Tag: Dot to Dot

Manchester Venue 87 Albert Hall – Part 2

One of the undeniable quirks of Albert Hall is the sheer size of the building and the multiple floors. A case in point is the extraordinary distance to access the lavatories which are situated in a veritable Bermuda Triangle maze of corridors in the basement, where it is rather easy to lose your bearings!

On 17/05/14 I recall us having a chippy tea on Cross Street and then watching the end of the FA Cup final between Arsenal and Hull which the former team won in extra time, before heading down to Manchester Albert Hall to watch the enigmatic Neutral Milk Hotel.

I had first discovered the band years after their breakup via reading an annual review pamphlet distributed by Piccadilly Records which listed them in several subscribers influential list. They hailed from Louisiana and their driving force was Jeff Mangum and their initial period of existence was from 1989 to 1998 before reforming for a couple of years in 2013.  

Their popularity in their initial phase resulting in them dropping off the map and heading into a hiatus and Jeff becoming a virtual recluse. Their music is ‘marmite’ to many punters, as it contains many unusual instruments such as a singing saw, uilleann pipes and the lesser spotted ‘zanzithophone’ which translates as a Casio digital horn. It also contains strange otherworldly lyrics, and they were cited as a resultant huge influence on bands that followed such as Arcade Fire and the Decemberists.  

My view on their landmark second album ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ is that is idiosyncratic, life affirming but also in equal parts deeply unsettling. It was fascinating to hear it converted to a live setting and some of their tracks had moments of genius about them.

Neutral Milk Hotel’s unique album cover. Image Credit Pinterest.

Because they had literally disappeared for such a sustained period and gained a degree of mythical status, many of their fans in the interim had developed into ardent zealots of their art, to the point that Uncle George observed on the evening that it felt a tad ‘insidious’. It was all in all a fascinating evening and the resultant people watch was almost as entertaining as the band.       

The following June I saw the ever-excellent Black Rebel Motorcycle Club for the fifth time with my personal favourite being when they astonishingly played five minutes’ walk away from where I lived in a small club in Preston called the Mill.

It was a glorious summers evening and despite being in an indoor venue the sun was angling through the many decorative windows to provide an elegant backdrop to their performance on stage. The band revel in long performances, quite often over two hours and flip consummately between straight up rock tracks like ‘Whatever Happened to my Rock N Roll (Punk Song)’ to countrified acoustic tracks such as ‘Complicated Situation’. They were in fantastic form on the evening and all things combined it resulted in becoming my gig of the year for 2015.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Image Credit myfreewallpapers.net

My next visit was as part of the Dot-to-Dot festival roster in 2018. To add to the many things Covid was responsible for is the fact that it sadly cancelled the Manchester leg of the Dot-to-Dot event, and it is now only held in Bristol and Nottingham. I really miss this event as it provided a great opportunity to visit some more obscure venues and also achieve some serious steps totals as it encompasses venues all across the city in one day!   

The other unusual element it allowed was to visit venues during daylight hours when they are at times virtually deserted which is slightly disconcerting as you are so used to venues being busy just prior to an evening show. The band on stage were No Hot Ashes from Stockport who had been receiving some hype locally but for me they didn’t justify it. The following year they released their only album ‘Hardship Starship’ and in 2020 decided to take an unspecified hiatus but Covid intervened again to cancel forever their two planned farewell shows.

In 2019 I saw Suede for the first time, and I have always been a tad ambivalent about the music but many gigs I have attended in the last five years are because we are now just down the road from Manchester, so why the hell not! Brett Anderson remains quite an engaging front man and they put on a decent performance without really moving me. I was left with the conundrum afterwards of whether I respected him or not for having the temerity to still wear tight leather pants at his age!

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 $$$$.