Tag: Manchester Hacienda

Manchester Venues 163 to 165 – Jazz Festival

The HOME complex in the centre of Manchester is in effect three venues rolled into one and has five cinemas, two theatres and a decent 500 square metres of gallery space contained within. They encompass all stages of the delivery as they cover the commissioning, production and presentation of those aforementioned artistic pursuits. The modern building is situated on Tony Wilson Square and is a stone’s throw from the old Hacienda nightclub site and was opened in May 2015 at a cost of £25 million.

Home Complex. Image Credit hotels.com

It was a joint venture between the Cornerhouse cinema and arts centre next to Oxford Road station and the Library Theatre company and both organisations then relocated into their new home. The Cornerhouse was famous for hosting the UK premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and was the first public gallery to display artefacts from Damian Hirst. I have sampled a couple of cold ones in the bar that used to be located there prior to its closure.

HOME has inherited several patrons including film maker Danny Boyle, actresses Meera Syal and Suranne Jones and musician Phil Collins. It is a busy old spot as they host 10,000 events annually and it has been included in the TimeOut’s list of the Top 10 cinemas in the UK. They are commendably forward thinking environmentally as they stand as carbon literacy champions.

I have never yet actually visited one of their arts events, but I have devoured a pizza in their café if that counts! I have also basked there in the summer on their outdoor tables and recall watching Coco Gauff’s first dramatic appearance at Wimbledon on one of the big screens.

In this quarter which is classed as being located in the Oxford Road Corridor you would also find the large Gas Works Brewbar, built on the old Gaythorn Gas Works which contains an in-house brewery, shuffle boards and a large seating area outside. Simon Wood’s restaurant used to be located here prior to its recent closure but there still remains Hakkapo and the Indian Tiffin Room.

Manchester Jazz Festival. Image Credit manchesterjazz.com

The longest running festival in the city is the Manchester Jazz Festival which was first staged in the summer of 1996. The first event took place in St Ann’s Square and was jointly organised by Manchester City Council, Musicians Union, Northwest Arts Board and a local brewery. It was a very small scale venture with only nine bands and a DJ on the roster. The first year coincided with the IRA bombing, but commendably the inaugural event was rearranged and staged a few months later.    

The annual event is run as a not for profit charity venture and has grown considerably over those intervening years, with an international exchange organised to mark the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. In 2005 further exposure was gained when BBC Radio 3 chose to undertake a live broadcast on the launch night. The most recent edition featured over 60 free and ticketed events incorporating multiple venues and they will celebrate their 30 year anniversary in 2025.

Now I have to be upfront and confess that Jazz is my least favourite musical genre, however when I noted I was in that very area on the sunny opening night and there were free gigs on prior to the event I was attending, the ‘gig addict’ in me knew I had to take advantage of these free hits!

Thus, on the night on the seventeenth day of May 2024, CCTV would have picked up Marcus, Uncle George and I mulching down to the Manchester First Street Main Stage. In a very busy area, a band called Mangorata were performing. The 6-piece jazz fusion band derive from Leeds, where they met initially as students at Leeds Conservatoire and a year earlier, they had released their self-titled album.   

Heading further away from Whitworth Street West you then arrived at Manchester First Street (Ask Garden Stage) located on James Grigor Square. Mr Grigor was a renowned 19th century botanist from East Anglia.

James Grigor Square. Image Credit alamy.com

The band on stage were the Gaz Hughes Trio, with Gaz being the original drummer for the Matthew Halsall Band and one of their early albums was nominated for a MOBO and they won Best Jazz Album at the Giles Peterson worldwide awards. On a personal level he won the people’s vote for Jazz Drummer of the Year in 2019.  The trio is completed with Andrzej Baranek on piano and Gavin Barras on double bass.  

The final venue of the day was inside the bar area at Manchester Home Stage where we witnessed Secret Night Gang, a local jazz, funk and soul act who had recently released their second album ‘Belongs on a Place Called Earth’.   

Manchester Venues 151 to 152

I am blessed with my current geographical Manchester location as there are regular multi-venue events, the latest to spring up is the Years End Festival which took place at the tail end of 2024 and is based in the main down the Oxford Road corridor. The remit of the days roster was for it to contain up and coming bands and most were guitar based, which suited me down to a tee.

The downside on the day was the monsoon and high winds weather conditions which was a tad bracing! I have previously detailed the Retro Bar downstairs area in an earlier blog, but this festival allowed me to attend a gig in the Manchester Retro Bar Area for the first time. I enrolled my pal Paul to be my wing man, and we met up at that site after we had both separately obtained our entry wristbands from the pickup point.

As I trotted down towards the building it soon became evident that there was a noisy combo already ensconced on the stage. I grabbed a cold beverage and settled in to watch a band called Revivalry who are a thumping three piece from Grimsby. They had such admirable confidence which is remarkable when viewed against the fact that none of the members are above 17 years of age. The lead singer and bassist Josh Courfield who was belting out the tunes looked about 12!

Revivalry. Image Credit grimsbytelegraph.co.uk

They are understandably reliant at this stage in being ferried to gigs around the country in the back of a transit van by one of their understanding tolerant parents and they were chosen to be the youngest band ever to play the Main Stage at the 2024 version of the Kendal Calling festival. They are on Manchester label Cosmic Glue and have already garnered support slots with Reverend and the Makers and The Lathums.  

In a novel twist they climbed down into the crowd to play an acoustic portion of their penultimate track before clambering back onto the stage for the electric second half of the song with full audience singalong participation. They were overall rather fine fun and good luck to them in their potentially burgeoning careers.    

Now, I have always endeavoured to never replicate myself in these articles but I make no apologies now for referencing a tale I mentioned briefly back in the mists of time in the second paragraph of Blog 1.

Hacienda nightclub. Image Credit manchestereveningnews.co.uk

My first ever venue visited in Manchester should have been at the Hacienda nightclub as we had tickets to see Husker Du there in early 1985. There was though a fundamental stumbling block of having no means of transport to be able to get there and back as my brother was between cars, I was too young to drive, and the last train departed at 10.30pm.

Thus, I never got to visit the Hacienda though thankfully did manage to see Husker Du twice in the next couple of years after the unfortunate ‘gig that never was’. To be perfectly honest though I am not overly gutted on that score as despite the club admittedly having a brief golden period, reports from my peers who attended there to see Trouble Funk and Killing Joke amongst others thought it was always sparsely populated and a little bit of a dump!    

One of the co-owners of the Hacienda was Peter Hook, who in 2010 collaborated with the Hacienda’s original interior designer Ben Kelly to renovate and reopen the former Factory Records HQ on Charles Street and Princess Street, opposite the Joshua Brooks public house. It opened as a nightclub and also stages student nights and live music and retained its original name as Manchester FAC251.

Toy Car. Image Credit facebook.com

On entry, my first impression that it was smaller than I had envisaged it would be. The bands that day were playing on the ground floor space with a 400-capacity called Manchester FAC251 Basement. There are apparently two other rooms, the first floor Loft and second floor Boardroom, both with a 200 capacity.  

The room had a metallic nightclub vibe about it, which is always a slightly odd scenario when watching acts at the earlier daylight hour’s time of 5pm. The band on stage was a scouse jingle jangle collective called Toy Car who are a fledgling act who have only thus far released a handful of singles, and they provided an engaging and energetic set.