Tag: Green on Red

Manchester Venue 175 – Night People

Manchester Night People was located on Princess Street about equidistant between China Town and Canal Street, just around the corner from the Satan’s Hollow venue. I can find very scant history online for this establishment, but I think it opened in around 2017, and I believe it closed post-covid for a 6 month refurbishment, but it looks like it never subsequently reopened.

I visited there four times in total, and I know they were included on the Psych Fest roster, an event I have never yet attended but also for the now defunct Dot-to-Dot festival which I was present at for several years.

I recall they used to stage Northern Soul shindigs for the Twisted Wheel events and due to the age now of many of the participants they staged it on a Sunday afternoon. I am sure the intimate downstairs setting would have made it an ideal location for such a gathering, and I recently located a flyer of the legendary Geno Washington and the Ram Jam band playing there in 2018. I would estimate the capacity of the venue would have been somewhere around 200.

 

Night People flyer. Image Credit mdmarchive.co.uk

My first visit was in February 2018 in the company of one of my Northeast correspondents Jamie Young. We were already attending a gig at Night and Day that evening so grabbed the opportunity to undertake an earlier foray to the new venue on the block! We met initially in the iconic Marble Arch public house before sampling some tea at the Mackie Mayors food hall and then headed down to Night People.

The first act was the Mancunian band slowhandclap who appear to play a lot of gigs at the Northern Quarter venues, and they provided a slab on noisy post punk. Also on the bill were Chester two-piece DEH-YEY who like many duos produced a fair old racket of fuzzy dark sounds with the driving force being the guitarist/vocalist Cash Burns. They have released a slew of singles thus far and have garnered a support slot for the much touted Belfast band Enola Gay.  

Three months later as part of Dot to Dot we saw an American singer songwriter called Kyle Craft. He was born in an isolated Mississippi river town in Louisiana and his first introduction to guitar music was a random purchase of a David Bowie compilation at his local Kmart store.

I think we can all attest to our own individual epiphany to hearing music that will go on to change and influence our life. My personal individual ‘journey’ (a much over used reality show phrase nowadays) was via my dad’s Neil Young and my brother’s Husker Du records and also hearing Stiff Little Fingers for the first time as a young pup at an early school disco.

An early 2018 sighting of Fontaines DC at the venue. Image Credit whenthehornblows.com

Kyle subsequently moved to Texas, and he formed a band called Gashcat who then broke up a couple of years later with the slightly bizarre reasoning of ongoing adverse comparison to Neutral Milk Hotel! In 2016, he recorded his debut album ‘Dolls of Highland’ on Sub Pop Records and then gathered together a live band callee Showboat Honey and secured a support slot with Drive-By Truckers.  

On the afternoon I saw him they produced an excellent set of deep fried Southern rock , where I could hear shades of Green on Red, Lone Justice and The Band, his strong vocal complemented by a fine backing band was a good combination. My next trip was again linked to Dot-to-Dot and the band on show this time was a local combo called ELM.

My final visit was on 26th February 2020 when the spectre of Covid was just beginning to gather pace. I attended with my pal Paul Wilson who had other Preston folk in tow including Aidy and Janet from Lostock Hall. I recall we met in one of the Wetherspoons before having a bevy at the timeless Lass O Gowry. Throughout the gig between bands there was a DJ set from writer and broadcaster Dave Haslam who is primarily famous for being DJ for over 450 sets at the Hacienda nightclub incorporating a Thursday night residency at the Temperance club night from 1986 to 1990.  

The first act on stage was Mick O Toole and the main support were the Gallowgate Murders, a five-piece Celtic punk band from Edinburgh who had only formed the year before. The headliners were the Rumjacks, a rumbustious combo from Sydney in Australia who were also in the Celtic punk mould. They were formed in 2008 and they were renowned for their energetic live shows and lived up to their billing. Their most famous song ‘An Irish Pub Song’ went viral and has garnered over 85m hits on YouTube.

The Rumjacks. Image Credit iheart.com

I recall a generous chap we had never met buying us a round at the bar before Paul and I entered the thrashing, flailing white hot intensity of the mosh pit. It had been a fair while since I had been in such a vibrant pit and my first since turning 50, and I had to recalibrate instantly to peel off my outer layer of clothing and take my watch off for safe keeping and then dived back in.

It was a very small area not helped by some inopportune bruise inducing shelves around the perimeter, but we were in there for the last hour of the gig, and it was a bloody good sweaty fun, more so in hindsight when the first lockdown kicked in a couple of weeks later!

Preston Venues 37 to 38

At the tail end of 2005 I read an article in the Friday entertainment section of the Lancashire Evening Post which provided detail of an interesting sounding gig in January 2006. The gig was to take place at Preston St Bede’s Club. I had never heard of the venue and located it on the map to the bottom of Brownley Road off Chorley Old Road in Clayton Le Woods, above five miles outside the centre of town.

I still had limited familiarity of the area so decided to undertake a field trip in the car beforehand to case out the joint and work out feasible travel plans and surrounding hostelries to visit beforehand. I found the building nearby to the Church and attached Presbytery of St Bede’s, the latter sites having been Grade II listed since 1984.

The 125 bus was decided upon as the most practicable commute option. So, on a particularly baltic Friday night I met Uncle George at the main bus station, and we boarded the bus that traversed its meandering way through Bamber Bridge, past Junction 29 off the M6 to our drop off point very near our first watering hole the Halfway House.  The bus continues past Chorley Hospital and eventually arrives at its end destination of Bolton a week on Tuesday!    

The 125 bus with Preston Bus Station in the background. Image Credit flickr.com

We visited a couple of other pubs, but I forget their names, I recall in one the jukebox had Husker Du ‘Don’t Want to Know if You Are Lonely’ on so that was obviously selected. In the other I encountered local comedian and Phoenix Nights star Dave Spikey in the lavatories!  

From there, there was an alley that cut you through to the venue. The concert area was a large, packed room in a social club setting where the audience was very respectful, so you had to tiptoe to the back of the room. George said it resembled folk clubs of old.

The support act was Corb Lund who is a country and western singer from Alberta in Canada. He has been on the scene for many years and a long-standing member of the Corb Lund band. On the night he played a solo set and was very engaging and enjoyable. 

The main act who had originally sparked my attention was Chuck Prophet. The Californian had first crossed my radar as a member of the 80’s desert rock band Green on Red. I used to play their records a lot, especially their debut album ‘Gas Food Lodging’.

I recall an interview at the time with Neil Young on the Old Grey Whistle Test where Andy Kershaw played some of the record to Neil, who listened for a few seconds and then drawled ‘sounds like Crazy Horse’! I got a chance to see them once supported by Steve Earle at Manchester International 1 in March 1987, but they produced a crushingly disappointing set.

Obviously, lessons were not learnt as unfortunately, this was little different as the gig was limp and his banter was surreal and unamusing. We left prior to the end of the set and arrived at the bus stop and prepared to wait more in hope than in anticipation, though the gods were smiling on us as a bus arrived within a couple of minutes to take us back into the city. The evening ended with a late drink in the Roper Hall club.

Nearer town on the same bus route on Preston Road, you would find the Preston Pines Hotel.  The venue was a famous local establishment and had been open for fifty years for cabarets, functions, school proms and weddings and I had personally attended a couple of weddings there myself and stayed overnight in the thirty-five-room hotel. It was owned throughout this period by the Duffin family before eventually closing in February 2017 and making space for 40 apartments and a Lidl supermarket.

Preston Pines Hotel. Image Credit pinkweddingdays.co.uk

They had a large function room where in 2006 Gill and I were roped in to attending a friend’s birthday party. The ‘entertainment’ on the evening was a local Abba tribute band called Mamma Mia.