Tag: Electric Six

Manchester Venue 135 – Bread Shed

On the opposite side of Grosvenor Street from the Deaf Institute venue you will find the Sand Bar. This is one of the many hostelries within the Oxford Road corridor, but it is a singular Manchester institution and one of my fave places to visit. It came into existence in the mid-90’s and I have been attending there for pre-gig drinks for many years. It is housed in an old industrial mill with an olde world feel and has an unprepossessing and almost hidden entrance. They have always served fine beers and was the first place that I was aware of that stocked continental lagers and was the location of my first sampling of the Bavarian Schneider Weisse wheat beer!  

Manchester Sand Bar. Image Credit flickr.com

On the next corner is another watering hole with the previously very simplistic name of ‘The Pub’. It is housed in a Grade II listed building, and they regularly have quiz nights and open mic nights, this one being more of a sporadically visited hostelry. A recent artistic addition to their side wall in May this year was a large mural of Kurt Cobain. At the back of this pub for many years there was a nightclub called the Zoo, now a singular music venue called Manchester Bread Shed.

I first visited the venue in its Zoo nightclub phase as part of the Dot to Dot festival event in 2013 and the act on stage was Beans on Toast which is the stage name of folk singer Jay McAllister who derives from Braintree in Essex. He is a prolific musician and has recorded fifteen albums since 2005 and has a liking for releasing them on his birthday of 1st December.

The Bread Shed. Image Credit designmynight.com

To be honest, he was not my cup of Yorkshire Tea though there were many punters in there who were lapping up his performance. On a personal front, my day improved dramatically immediately after as I caught a startlingly good Wolf Alice set across the road in the Deaf Institute.

In August 2017 the site rebooted as the Bread Shed and the owners Stonegate Pub Company spent £450k on upgrades. The unusual name derived from the history of the building as in the 1900’s it was the Duncan & Foster bakery site. This was also reflected in the attached pub revising its name to the Flour & Flagon. It was set up as an events space with a 480 capacity and beyond the live music they also reinstated the XS Malarkey comedy night that had for a short period been rehomed at the Comedy Store.   

Prior to attending a Fontaines DC gig at Gorilla in 2019 I cheekily blagged my way into the venue and caught a portion of a pretty woeful Iron Maiden tribute who were at the same low calibre level of the ‘legendary’ Damascus gig (my third ever gig) at Preston Clouds in 1984!   

My next visit was in October 23 where Marcus and Anita attended with Gill and I. Marcus had some ticket issues on the door but managed to negotiate his way in. The band we had come to see was the Boo Radleys who I was witnessing after a 29-year sabbatical as I had not seen them since two gigs in 1994. They were on a rotating joint headline tour and were the support on the night and were in excellent form with the fabulous ‘Lazarus’ being performed towards the end of their set.  

The headliners were Cud who are an electro indie band from Leeds who I had surprisingly never seen before. They formed in 1987, broke up in 1995, but reformed again in 2006. In their first incarnation they undertook a cover of Hot Chocolate’s ‘You Sexy Thing’ which garnered a number 20 position in John Peel’s festive fifty in 1988. Their lead singer is Carl Puttnam who can be marmite to some people, and I honestly didn’t approach them with high expectations. However, these chaps could play and were seriously good fun, reminding me of the vibrancy of Electric Six’s live performances.   

Cud band. Image Credit 3loopmusic.com

My latest visit was in April this year to see the ska/punk sounds of Snuff for the eighth time. Just when I was thinking the audience were very quiet on the first three tracks and not resembling an archetypal Snuff crowd they then played ‘Soul Limbo’ cricket theme, and the place went ballistic! So much so the instantly created moshpit had a kick back and Uncle George was knocked back onto the floor and temporarily flattened, but he is literally made of Teflon so bounced straight back up again! I had a rare foray into the pit myself for a few tracks and as ever thoroughly enjoyed their show!    

Nottingham Venues 39 to 42

On a heady weekend at the end of June 2014 I completed a flurry of 4 gigs in the city of Nottingham. On the Friday night, we headed over to the Guitar Bar on Clumber Avenue, sometimes also known as Hotel Deux. I recall it as a two roomed venue with a stage in the left-hand room and was an intimate venue and very sparsely attended on the night of our visit.

Massey Ferguson were an alt country bar band from Seattle led by the distinctive vocals of Ethan Anderson named after a farm equipment company. They sit in the Springsteen/Tom Petty Americana fold, they were highly accomplished musicians and their songcraft was very evident and were very enjoyable, though I was slightly embarrassed on their behalf by the low turnout.

See the source image
Massey Ferguson. Image Credit glidemagazine.com

After watching Brazil beat Chile on penalties in the World Cup, the Saturday night musical entertainment commenced with a trip to the Forresters Inn, a traditional boozer located on Huntingdon Street behind the Victoria Shopping Centre. It is a Victorian corner pub established in 1868 and is currently independently owned. There was particularly limp act playing in the corner with perhaps their most interesting element being their stage name of Pegefoe and Maria Metalie.

En route to the second venue we discovered that Columbia had eliminated Uruguay 2-0 with a wonder strike from James Rodriguez. Delving deep back into my memory I recall that the first ever two pubs I visited in central Nottingham were the famous Ye Olde trip to Jerusalem, with the other being the nearby Ye Olde Salutation Inn located on Hounds Gate. It is a Grade II listed public house with components of it allegedly dating back to 1240 and it is built above Anglo-Saxon caves dating from the 9th century which was at one-point home to a colony of lepers. It is also noted as one of the most haunted pubs in the whole country, with reports of 89 separate apparitions.

See the source image
Ye Olde Saluation Inn. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

It is an archetypal heavy rock biker pub and reminds me of the Dog and Partridge pub in Preston where on any given Friday night in the 1980’s there would be a plethora of bikes located outside. Upstairs they have a stage and there was a heavy metal act called Enormity Falls playing that night.

They were already underway and as we traversed up the steps, I could hear an unmistakeable cover version being played, though as I processed it, I was very surprised by their choice. The record itself was a noisy doom-laden version of Electric Six’s ‘Gay Bar’, and it went down a storm with the audience. They were a home-town band who had just released their debut EP ‘Voices’.

We then searched out a pub for a final beverage or should it perhaps be better quantified as the fateful ‘one for the ditch’! As we passed a hostelry we have never previously visited, we could hear the strains of a vibrant noisy local band called Misspent Youth throwing out some decent indie and punk covers.

The pub in question was the Royal Children on Castle Gate, another old pub dating back to the 17th century and is reputedly named after Princess Anne, daughter of King James II who took refuge there in 1688. It appeared everyone in the venue was pie-eyed, including us, but this only served to create a terrific bouncing atmosphere!