Tag: Ian Curtis

Manchester Venue 82 – The Castle Hotel

The Manchester Castle Hotel located at the top end of Oldham Street was built in the late 18th century and began trading as a public house in 1816 and it is estimated the grand olde world interior complete with Victorian tiles and mosaic floor dates as far back as 1897. It has had many previous monikers including The Crown and Sceptre, The Crown and Anchor and The Clock Face.

Manchester Castle Hotel. Image Credit Flickr.

There has always been a musical ethos within the pub incorporating the involvement of John McBeith who went on to launch the Roadhouse venue, fondly remembered by me as being the first venue I ever saw Mogwai. The Castle was also the site of a famous John Peel interview with Ian Curtis in 1979 and Fall’s Mark E Smith also chose the pub as a meeting point for some of his abrasive monologue interviews.

The pub fell on tough times and closed in 2008, before subsequently being refurbished and reopened with a linkage to its sister pub Gulliver’s across the road and has gone from strength to strength since that date.

Despite being a fairly small hostelry, they have incorporated an eighty-capacity venue off the corridor to the rear of the pub. Facing the small door entrance is the mixing desk and the stage is to the right, and I must say it is one of the most cramped areas I have encountered when a gig is sold out!

I have attended eleven gigs in total with only the first one being where I have paid a singular ticket to see the band, the others being part of other multi wrist band events such as Carefully Planned and Dot to Dot Festivals.

Thus, on 23/10/11 I saw Veronica Falls who were a four-piece formed in London in 2009. They formed from previous bands The Royal We and Sexy Kids and are still active though sadly their drummer Patrick Doyle died in 2018. They first came to my attention via their excellent debut single ‘Love in a Graveyard’ which was a combination of C86 meets the Raveonettes, and they were good fun in a live setting.   

Veronica Falls. Image Credit Clash

Three years later, Space Blood were in town, a two piece slightly jokey instrumental combo from Chicago and I would place them in the math rock vein, and they have a couple of albums on the books. The following year I witnessed bands called Face, Georgio Tuna  and The Stay Aways, an all-female four piece based in Brighton and London. 

In 2017 I saw a young rapper called Tobi Sunmola from Nigeria, who moved from the country of his birth at the age of 17 and is now living in Manchester. The following year I saw Grand Prix and Thyla, the latter being a four-piece dream pop band who all met while attending university in Brighton. When one of their original guitarists departed in 2021, they decided to call it quits and their final ever gig was at the Hope and Ruin in Brighton on 25/05/22.

In May 2019 I saw another four-piece band called SUN SILVA who initially got together whilst at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Six months later I witnessed Winnie and the Rockettes, a funk and soul band who have supported Chaka Khan and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and have also headlined the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. My latest and only post-Covid visit thus far was in April 22 to see a Manchester band called Another Country $$$$.

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.