortly after it closed and reopened under its current name and was more in the gastropub mould. When sampling some food there in August 2021 there was a local act called Heatons Jazz Band providing a soundtrack.

Before I go this week I must add my homage to the genius songwriting talent of Shane MacGowan. I initially missed the Pogues playing at the Paradise Club in Preston in front of about thirty people in February 1985 despite being in town that night and my brother trying to persuade me to attend. Oh, young foolish 16-year-old Jimmy!

Shane MacGowan. Image Credit withradio.org

I saw them three times after that with the second at the long-gone Manchester International 2 in December 1986 remaining one of my Top 20 ever gigs. They were extraordinary and I never since seen an occasion where about 90% of the audience were dancing, creating a huge communal euphoric experience. If only there was a way to bottle or freeze those moments in time!

I am sitting here misty-eyed listening to the marauding intent of ‘Boys from the Country Hell’ and the warped beauty of ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ to name but two of his astounding canon of material. RIP Shane – ‘I Will Have a Pint With You Sir’!