Tag: Manchester Deaf Institute

Liverpool Venues 33 to 35

I shall return this week to my ongoing review of the 2025 Liverpool Sound City event, with our next port of call being Liverpool Kazimier Stockroom. As I have discovered when writing these scouse based blogs their background stories of the venues never seem to be simple. So, this particular tale commences with the much touted original arty Kazimier venue in Wolstenholme Square.

The venue opened in 2007 in an old mirror-lined club owned by local boxer John Conteh and came complete with an octagonal dancefloor, outdoor space and a top-deck bar and it was the size of the Titanic. It finally bowed out in some particular style on New Years Eve 2015 after a self-created sci-fi themed Escape to Planet Kronos party with one hundred and eighty performers. A mere four months later alongside Nation, the original home of Cream, the whole area was razed to the ground under the banner of gentrification plans.

Kazimier Stockroom. Image Credit liverpooltheatres.com

A regular performer there was the in-house carnival techno act The Krunk Band. They chose not to perform on stage, instead they mingled into the crowd whilst booting out their tunes and included a mishmash of trumpets, percussions, barrel organ and accordions in their sound. Other bands to play there include Sleaford Mods, Blossoms, Buzzcocks, Miles Kane, Michael Head and The Harlequin Dynamite Matching Band.  

Then in 2016 the newly formed Kazimier Collective opened up a new venue on Regent Street near to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse. The three storey building comprises of two events spaces, the basement one called Substation, and some artist studios. It was named The Invisible Wind Factory and has a 1500 capacity. Fat White Family, Ride and the Orielles have played there, and it has also been used for daytime rollerdisco events, thereby invoking unwelcome memories of Cliff Richard and Frank Spencer!  

The Collective then opened up the Kazimier Stockroom which is a multipurpose small site with a 100 capacity and alongside being an intimate showcase for fledgling local and national bands they also host film screenings and theatre shows. It has an open courtyard area, and its name derives from its location adjacent to Kazimier Gardens.  

Upon our arrival it took us a moment to find the venue which was located just off from the outside area behind an unmarked wooden door, it was a busy enclosed space and was absolutely sweltering. On stage was a young R&B singer called Immi Dash who was born in Scotland to British and Trinidadian parents, raised between California and Slough and now resides in Liverpool, sounds like an eventful journey!  

Arts Club. Image Credit tagvenue.com

We then moved onto the nearby Liverpool Arts Club on Seel Street, a venue that has existed since 1928 and was before that date The Liverpool Royal Institution. Its original remit under the new banner was as a social club before morphing into a live music venue. Prior to its current moniker it was known also as The Barfly, The Masque and East Village Arts Club.

In the early part of 2023, like many other similar establishments it faced closure, but was subsequently thankfully saved from that ignominious fate by the Manchester based Tokyo Industries. That particular company also own Gorilla, The Deaf Institute and Factory 251 and brought that previous expertise and a major regeneration to this venture. Early gigs by The Wombats and Two Door Cinema Club served to cement its reputation back on the live circuit.

The venue has three individual rooms, the first is the lobby which is utilised as a club space with a capacity of 200 punters. The second is Liverpool Arts Club Loft which has a live maximum of 550 people. When we attended there, we saw a Manchester act called Cooper T who are a duo comprising of two producers Kong and TMNMS. They sported brown shell suits and matching balaclavas and were verging on the grime genre, not dissimilar to Sleaford Mods, a band who has always left me cold, though the crowd around me appeared to be lapping it up!

The Florentenes. Image Credit youtube.com

Along a linking corridor brought you to Liverpool Arts Club Theatre, which was my preferred venue of the two and has a capacity of 550 and the space reminded me of the old Preston Polytechnic venue. First up we saw a local singer called Neil Noa and then later in the day Florentenes. The latter three piece were from Manchester and astoundingly young with the two guitarists aged eighteen and the drummer only fifteen. They reminded me in parts of The View, early Strokes and The Vines and they created a very pleasing racket!  

Manchester Venues 199 to 200

In the year 2000 (could be a song lyric there!) a bar opened on New Wakefield Street adjacent to Manchester Oxford Road train station. It was called the Font Bar, and the split-level site was a no frills establishment and became eternally popular with the University students due its cheap drinks. 

Font Bar. Image Credit manchesterbynight.com

For around a decade from 2004 the area was the location for an annual festival called Eurocultured where three local streets were closed and there were over two hundred artists playing over three stages, one being positioned under the arches near to the Gorilla venue, and the residual artwork from that festival remains on the walls today. The festival was initially founded because of that year’s enlargement of the European Union, though those events sound like they from another era considering what has happened since!  

They utilised other nearby bars and venues including Revolution, the Blackdog Ballroom and the much missed Sound Control and it was an event I had never heard of until researching it for this very article. The ethos of the gathering was to embrace and celebrate the European cultural heritage and created eclectic rosters and a sample of this from 2013 included three French electronic music composers who collaborated to form a gypsy jazz trio called Caravan Palace.  

There was also Swordfishtrombones from the Czech Republic, dub step from The Correspondents, Irish dance from the Japanese Popstars and some Ukranian folk dancing with the Orlyk Dance Ensemble to jig along to whilst becoming suitably merry if you imbibed the Swedish cider Rekordelig. Additionally, there was Datarock, labelled as the Norwegian version of ‘Happy Mondays’, who were known for wearing red jumpsuits, though for an unknown reason in 2018 their sartorial choice shifted to all-black versions!  The performers on the acoustic stage were covered live on the then local TV Channel M.

Datarock during their ‘Red’ phase. Image Credit lifeinnorway.net

The Font Bar survived the covid period and even added outdoor seating for the first time prior to the bar closing unexpectedly in January 2023. Their Fallowfield outlet had previously shut in 2018, but their Chorlton branch remains. It was not a bar I visited regularly but had sporadic forays with my last being in September 2022 when Paul, Marcus and I imbibed far too much after a Ducks Ltd show at the nearby Yes venue.  

After a fallow eighteen months, Mother Marys took over the reins and opened in June 2024 with the new venture headed up by nightlife gurus Joseph Finegan, Greg Dwyer and Chris Sharp. The first named had hosted many events at the nearby Gorilla and the Deaf Institute venues and the latter named brought with him the pedigree of also owning the renowned music venue The Fleece in Bristol. They devised a weekly event schedule of an open stage on a Monday, stand-up comedians and regular live bands and DJs across the two gig spaces on other nights.  

They invested in a bespoke KV2 sound system and a state of the art lighting system.  Food was also served with all-day breakfasts and in a homage to the previous history of the building a £2 cocktail called ‘The Font’ was also available. It then suddenly closed in November 2025 due to financial pressures, which was hugely unfortunate as they had at that stage been listed as a shortlisted nominee in the This Is Manchester Awards.

As you enter the bar, Manchester Mother Marys Upstairs Stage was directly facing you in an alcove above the stairwell. I first visited in August 2024 and saw a local singer called Damon playing there.  My next attendance was on 07/12/24 as part of the Year End Festival, where this was being utilised as the base and the ticket collection point.

Mother Marys. Image Credit secretmanchester.com

When I was collecting my wristband there was a local chap called Elijah Jenkins playing. Elijah is a soul singer who initially had a solo support slot with Reverend and the Makers before evolving into a four-piece band. I then headed out in the monsoon conditions to meet Paul in another venue before later returning to base camp. On the second pass we saw Patrick Saint James, a Derry born now Manchester based performer who has been on the support roster for Kate Nash.

When I first moved over to Manchester nine years ago, I was at that stage positioned on a total of 76 venues in the city, and I very quickly achieved my century. The new sites then kept being ticked off enabling me to record Manchester Mother Marys Downstairs Stage as my 200th different Manchester venue. The band to commemorate this milestone was a Rochdale female led combo called Foxglove who provided some soothing dream pop.