Tag: Manchester MEN Arena

Manchester Venue 59 Sound Control – Part 2

An early blog posting for you this week.

The Sound Control venue is in the perfect classic mould of being located within bumbling distance of the nearest train station. Others to fit these criteria locally are the Star and Garter (Piccadilly), Rebellion Bar (Deansgate), MEN Arena (Victoria) and Kings Arms (Salford Central).

So, much like Esha Ness’s ‘win’ in the Grand National and therefore discounting the ‘gig that never was’ outlined in the blog last week, I have attended the Sound Control Music Room a grand total of seven times.  

My first attendance was on a warm sunny June evening in 2011. On the journey over the train was extremely busy with gig goers and the reason for this significant commuter increase was that the reformed Take That were on a run of comeback dates over at the Etihad Stadium.

Our band of choice that night was the shoegaze gurus Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Now I saw this band five times in total during their career and a couple of those gigs stood out, an initial gobsmackingly fine performance in Chorlton which sat alongside this appearance as an absolute belter.

The reason that this duo of gigs succeeded was that the guitars were ramped up to 10 capturing the intended beautiful sonic fuzz that their sound clearly deserved. The set was in a good way still leaning very heavily on their astonishingly good eponymous debut record, which in my view is all killer no filler. They were supported by a local band called Raffles.  Uncle George had to scoot off prior to the end of their set as he was unfortunately on an early shift the next day, but we stayed for the duration before trekking up and catching the last train from Piccadilly.

Four months later, I saw the Canadian hardcore punks F##&£d Up who with their effervescent lead singer Pink Eyes and surging guitars certainly pack a punch. They are somewhat of an anachronism as their sound could be quantified in the category of intelligent hardcore music and they even start one album with a cheeky flute before the track morphs into something infinitely noisier!

See the source image
Pink Eyes in full flow. Image Credit Dreamstime.

Their big energetic tsunami of sound sucked me into the moshpit but that was curtailed prematurely as I toppled over, and I was proper sore and battered in the morning. Some naysayers may say moshpits should be avoided at the age of 43, but I eschew that point of view and eleven years on I will still partake if the mood takes me! Train constraints again meant we missed the tail end of the performance; a pattern was beginning to develop here at this venue.

Mainly due to the ongoing issues around enforced early departures we decided at our next attendance on 01/12/12 to grab a room for the night at Old Trafford Cricket Club, this being in the days when hotels rooms in Manchester were just about affordable, before they morphed into London prices.

The band in question was the rather terrific Raveonettes, the Danish shoegazing duo who had recently released their excellent sixth album Observator and they played a selection of tracks from said record with ‘Young and Cold’ being the highlight. It was a glacially cold night and after the gig we encountered the busiest ever metro in the whole of Christendom when commuting back to the digs.

See the source image
The Raveonettes on stage. Image Credit mxdwn.com

At the 2013 Dot to Dot event, we saw a singer songwriter called Billy Lockett from Northampton, who is a classical pianist. He was in the faux familiarity bracket that I can never warm to, in the mould of Newton Faulkner and Beans on Toast and a certain Ed Sheeran who appears to have made a career out of this genre!

Manchester Venues 44 to 46

As you traverse down the rather exposed A6 into the City Centre from Salford Crescent station you encounter the Old Pint Pot pub overlooking the River Irwell. It was originally a school and was called Adelphi Riverside in the eighties before obtaining its current moniker in the nineties and has been a regular haunt for Salford University alumni for many years.

It is a Marston’s Brewery pub and apparently has recently gone through an extensive refurbishment with the introduction of a state-of-the-art unique overhead beer dispense system called Palm Pour.  There is also a fine beer garden with a vantage over the river.

My first visit there was for a beer prior to watching AC/DC at MEN Arena in 2001. On another visit whilst meeting Gill after work I arrived first and upon entering the establishment my ears were assailed by the unmistakable sound of Husker Du’s sonic cover of the Byrds ‘Eight Miles High’. This remains one of my favourite ever Huskers track and I have never heard it in a pub environs before or after that day!  

See the source image
The Old Pint Pot. Image Credit scoopergen.co.uk

I have always been fond of this pub, and it remains a focal gathering point within the auspices of Sounds from the Other City festival. At the 2017 festival in the Old Pint Pot Main Bar, we saw a terrific band in an Americana vein called the Roasts, though searching now I cannot find reference of them, but I most certainly saw them! We also saw another act called Lord Kessell and the Drums.

On my first visit there in 2012 we saw a decent local post rock band called Day for Airstrikes, whose first full length album ‘Widows’ released in 2006 (not to be confused with Sennen’s debut album of the same name) through Piccadilly Records.   

There was a more conventional stage in the Old Pint Pot Upstairs and at the same event in 2018 we watched TV AM. At the following years event we saw a brief portion of indie band Pip Blom’s set, they were obviously a draw because we could barely push through the door!   

To exemplify the broad spectrum of venues utilised by the festival, the next one located just down the road is the Angel Centre, a healthy living centre offering free activities to the Salford community including events such as free E-Cig appointments and mental health and horticulture drop ins.

In the main room they had kitted up a small stage in the corner and a pop-up bar to the left. I have witnessed gigs there at each of the three SFTOC festivals I have attended.

See the source image
Angel Centre. Image Credit guerillapocasts.com

On my first foray in 2012 I saw Frazer King, a quirky six-piece band from the local suburb of Wythenshawe who were difficult to quantify but Ennio Morricone punk could be an apposite description of their sound.

In 2017 we saw a terrific band called Golden Dregs, led by driving force Benjamin Woods. They were a welcome blast of garage rock Americana and his vocals resembled Bill Callaghan of Smog; they went down a storm complemented by a cold brew from the bar. I completed the venue trilogy in 2018 by watching a local band called Cattle.