Tag: Ghostpoet

Liverpool Venues 31 to 32

On the days when I am navigating my way back to Lime Street train station after a visit to the Liverpool office, I quite often skelp down Mathew Street, where you enter into an alternate ‘Beatleland’ area with music assailing your ears at every point.

Towards the bottom of the road is Liverpool Grapes Inn which resides in a building that dates back to 1804. There is little documentation on the earlier hostelries that were in that very spot. Considering how busy the thoroughfare is today; it is remarkable to recall that in the early 1960’s it was only pub on the whole street, and in those days, it was surrounded by warehouses.

Grapes Inn. Image Credit creativetourist.com

It was a customary watering hole for the young Beatles after their regular Cavern gigs as the club at that point was unlicensed. There is a famous photo of them in the Inn circa 1962 with what looks like pints of Mild! It was for a short period the Famous Grapes and like many others, including the Dog and Partridge at Didsbury, was renamed the Beautiful South when the said band went on a month long promotional tour.

It has been through many refurbishments, but they have always endeavoured to retain the original features, some which continue to be discovered to this day. On the day I passed there was a tour party being entertained by Eddie and Edie on a makeshift stage in front of the pub, they were somewhat predictably singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

I have just learnt that the song was given its debut in the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel and is in fact sung twice at separate occasions in the production. This being prior to the universally famous cover by Gerry and the Pacemakers in 1963, which then was further adopted by the Liverpool fans on the Spion Kop at Anfield.   

Beatles having a bevy. Image Credit Liverpool Echo.

Returning now to my Sound City Festival 2025 review and having quickly adopted a lessons learned from having accessibility issues to the Jacaranda we headed next door in good time for the next band in the Liverpool Shipping Forecast. It was previously a Flares branch pub and looks like it has been open since 2010 in its current format.

There is a welcoming wood panelled main ground floor bar and then there is the upstairs space (known as the Top Deck) which stages mainly DJ events with the likes of Calvin Harris and Mark Ronson having played there in the past. They have held periodic vinyl fairs, and their kitchen is linked to Ruby Jean’s diner, which churns out ‘Americana’ tucker (basically anything unhealthy).

The lavatories used to have a special touch in that the actual shipping forecast, first broadcast on Radio 4 in 1925, was piped into them, alongside relaxing sounds of waves and seagulls. However, the kit was subsequently stolen, and I shall respectfully refrain at this stage from any Scouse ‘hub cap’ references!    

Shipping Forecast. Image Credit creativetourist.com

Our destination was reached by heading down the steps into The Hold venue which has a capacity of 200 and it fits perfectly into the archetypal category of a sweaty cellar bar, in a good way!  The brickwork is exposed with a low wooden beam roof, which served to enhance the acoustics, however you do face the inevitable ‘pillar viewability’ challenge.

Despite the venue size they do admirably attract a decent level of band with Ghostpoet, Four Tet, Deary, Futureheads and Pulled Apart by Horses having graced the stage there. The main bar was not open that day, but thankfully they had some cold cans available at a pop-up table bar.

On stage was a young Liverpool singer/songwriter called Dylan Robert (no prizes for where his first name derived from!). He commenced his musical journey at the age of ten when he played guitar with his best mate Ben Harper. These two chaps have stuck together as Ben is now his producer. He also had a shared passion with football but a broken collarbone at the age of eleven resulted in him turning 100% down the musical path.

He had progressed up onto the main bill from a spot on the Sound City showcase roster in 2024. He has already released a slew of singles and I enjoyed his set, where he reminded me a little bit of another Liverpool act Shack. 

Beacons Festival 2012

Skipton is a traditional historic market town in North Yorkshire, located about an hour’s drive from Preston. It contains a rather fine 14th century castle which was Yorkshire’s last Royalist stronghold when it was besieged during the English Civil War. When we heard about a new festival taking place near the town at Heslaker Farm on the Funkirk Estate, we thought it was well worth a foray over to check it out.

The Moor Music festival was held in Ilkley, West Yorkshire from its inception in 2006 and was a non-corporate sponsored event and had a considerable green eco slant and featured local bands. The shindig moved to Heslaker Farm for the 2009 and 2010 editions before rebadging itself as the Beacons Festival for the 2011 event. It remained there until 2015 before morphing again into a short-lived tri-city event in Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester called Beacons Metro.  

However, the 2011 version which we purchased tickets for was hit by unseasonably inclement weather resulting in its cancellation and our tickets were carried over to the August 2012 festival. We managed to purloin some digs at the hugely inviting Woolly Sheep pub located on Sheep Street which is known locally as the ‘Woolly’. It is owned by the Timothy Taylor brewery, and they stock some very fine beers.  

Woolly Sheep pub. Image Credit c.yell.com

We had a day ticket for the Saturday so on arrival in Skipton we had a wander round the town followed by a hearty lunch before heading over in a taxi to the site. It was a very rural setting and quite a small site literally attached to the working farm, but a 1000 times smaller than what I would envisage the Glastonbury site to be!

You could wholly understand the previous year’s cancellation as despite a batch of decent weather the ground remained a quagmire and there were not many dry seating points on the grass. On the upside though they rather excitingly had the first real ale tent I had seen at a festival before it subsequently became a staple tent item at future events.    

There were two main stages, namely Stool Pigeon and the Noisey/Vice stage and we gravitated between both areas.  On the forenamed stage we initially saw a singer songwriter called Tom Finian.  The next act was 2:54, a decent shoegazey act from London comprised of the Thurlow sisters who had just recently released their self-titled debut album.

An hour later we saw the Japandroids set. They are a punky act from Vancouver and were touring their touted second album Celebration Rock and they created a rather fine racket; and they remain in circulation to this day. They were followed by Obaro Ejimiwe, who is better known as Ghostpoet from London. He has been twice Mercury Prize nominated and I enjoyed his unique sound.   

We saw more acts over on the Noisey/Vice stage, the initial one being Best Friends, a group of pals who met at university and provided some noisy guitar fuzz. Next up was Plank from Manchester who had a 60’s space rock feel about them.  Following them was Paws from Scotland who have now produced four albums of off-kilter guitar tunes in the similar vein to Swearin and No Age. Their first ever show at the Stereo Café Bar in Glasgow in 2010 was supporting the Dum Dum Girls.

Beacons Festival site. Image Credit blogspot.com

We saw Archy Ivan Marshall, a singer/rapper who has many pseudonyms, but that day played under the moniker King Krule.  My favourite band of the day was Swim Deep, a woozy dream pop band from Birmingham, who were later cited as part of the Digbeth-based B-town movement. They had a really nice vibe to them, though the sound could have been a tad louder for my tastes.

The final act we saw was Eagulls from Leeds who were in the post punk mould and the lead singer George Mitchell had an element of Ian Curtis in his stage persona.  They subsequently split in 2019 with George then becoming a painter and starting a new musical project.

We managed to book a taxi back to the digs and reached the pickup point by stumbling through dark fields which reminded me of the early Wickerman festivals.