The Boardwalk was a small venue (capacity initially about 250 before increasing to 400) in an industrial area on Little Peter St behind Deansgate station. It was a stone’s throw from the Hacienda and was a fine venue between 1984 and 1999. It doubled up as a recording space and Oasis played their first ever gig on 18/08/91.
You went up some narrow steps to the main room with a bar on the left and I recall it was a very warm venue.
Between 18/06/1987 and 09/10/1992 I attended five gigs there. The first being a very early fine gig by the Proclaimers supported by the Rhythm Sisters. They came on at 11pm with late stage times being a regular occurrence and they played the whole first album and then ran out of songs so played the first track again.
The second gig on the 18/07/87 was a proper event. On John Peel’s show on the Wednesday it was referenced that the legendary Big Black were playing their final ever British dates, the penultimate one being on the Saturday. I put a call into Piccadilly Records box office on the Thursday morning and was informed there were a handful of tickets and asked them to save me two which we agreed would be picked up in person on Saturday afternoon, but upon arrival we were informed that there had been an oversight and the gig was now sold out. Hope extinguished one might think, however there was a chink of light as we were informed that the venue always held 50 tickets back. So off we trotted and we were the first in the queue at 8pm to obtain said tickets. I recall a minibus arriving from Crewe with the aspiration of garnering some tickets.
Pubs were then visited in celebration and we returned to catch the support band Death by Milk Float. Big Black themselves were an intense slightly unsettling experience with their industrial noise, at one point in their enthusiasm the crowd pulled lead singer Steve Albini into the moshpit, causing a 10 minute delay. They were thoroughly worth the ticket palaver to witness them before the band disbanded, ‘Kerosene’ was outstanding. We returned home to watch a recording of Steven Roche wrap up the Tour De France which he won the next day.
The third gig the following year was a band called Pussy Galore who were not that memorable.
The fourth in Sept 89 was Firehose supported again bizarrely by Death by Milk Float. My now wife Gill was studying in Crewe at the time and one of the ticket outlets was located in a record shop there. So on a weekend visit I scamped in to purchase some tickets completing the full circle of the Crewe/Boardwalk link. Firehose appeared out of the original band Minutemen after the untimely death of their lead singer D Boon in a car crash. A chap called EdFromOhio made an approach and encouraged the band to reform with him stepping in as lead singer.
When they came on stage we realised that we had unwittingly being sat near them in the Briton’s Protection pre-gig (very limited band photos available pre-internet to know what people looked like). They were a terrific live act and for some inexplicable reason I wandered into their dressing room and said hello to Ed who walked off without a word which I took as my cue to curb my interloping activities and go home!
My final appearance at the Boardwalk was to watch Sugar supported by Venus Beads on 09/10/92. Sugar was ex Husker Du Bob Mould’s new band which finally brought him some much deserved critical acclaim. They produced a thunderous set which was a suitable epitaph to a sorely missed venue.