Tag: Manchester Academy 2

2022 Gigs – Part 2

I am continuing the tale this week of the 2022 gigs I attended at venues already covered in previous blogs.

Every year, there will always be gigs that I go to in one of the Academy sites and I am rapidly closing in on 100 gigs in total across their four venues, all since I attended my first ever, namely Wedding Present at Academy 2 in February 1988. Thirty-four years later In February 2022 I attended Manchester Academy 2 again to see Dry Cleaning with Graham Jones in tow.

They are a post-punk band with a distinctive lead vocal from Florence Shaw interspersed with spoken word lyrics and they later in the year released their second album ‘Stumpwork’ containing the catchy single ‘Gary Ashby’. That night I also finally managed to make a visit to the Old Abbey Taphouse, a community pub located in Hulme near to Manchester science park where they undertake sporadic gigs and I hope to return at some point to attend an event.    

Old Abbey Taphouse. Image Credit Manchester Evening News.

A month later I returned to Academy 2 to see Warmduscher, a post punk band from London for whom Mark Reilly from 6 Music is a keen advocate. I personally didn’t warm to their sound, but their twitchy energetic lead singer Craig Louis Higgins Jr (Clams Baker) was an interesting presence. It was also a landmark gig numerically as it transpired to be my 500th gig in Manchester.  My final visit there was in June to see Dave Wakeling’s Beat, one of the two splinter groups out there touring who emanated from the original Beat.

In September I headed to Manchester Academy 1 to finally witness Godspeed You! Black Emperor who formed in Montreal, Canada in 1994. They are a Canadian instrumental post-rock combo who provide sweeping soaring soundscapes and apart from the slightly dizzying visual screens behind them they were a terrific live proposition.

I was in tow with Uncle George and John Dewhurst, the latter previously saw Godspeed in Planet K in 2000 on the same night that George and I saw Trail of the Dead at the Roadhouse a couple of streets away, that was one noisy night in Manchester!

Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Image Credit Chicago Tribune.

On my birthday weekend in June, Gill and I went for a meal at a local restaurant on the Thursday before the following night heading to Manchester Ritz to watch Lovely Eggs. It was their biggest ever gig and they were as vibrant as ever. Holly was in a particularly combative mood, exemplified by her justifiably and scathingly condemning the security staff when they aborted her plans to undertake the final of a stage diving contest. Her wrath was only increased by the fact that prior approval had been sought and obtained but then ignored. They were supported by Thick Richard on the night.  

On the Saturday we stayed over in Preston after attending a family barbecue before travelling back over to Manchester on the Sunday prior to another gig at Manchester Apollo. We were off to see Yeah Yeah Yeahs but at one point in the early evening Gill bandied about the phrase that our attendance looked more like a ‘No No No’, however our gig stamina kicked in and we shuffled off to the venue.  

I had never previously seen them and was anticipating a good one and my preconceptions were met fully as they were superb and lead singer Karen O had a hypnotic presence on stage, English Teacher were the support band.  

I attended there again in November to see Sigur Ros and visited the Aspley Cottage pub next door for the first time in 14 years and the hostelry was refreshingly unchanged. I met up with Barry Jury and a couple of his pals and Sigur provided an epic 2-hour set.   

The final venue to reference is the ever-reliable Manchester Night and Day. In June we attended to see The Courettes with our friends Jo and Paul. The band are jointly from Denmark and Brazil and perhaps best fit under the Spector Wall of Sound genre. They were good fun and had a very keen tendency to keep shouting out the phrase ‘Come on Manchester’! They also bravely asked the audience to crouch on the knees for a sustained period during one song, which was a challenge for the majority of the audience, including me!   

My final appearance to Night and Day was somewhat accidental in that I was scheduled to attend the White Hotel in Salford for the first time, but the gig was cancelled. Not wanting to totally kibosh the evening I found an alternate gig involving an artist I would not normally pay to watch but I was so glad we did.

The night started with meeting Uncle George in Piccadilly Central bar (previously Monroes) near Piccadilly train station and some tea in Ning on Oldham Street. When we arrived at the venue, it was all seated at the front and we managed to grab a pew at the side of the stage.

The support was Peter Bruntwell and the main act was a sprightly 74 year old called Bill Kirchen who has been quantified as the ‘Titan of the Telecaster’ for his terrific guitar work and has collaborated over the years with Nick Lowe, Gene Vincent, Link Wray and Elvis Costello. With the latter he penned a remarkable tune called ‘There is a Man at the Bottom of the Well’ with Elvis’s laconic delivery and the line ‘is he looking down from heaven or staring up at hell’ which he played on the night.

Bill Kirchen on stage. Image Credit gigharbourmarina.com

His outro was remarkable as he played a medley of around thirty high quality, seamless short segments of artists including Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Nirvana and AC/DC. It resembled the best ‘Stars on 45’ you could ever wish to hear and something I have never seen in 38 years of watching gigs!  

2021 Gigs – Part 2

I am continuing to look at the post-apocalypse year of 2021 where I somehow managed to attend 33 gigs. There is a suite of new venues in this year which will be featured in future blogs, however I am going to focus on the venues already visited and covered in previous articles.

On the 21st of August, I managed to finally return over to Preston and have my first night out there for 18 months. After watching PNE in the afternoon, Uncle George and I met up with John Dewhurst and we had a sally down the pubs on Friargate. This included a visit to the ever-unchanged Preston Olde Black Bull, where there was a thunderously loud band called Law and Order playing in the main room. It was low quality fare, and its only relevant significance was the fact that it was my 200th gig in Preston.

We also headed up to Preston Market where they have now put in place a deserved tribute bench to commemorate Preston’s very own Nick Park, the abundantly imaginative creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, now I have mentioned it please try and stop yourself humming the theme tune to Wallace & Gromit. He also coincidentally attended the same secondary school as myself though he was a few years above me.

Nick Park bench with the chap himself. Image Credit wallaceandgromit.com

As we walked up Orchard Street, we could hear the unmistakeable rumble of a live band, and therefore bonus gig said I! As it was a balmy August evening, they had erected a stage at the Lancaster Road end of the covered outdoor market just beyond the Orchard Bar. After purchasing a cold craft beer, we witnessed a young local band called the Avenhams, named after one of the main parks in the city. They had an enthusiastic friends and family crowd supporting them and despite veering into lad rock at times they were enjoyable.

On the 7th September I attended my first indoor pay gig at Manchester Academy 2, the venue now clearly rattling into second place on my most visited venue list. Prior to the event and as it was a pleasant Tuesday evening, we purloined some outdoor seats at a pub that remarkably I had never visited before, which was the Ducie Arms buried behind the Manchester University campus.  

The gig was a sell-out, but I surmise that post-pandemic sold out capacities are less than previous restrictions as it clearly felt there was room to breathe in the venue, and that appears to be a sensible continuing ongoing action in my experience of the gigs I have attended since. They operated one-way systems and there was a very civilised queue at the bar, and everyone was understandably noticeably considerate of others and their own personal space. 

The band on stage was the timeless Teenage Fanclub who were in peerless form and Norman Blake had a manic grin throughout, no doubt as relieved as all of us to be back on the tour schedule. Many travelled from far and wide including Stephanie (@peripixie on twitter) who travelled in from America prior to her watching them at their spiritual home Glasgow Barrowland the following week.

Teenage Fanclub. Image Credit Tiny Mix Tapes

Post gig we went for a cold one at Big Hands further down Oxford Road. Whilst Marcus and Gill were ensconced in the roof top beer garden upstairs, I was at the bar waiting for a lengthy beer barrel change when one lad at the bar inadvertently came out to his mate, which was a slightly surreal occurrence to witness.

A month later I headed into town on the No 50 bus to Manchester Club Academy to see the scouse band Red Rum Club. It was a gentle foray as I was departing the next day for a family gathering at a large house we had rented in Matlock. I had seen them three years earlier at Peer Hat and I thought they were excellent there as the sound was so crisp. They didn’t quite scale those heights this time, and I do think seeing a band for a second time is a tester of their ability and potential longevity, much like the second viewing of a movie.