Tag: Happy Mondays

Manchester Venue 181 – Canvas

Dominating a 5.4 acre portion of Oxford Road for many years was the New Broadcasting House (NBH). It was the BBC regional headquarters and contained various departments including BBC Manchester, BBC Northwest, the Philharmonic orchestra and was also furnished with a 180-seat restaurant. Many TV programmes were recorded there including Question of Sport, Dragon’s Den and Red Dwarf.

The old BBC building. Image Credit g7uk.com

It was originally built in 1975 before being subsequently demolished in 2012, when lock stock and barrel everything relocated to Media City at Salford Quays. During this period one of the Kro branches (Kro 2) was located next door and served as a sister venue to the one further down the strip opposite Manchester University. I visited there many times pre and post gigs and imbibed a few cold ones in their large outdoor area. Its closure coincided with the shutting down of NBH and it is now a Tesco Express.  

The land remained sparse and derelict for many years before a new development suddenly sprung up, seemingly overnight. This has become known as the Circle Square development and encompassed within this area are student accommodations, office spaces and communal seating within the open plan Symphony Park in the central portion.

Also catered for are the highly important food and drink options, the former including Hello Oriental where I have sampled their wares a few times. The latter incorporates a Federal coffee outlet and a branch of the North Taproom brewery.  

Circle Square. Image Credit circlesquaremanchester.com

On the musical front, there is a 1000 capacity venue which has recently opened called Ambers. They are mainly a DJ based venue and have regular late events across the two function rooms.

The other venue that appeared there was Manchester Canvas which had a day and night concept. It was created by the BeSixth team who owned two established music locales in East London, namely Oval Space and Pickle Factory which are sister venues, located opposite each other in Bethnal Green. They commendably became the first two multi-use venues in the UK to eliminate single use bottles and cups, and the concept of all three establishments was to create a blank canvas experimental ethos.  

There was a ground floor cocktail bar and South American influenced restaurant and function rooms for hire and weekly yoga classes. They also launched a fairly unique membership for under 30’s costing £15 with perks such as free gigs.

The venue appeared ‘as if by magic’ on the gig listings in June 22 in much the same way that the Soup Kitchen did many years earlier, causing me to initially scratch my head regarding its actual location, but the ‘venue bloodhound’ in me soon tracked it down!

My initial interaction was visiting the bar whilst on the way to another gig. I engaged in discussion with the friendly barman regarding the new complex and he generously offered a private tour, which we readily accepted. Downstairs from the bar were two separate but interlinked rooms, the second complete with comfy sofas and a balcony and it was an impressive space even when empty.

This latter space was classified as Manchester Canvas 2, which had a capacity of 200 and where I had booked some tickets for the South London punks Snuff in April 24. However, rather unexpectedly the entire venue closed, and that show was relocated to the Breadshed. Thus, this venue was then added to the ‘Jimmy missing venue’ list where either the venue had closed prior to the gig, or I could not actually attend the event despite having tickets. Previous entries on this list include the Hacienda, Fairfield Club and Jilly’s Rockworld.   

The larger room containing Manchester Canvas 1 had space for 550 punters and had hosted events featuring Liam Fray, Happy Mondays, Dutch Uncles and the Warehouse Project. I attended just the once in September 2023 on a filthy rainy night.

Coach Party on stage at Canvas. Image Credit Aesthete.

The room downstairs on entry had a bar to the left and the stage to the right and the already traditional sticky floor in between. The band that evening was Coach Party, a four-piece indie rock band from Isle of Wight and they had an innate quirkiness to them which I found very enjoyable.

One of the band members Steph Norris used to be a manager of Black Sheep, one of the few music venues on the island. They have since been followed by fellow ‘Caulkheads’ Wet Leg who are making their own large strides in the music industry.

The postscript this week is that this is my 100th Manchester article, a long way away from the very first one that I posted about Manchester Apollo nearly six years ago!

London Eleventh and Twelfth Trips

I have travelled a few times down to London with work and at one stage was visiting a company who were based nearby to Moorgate station and adjacent to London Finsbury Square. In 1784 the Square witnessed the first successful attempt of a hot air balloon flight and there is also a memorial installed there to commemorate the 1975 Moorgate tube crash where 43 people perished.  

Finsbury Square. Image Credit londonplanning.org.uk

In the summer of 2017 after leaving a meeting I was headed back to the tube for the journey home and heard music playing. In the early 20th century, the square was home to the London Royal Yeomanry and on that day the Band of Royal Yeomanry (Inns of Court & City Yeomanry) were playing a gig.

Their regimental history dates to 1548 and the band formed in 1961. They perform at many events, including D-Day memorials in Normandy and 6 Nations matches at Twickenham. They still maintain their original ceremonial uniform of French blue jacket and trousers, chain mailed shoulders, George boots and spurs and Chapka helmets.

Band of Royal Yeomanry Band. Image Credit flickr.com

I have always been a huge fan of Hold Steady and have now seen them nine times in total and they sit in bronze medal position of my bands most seen list. That figure would undoubtedly be higher if not for the fact that they have not played a Manchester date since 19/10/14. The reason for this dearth is that they have chosen since then to just play an annual three-day residency in London with no other regional dates.

As a result, we decided to make a pilgrimage down to the smoke in 2019 as I was missing my Hold Steady fix! Their base for their seasonal jaunt is in the thriving Camden suburb of the city. I met Uncle George and John Dewhurst off the train, and we dropped our bags at the handy location of Euston Premier Inn.  We then headed off on the Northern tram line to find our first hostelry, the Dingwalls pub on Camden Lock overlooking the canal.

My first visit to that establishment was in 1987 when I saw Brilliant Corners supported by a yet undiscovered Happy Mondays. The pub has certainly gone through a regentrification phase since then, but they still have live music there on a regular basis.  We also had a foray to the Old Eagle public house and to refuel we hit a local pie shop but there were unfortunately no butter pies on sale!

The Hold Steady show took place at London Camden Electric Ballroom. The Ballroom is a long-established venue and has been in place for 80 years. It began its days as an Irish club where the crooner Jim Reeves used to play and adopted its current name in 1978. There used to be a weekend indoor market staged there and was in place until 2015. It survived potential demolition in 2004 when there was a proposal to redevelop Camden Town underground station.

Camden Electric Ballroom. Image Credit Electric Ballroom

There are two dance floors and four bars contained within and it has a capacity of 1500 and there was good viewing of the stage from any vantage point.  They launched straight in with the vibrant ‘Stuck Between Stations’ and didn’t let up for the next 24 tracks, it was another thoroughly enjoyable performance.

It was also appropriate as a milestone event as it was Uncle George’s and I 500th gig together, a mere 32 years since our first, a staggeringly good Pogues show at Manchester International 2. Our 100th was also a belter with Black Rebel Motorcycle playing the Mill, a small club in Preston.  

After the set had finished, George and I progressed onto London Camden Monarch for number 501. The original Monarch prior to 2000 was in another area of Camden which then became the music venue Barfly. The new Monarch opened in 2008 in a new site on Chalk Farm Road and the DJ on the opening night was none other than Amy Winehouse!

The pub subsequently closed in 2020 but reopened the following year under the new moniker Monarchy retaining the live music in a downstairs events space called the Vault.  On the night we visited a local indie band called Stay Club took to the stage.