Liverpool Venues 5 to 7

Before I outline the remaining events I have thus far attended in Liverpool, I wanted to provide some detail of all the missed gig opportunities on the other side of the River Mersey from the city centre. The first occurred when I attended my auntie’s wedding somewhere deep in Wallasey territory and there was a pub opposite the wedding reception building, but the name of the establishment evades me now. We visited briefly during the day but only Uncle George grasped the mantle to attend at one point in the evening where there was a band playing.

Following on from that quarter information tale, in July 21, Gill and I were scheduled to attend the Lets Rock 80’s festival at Wavertree Playing Fields (aka the Mystery). The derivation of the mystery moniker is down to the fact that the 104-acre park was donated to the Liverpool corporation by an anonymous well-wisher who subsequently transpired to be a shipping magnet. We were planning to commute in from the local nattily named Wavertree Technology Park train station but in the end, circumstances dictated we could not attend resulting in missing out of the dubious privilege of watching Sister Sledge, Odyssey, Wet Wet Wet and Adam Ant!  

Adam Ant. Image Credit thecurrent.org

I have previously attended gigs at library venues in Lancaster and Wigan and was hoping to tick Birkenhead off this list when we obtained tickets to see the French band Juniore for a chilled Sunday afternoon set, but it was subsequently cancelled and not rearranged due to issues with post-Brexit visa issues and Covid.

Another interesting sounding venue in that area is the Future Yard in Birkenhead. One of my favourite ever bands Sennen were undertaking a very rare tour and had added a date at that very venue. Unfortunately, I had a fixture clash and could not attend, and despite my exhortations to the band they didn’t add a Manchester date, so I have not yet added to my sole sighting of them at Manchester Night and Day in 2010.

Thus, I shall now move away from the hard luck stories onto actual gigs attended. One day in December 2019 I was working out of the Liverpool office and gravitating back down Liverpool Church Street to Lime Street station for my train home. I heard the unmistakable sound of a full band playing a street gig, the combo in question was Keywest.

Keywest band. Image Credit wordpress.com

Keywest are a four-piece folk band from Ireland and their route to success is an unusual one as they learnt and honed their craft by years of busking in the hot bed area of Grafton Street in Dublin. They had obviously decided to take a trip down memory lane by performing on a busy shopping street, I don’t whether that proceeded a gig in a more standard venue that evening.

On Matthew Street, you will find Liverpool Sgt Pepper’s Bar, like many in the area a Beatles themed establishment and the website informs that improbably and in fact impossibly they have music on ‘8 days a week’! In 2017 I caught a chap called John McDonna playing a set there.

In December 2021, I was over in Liverpool for an overnight work event and therefore naturally had to have a gander at the Ents 24 website to see if there were any musical events of note that coincided with my stay, thus discovering there was an interesting act on that very night at Liverpool EBGBS.

After work, we grabbed some tea in the Silk Road tapas and after a couple of drinks persuaded my colleague David Taylor to also attend the gig. David had previously pleasantly surprised me when he stated unexpectedly that he had not only heard of Mogwai but had actually seen them live which was good enough for me!

Heebies Jeebies (known locally as Heebies) has been a popular venue on Seel Street since it first incarnation as a jazz bar in the mid 90’s. In 2016 they opened the 250-year-old basement room as a live and club night venue and named it EBGBS.  Upon entering the establishment, I noted they had nailed the intended vibe as a dingy downstairs biker bar, in a good way! It reminded me of the Merchants pub near Lancaster train station.

EBGB’s dungeon setting! Image Credit architectural-emporium.co.uk

The venue has a capacity of 300 but there cannot have been more than fifty people in attendance that night, I can imagine when the place is full the view of the stage may be impaired due to the numerous pillars in place.

The support band was a post punk band from Oslo in Norway called Mayflower Madame, the main act was New Candys from Venice in Italy. Since their formation in 2008, their singer Fernando Nuti remains their ever-present member. In their early days they had support slots with the likes of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Crystal Stilts.

Their second album was recorded by John Willis, producer, and drummer of legendary psych rock band Loop, who coincidentally I am off to see today (21/05/23) on their comeback tour, 33.33 years since I last saw them at Manchester International 1 in January 1990. New Candys provided an enjoyable slab of gentle shoegaze before we headed back down the vibrant Seel Street, which looked worthy of further investigation at some future stage.      

Other British Gigs 3 and 4

I managed to catch Mogwai three times in the 2006 calendar year as I saw them in Edinburgh and London. The third strand of that trilogy was the last date of a short British tour which took place at Sheffield Plug on 07/04/06. My attendance of the event was in doubt until the last minute as I was a tad under the weather, but generally nothing would stand in my way of attending Mogwai gigs!

Thus, a train was boarded by Uncle George and I on the Friday afternoon via Manchester into Sheffield. John Dewhurst was not in attendance as the birth of his son Joe was imminent, frighteningly Joe is now aged 16 and just about to commence his first apprenticeship.

It was my virgin trip into the steel city, and I have always aspired one day to attend the World Snooker at the Crucible Theatre. Linked to that, I have a pal called Dave Dyson whose one of his claims to fame is that he was in attendance in 1983 when Cliff Thorburn famously made the first televised 147 break at the World Championships.

We had a quick foray into the bookies as it was Ladies Day at the Grand National meeting and we found a 33-1 winner which set us up in good stead for the day. We had a mulch around a couple of pubs before heading over to the venue located on 14-16 Matilda Street.

The club first opened in 2005 and modelled itself as a live music and club night venue opening to 6am at the weekends. Local luminaries Arctic Monkeys and the Prodigy have played there. It was also an award winner in the Club Bar None Awards in 2014.

The venue subsequently closed just before the pandemic struck. However, there are green shoots of recovery evident as the record shop Record Junkee, which sits opposite, are planning to reopen the establishment under the name Network and reinstate gigs and club nights there.  There are also plans for a bowling alley, drinking and dining area to be located in the original Plug car park.

The Sheffield Plug. Image Credit sheffieldhistory.co.uk

I recall the venue being down in the basement and it contained a very low roof in the style of the old International 1 in Manchester. As a result, it was the loudest Mogwai performance I have ever witnessed, and they do set a very high bar in that regard. There were literally people with hands over their ears at certain points during the set.     

The bands choice of the last three tracks contributed to this cacophony, being namely ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’, We’re No Here’ and ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’.  We spent the return journey on the Saturday, trying without success to identify the winner of the National that afternoon.

On one weekend when I was visiting my brother in Nottingham in July 2008, he mentioned there was a festival that a friend’s band was participating in on the Sunday. So, I agreed to provide a lift there for him as it was on my route of travelling back to Preston.

The event was the Belper Music Festival though I can find scant details when I searched, so I don’t know whether it was only in existence for a short period of time. It took place on the narrow streets of the town and as it encompassed a bonus new venue I obviously had to stick around and watch a couple of acts! Thus, on a small stage on the main drag I saw two local bands, namely Moscow Straits and the Re-enactments.

Two postscripts from me if I may, I have just heard the brutally sad news of Mimi Parker of Low’s untimely death from evil ovarian cancer. I shall always the treasure the few times I saw them live and the heavenly harmonies they created. We shall always have ‘Just Like Christmas’, which is our Christmas present opening song on Christmas morning.

Mimi Parker of Low. Image Credit www.acclaimedmusic.net

The other element is that I have finally reached 100k words in my blog, a future book at some stage methinks. What was the profound 100,000th word I hear you say? Could it be ‘the’ or ‘but’? Well, it actually somewhat appropriately turned out to be ‘Manchester’!