Tag: Killing Joke

Manchester Venues 122 Deaf Institute – Part 2

Nearby to the Deaf Institute Music Hall on the same side of Grosvenor St is the Footage pub (previously Flax and Firkin) which is a large vibrant pub with craft ales and many TV screens showing the latest sports. Just around the corner is the basement Umami Noodle Bar which has been a regular pre-gig eating stop for over 20 years.

The Footage with the Trof Deaf Institute sign in the background. Image Credit Zomato.com.

My first gig there was on 02/07/09 when I saw Nine Black Alps, a four-piece band from Manchester whose original moniker was The Chelsea Girls. The Alps name was selected from a line in a Sylvia Plath poem. I had picked up on them initially via their belting debut album ‘Everything Is’ which I still play periodically to this day.   

A couple of years later I had to cancel at short notice a trip to my brothers in Nottingham thus missing a Kyuss (forerunners to Queens of the Stone Age) gig. I was kicking my heels and a couple of lads were off to see Killing Joke, so I tagged along, but discovered on arrival at the Academy that their gig was sold out. A variant C approach then evolved by quickly checking that night’s gig listings and identifying an event at the Deaf that I could attend and then meet up after with the boys for the train home.

I struck lucky as the act on that particular night was the Dum Dum Girls whose name derived from a Vaselines album and an Iggy Pop song, thereby displaying their musical influences. Originally it was a solo project for Californian Kristin Gundred who then renamed herself as Dee Dee. After she signed up with legendary label Sub Pop three more girls were added into the band including the drummer Frankie Rose who has also been in Crystal Stilts, Vivian Girls and Frankie Rose and the Outs.

Dum Dum Girls. Image Credit Fanpop.

They disbanded in 2016 where Dee Dee then became Kristin Kontrol and her sound morphed more into the synth pop arena. She also around that time provided an excellent atmospheric cover of one of my favourite Jesus and Mary Chain tracks ‘Teenage Lust’. They were enjoyable live with many of the tracks coming off their debut album ‘I Will Be’ and reflecting the geographical location they were playing in, they decided to finish their set with a cover of ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’.  

Next up was one of those ‘right place right time’ moments that only occur very occasionally in one’s gig going journey. During my attendance at the Dot-to-Dot festival in May 2013 I had sighted on the roster an upcoming band I had just become aware of, and at that stage had only released two singles. The band in question who were performing in a teatime slot were Wolf Alice.

The venue filled up just before they landed on stage, and they were stunningly good, and rarely have I seen a young band who had such poise and justifiable confidence in their sound and ability.  At one quiet point between tracks a punter at the bar said in an awed voice ‘outstanding, absolutely outstanding’ which received a shy thankyou from lead singer Ellie Rowsell.  They finished with their superb first single ‘Fluffy’ and it was plainly obvious they were destined for great things including subsequently headlining Glastonbury stages and Mercury Music prizes.

As the set arrived at a tumultuous finale and the band left the high stage Ellie was struggling to step down so I proffered a hand to assist her which she gratefully accepted. Musical royalty was touched in that very instance and I am sure Ellie has not washed her hand since!   

Wolf Alice. Image Credit nylon.com

In October 2013 I went to see White Hills for the first time who are a stoner psychedelic rock band from New York and provided a pleasing slab of white noise. They have had a prolific output since their formation in 2003 and have recorded over fifty releases incorporating an impressive twelve studio albums. In their early days they were championed and supported by Julian Cope and were also cherry picked to appear as a live band in a scene of a 2012 Jim Jarmusch movie ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’.  

There then followed a gap of 4.5 years until my next visit in March 2018. Gill and I headed down with our pal Laura Buckley to see an Icelandic dream synth pop band called Vok, the name translating as a ‘hole in the ice’. They had formed in 2013 and gained some instant recognition by winning Musiktilraunir, an annual Iceland music contest and the year before we saw them, they released their debut album ‘Figure’. 

Gigs from Abroad Part 9 – Brussels

On the annual lad’s trip in 2014 we decided to visit a new European country; hence I made my debut foray to Belgium and the city of Brussels. For time saving purposes based on an overall 48-hour jaunt, we took the flight and discounted the Eurostar option.  

Brussels is the capital of Belgium and has grown exponentially since the Second World War and has become a major centre for international politics and the unofficial capital of the European Union. The Grand-Place in the centre is a UNESCO World heritage site, and it is a very impressive sight when lit up in the evening and we frequented a couple of bars surrounding there. Jez Catlow and I, who is a fellow connoisseur of foreign dramas kept referencing Salamander, a fine drama about a bank heist based in Brussels that we had both recently watched.

On our meanderings, we passed the same shop window a few times, where they had on display gold waving maneki-neko fortune cats, which we obviously had to wave at on each passing, the last time when returning rather late at night! Around teatime we found a restaurant where I had possibly the biggest bowl of spaghetti sauce ever, it was rather delicious.

Maneki-neko cat. Image Credit pinterest.com.mx

In the afternoon, one of the chaps had noticed a sign outside a club advertising English psych rock that very evening, so we stored that away for future reference. With me as a cheer leader we returned later to investigate and identified that the club in question was Brussels Madame Moustache.

Madame Moustache is a neo-cabaret venue located on Place Sainte Catherine in the Ste-Catherine area. There is a sun terrace bar outside where you can sit on beach chairs by the canal during the day, and have a cold beer served through a hatch.

At night, it transforms into a club open until 4am, with the musical slant being in the hip hop and funk and soul domain and they hold occasional gigs. I read on recent reviews that they have bizarrely begun to charge punters for the sheer temerity of wanting to visit the lavatory. I also gleaned that the venue is currently shut due to a recent fire.

Brussels Madame Moustache. Image Credit flickr.com

I am assuming the club is named after Eleanor Dumont (born Simone Jules) in 1829, who was a legendary gambler on the American Frontier, especially during the Gold Rush. Perhaps it is a surprise that Neil Young didn’t pen a tune about her! She was known as Madame Moustache due to the appearance of a line of dark hair on her upper lip and she owned a gambling parlour in Nevada, California and became known as ‘the woman dealer’.

We decided to take a punt to enter the establishment and I am so glad we did as the band playing was the Cult of Dom Keller from Nottingham. We caught about three quarters of their barnstorming set and had a brief chat with them afterwards. They were lovely lads and informed us that this was their final date on their first ever European tour.   

Cult of Dom Keller. Image Credit ents24.com

On Day 2, we escorted one of the crew Tony Dewhurst on the train down to the port destination of Ostend, as he was off to see Killing Joke in a leisure centre near the town. Ostend had a beach and a seaside faded grandeur vibe about it and there are still ferries available to the town from Ramsgate, Hull and Dover.

We located a bookies, which is unusual for a European city which enabled us to have a bet on the Scottish Grand National taking place that day. We watched it in a nearby bar and got chatting to a group of football fans whose team was playing Ostend. They were fascinated by our reaction to our local rivals Blackpool being hammered and we ended up teaching them some radio ‘unfriendly’ anti-Blackpool chants.

At a later point, returning from the afore mentioned bookmakers I heard these lads unprompted singing one of the newly learnt ditties whilst heading down the street, thus let it never be said that I am not a fierce advocate of fostering good relations and shared interests with our European counterparts! 

Tony headed off to his gig and we jumped back onto the train and grabbed the opportunity of one more stop on the line to take in the sights of the pretty town of Bruges. It was a proper chocolate-box place, and I would like to return at some stage for a more extended visit.  

We did however struggle a tad navigating a route from the train station as there didn’t appear to be a natural path through to the town unless we completely missed it! On our return journey we followed a chap with an old-fashioned beat box who led us like a pied piper back to the station and then onto the ongoing train returning to Brussels.