Tag: John Peel

Liverpool Venues 25 to 27

Firstly, this week I will look at the latest hostelry visited within the cornucopia of establishments within the Matthew Street enclave. The lineage of the very traditional Liverpool White Star can be traced back to the 1880’s and this is proved by a reference to the White Star Carvery and Bar within an 1887 Empire Theatre programme. It is named after the Titanic shipping owners White Star Line.  

Apparently, the pub in those days remains relevantly unchanged from today, apart from the fact there used to be a back yard and there was living accommodation upstairs. Astoundingly there were no ladies lavatories in the building until 1987, the wafer thin justification for this was due to the premise of endeavouring to discourage visits from the large number of prostitutes working in the city post Second World War up to the late 1980’s.    

After the war, a punter called Mr Quinn purchased five pubs in the city, including this one and on all that quintet he inscribed the word Quinns on the front windows. To a degree that name stuck to the level that the good beer guide named the pub as the White Star (Quinns 2).

The Beatles ‘back wall’. Image Credit pinterest.com

In the 1960’s, two promoters named Bob Wooler (the original DJ in the Cavern Club) and Alan Williams arranged for bands to play in the back room, and that is where the Beatles played their first ever gig. That room is also where the bands were paid after they had performed at the Cavern and naturally contains Beatles memorabilia, known locally as the ‘Beatles back wall’.

Apparently, Brian Epstein also discussed with Mr Wooler there in 1963 about their upcoming appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show which provided their first exposure to American audiences. On my one foray there I saw a local singer called Siobhan performing.   

Across town on Renshaw Street within the Grand Central building, you will find the Liverpool Liffey Bar, and as I am sure you can glean from its moniker it is yet another Irish themed hostelry, this time named after the river which permeates straight through Dublin city centre.  The plethora of such bars is no surprise when you factor in that 75% of Liverpudlians have Irish descent, the highest heritage of any British city apart from Glasgow.

The pub was subject to a long running rental dispute with a former tenant which resulted in the pub suddenly closing in March 2022, the disagreement also impacting on the Smokie Mo’s and Nelly Foley bars, which were reviewed in a previous blog. The Liffey was closed for around a year and grabbed that fallow period as an opportunity to undergo a £200,000 refurbishment.

The Liffey Bar. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

From a business profit viewpoint, they ensured that they managed to reopen in time for St Patricks Day on Friday 17 March 2023 and must have expected a busy one by stocking fifteen barrels of Guinness which equates to 1500 pints, you would be a tad merry after that! They have live music every night and on my visit, there was a singer called Paddy performing.

The Liverpool Sound City festival is an annual multi venue music shindig similar in structure to the Dot to Dot events. It was founded in 2008 and acts such as White Lies, White Denim, Gil Scott Heron, Swans and Hold Steady played in some of those earlier years.

It also runs in conjunction with the John Peel World Cup which is a British Heart Foundation led event where teams derived from band members and music industry bods play in a five a side tournament. It is a gala that I have always yearned to attend and in May 2025 that came to fruition.

Now, my football team Preston North End had proceeded to make an absolute dogs’ dinner of the end of the season, and this allied with some unfeasibly spectacular results from their rivals meant that the spectre of relegation had gone to the last game. Thus, I was nervously checking the scores on the train commute over but results thankfully went in our favour and we achieved safety. I could now relax, and as a result the first cold one did not touch the sides!

The hub points for picking up our wristbands and then our first venue was Liverpool Spanish Caravan. The bar and tapas restaurant is located on Slater Street, and the side wall of the building contains a large mural of ex Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp. There was a spacious indoor bar and beer garden and a decent choice of beverages.   

Spanish Caravan complete with mural. Image Credit liverpoolecho.co.uk

At our visiting time the singer on the small stage at the end of the bar was a chap called Oscar Blue who maintained our Irish theme by hailing from County Clare. He had a busker vibe about him and has apparently been a hit on social media where his initial debut singles have been streamed over 10 million times globally.  

Gigs from Abroad Part 23 – Belfast Part 1

Perhaps in comparison to many other European cities, Belfast has encountered a particularly varied and challenging history. It all began as an English settlement in 1613 and evolved into becoming the capital and the primary port of Northern Ireland. Along the way they had the small matter of a rebellion in 1798, joined the GB union two years later and gained their city status in 1888.

They were the largest linen manufacturers in the 1900’s and also utilised the waterfront with their huge shipyards which covered around a quarter of all UK trade. One of the chief proponents were Harland (not the Manchester City player!) and Wolff, who were responsible for that big ship called the HMS Titanic which they built in 1911 for a cost of £1.5 million, which now equates to a contemporary cost of £180 million. The company still have their famous landmark (known as Samson and Goliath) within the now titled Titanic Quarter and their vastly overpriced museum. The structure has been utilised as a backdrop to many TV shows.

Harland and Wolff cranes. Image Credit Northern Ireland

The ‘Troubles’ commenced in the 1920’s with an astounding occurrence of over 2000 bombings in a single kilometre area of the city centre between 1969 and 1977. Anyone who lived through this period even from a geographical position from across the water will recall that you eventually became somewhat anaesthetised to the regular bloody headlines on the daily news feeds. I have worked in government offices all my life and I recall the monotonous regularity of bomb scares, and in those days you didn’t argue and ensured you exiting the building post haste!

There is a recent BBC documentary titled ‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’ which has interviews with people from both sides of the divide, many who had never publicly spoken about it before. It is an astounding bruising watch and investigative TV at the top of its game.

The historic Good Friday agreement was struck and signed on 10th April 1998, memorably prefaced in Billy Bragg’s idiosyncratic style on his 1996 track ‘Northern Industrial Town’ off the ‘William Bloke’ album. This has resulted in the regeneration of the central area of the city into a vibrant tourist location, but the old hostilities remain in the suburbs and will probably take a generational change before they hopefully finally dissipate.

Billy Bragg. Image Credit theconcertdatabase.com

Perhaps understandably set against that tumultuous backdrop the city was immersed in the punk scene with my faves Stiff Little Fingers early output including ‘Suspect Device’, ‘Tin Soldiers’ and ‘Wasted Life’ which literally oozed with barely concealed anger and disillusionment. Fellow city residents were the Undertones who were managed briefly by Terri Hooley of the Good Vibrations record shop and label, who famously dropped a tape into John Peel of ‘Teenage Kicks’, and the rest as they say is history!

They are the smallest city to host the MTV Europe Music awards in 2011 and in 2021 became the third British location after Glasgow and Liverpool to be awarded the UNESCO City of Music. They have two universities and two airports, the George Best Belfast City in the centre and the International airport located fifteen miles to the west. Many famous people have Belfast as their place of birth and these include David Trimble, Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, George Best, CS Lewis the author of Chronicles of Narnia and the musician Van Morrison.

I have visited twice, and the first trip was with Gill and a couple of friends in 2009. Fortunately, Blackpool Airport was still operational then, so we headed out from there with only a handful of customers on the flight whilst encountering the novel situation where they deliberately spaced us around the plane to ensure the required balance! We then traversed in on the 45 minute shuttle bus ride and had a hotel near to, but not in the Europa which is the most frequently bombed hotel in Europe.

Hotel Europa. Image Credit drifttravel.com

With a remarkable flurry of late results my football team Preston North End had managed to secure an unexpected end of season play off tie against Sheffield United. However, the kicker was that the first home leg was on the day of our outward travel. So, it transpired that I was watching the first half in a very busy bar on a small TV with no sound from a fair distance away and randomly swore at one point with other punters looking at me askance!

At least we had a better viewpoint and a seat in another bar to observe the second half. Still no volume, but we had cold Harp (tastes sharp until the bottom of the glass!) on tap. We drew 1-1 that night but unsurprisingly lost the second leg three days later. We had a fine 48 hours there and took a liking for the vibrant student areas and had a fantastic meal at the Red Panda Chinese restaurant located very close to the famous Crown Liquor Saloon.

A postscript this week is that I have hit a literary milestone of 200k words in total thus far in my 293 articles. For the record, the 100k word was Manchester and slightly anti climatically the 200k word is ‘place’, though pertinent as either the venue or in this context as city of birth.