Tag: Manchester Piccadilly Records

Manchester Venues 184 to 185 – Piccadilly Gardens

Christmas markets are essentially street bazaars which are linked to the celebration of Yuletide and traditionally take place within the four-week Advent window. The initial concept of them evolved in the last knockings of the Middle Ages and mainly in the German speaking areas of Europe. Early mentions of December markets roll all the way back to Vienna in 1296 but the first recognised reference to a Christmas market was the Striezelmarkt which took place in Dresden in 1434.

They are large open-air gatherings with food, drink (traditionally mulled wine) and seasonal goods for sale. The food offerings can range from Nussknacker (candy toasted almonds) and Christstollen (stollen). The markets undertook a significant modern day revival in the 1990’s and spread their wings to a considerable number of European cities. The first occurrence in England was in Lincoln in 1982 before the larger cities caught the bug with the commencement in 1997 of the Manchester (Frankfurt) Christmas Markets,with the German city initially providing support.   

Manchester Albert Square Christmas market. Image Credit whatsonmcr.co.uk

I have attended a couple of actual markets in Germany including an excellent one in Stuttgart where the facilities now include additional elements such as ice rinks, funfair rides and my own favourite model railways which I am eternally fascinated by. The Manchester shindigs have always personally felt like a paler imitation of the originals. However, despite my reservations they have grown exponentially from the inaugural version which was based solely in St Anns Square into the hugely popular event it is nowadays with three hundred stalls now dotted across many parts of the city with a large footfall attending.

It used to create a considerable nuisance when attending December gigs and then encountering a plethora of inebriated punters on astoundingly busy trains back to Preston. Also, my commute back home after work requires me to devise a different route than normal to reach my destination of Piccadilly station.   

The central hub of the markets was always Albert Square but that has been closed for restoration for the last few years, but it is planned to be reopened for this year’s event. In the interim one of the main areas centralised around Manchester Christmas Market Piccadilly Gardens.

In the 18th century this particular location was donated to the city by Sir Oswald Mosley, Lord of the Manor of Manchester on one fundamental condition that the space be retained in public use in perpetuity.   

L S Lowry ‘Piccadilly Gardens’ picture. Image Credit King and McGaw.

The Gardens were initially designed as an ornamental sunken garden after World War I on the former location of Manchester Royal Infirmary, the Infirmary then moving to its current location down Oxford Road. Prior to building the gardens other schemes including building an Opera House or a new location for the Cathedral were proposed but then discounted. The local painter L S Lowry also utilised the backdrop for his 1954 painting titled ‘Piccadilly Gardens’.

It was subsequently flattened out in 2002 with a central water feature and a concrete pavilion designed by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando with a curved concrete wall to obscure the metrolink line, this all resulted in an overall cost of £20.7m. It is an extremely rare green space in the city centre and contains a transport hub with buses and trams running directly through and adjacent to it. For many years prior to its move to Oldham Street, the famous Piccadilly Records was also located nearby.

Within the village created, room was made for a stage for the purposes of providing musical entertainment. Within the auspices of the 2023 event, I saw an act called General Drummer play there.

Earlier this year another innovative shindig was initiated via the generation of the Manchester Piccadilly Gardens MCR Live Hub with a stage located in another corner of the Gardens. It was designed as a city centre gathering point taking place between early July until the end of September and was part of the wider MCR Live 25 event which deliberately coincided with the Burnage Boys comeback tour.

Manchester MCR Live Hub Stage area. Image Credit ihmanchester.com

Other attractions were the Music for the Senses trail containing murals, mosaics and Guitar Street (located in reality on King Street), where you could find 50 donated guitars, some from musicians including Doves, PINS and Pixies. Commendably at the curtailment of the trail the instruments were auctioned to raise funds for grassroots venues and music projects across Greater Manchester.

Manchester artist Lazerian also created a Cathedral of Sound, a sound installation built from hundreds of reclaimed acoustic guitars. The Live Hub area was staged fully outdoors to embrace the weather in the summer months and contained a bar, street food and a plethora of beer garden picnic tables. They had DJ sets and live musicians, and I saw a couple of local artists called Sabrina and Gordy performing there.

Manchester Venues 182 to 183

Alongside the seemingly omnipresent Action Records in Preston, the other hugely important record shop in my gig going lifetime is Manchester Piccadilly Records. They originally opened in 1978, which was coincidentally also the conception year of Factory Records. They started as a record concession within another shop before morphing into a singular store themselves.

They were located initially in the Piccadilly area before moving to Brown Street near to Piccadilly Gardens. I remember distinctly visiting that particular site many times in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s and I was also in regular correspondence when sourcing many tickets, predominantly for gigs at that stage at the old Manchester International 1. Now one for the kids out there, I use to send a paper item called cheques through the post and then as if by magic valuable tickets were subsequently received on my doormat a couple of weeks later!     

Original site of Piccadilly Records in 1990. Image Credit mdmarchive.co.uk

They had a change of management in 1990 before being caught up in the IRA bombing of 1996. One of the staff at that time still owns a Fugees album which had its cover shredded when the windows blew through in the explosion. A year later they moved into their current location on Oldham Street in the yet to be developed Northern Quarter.

They have moved with the trends and times and exploited the post punk genre in their earlier days and continued to develop and adapt as the digital streaming age came into play. They have received regular newspaper awards and additionally have won the prize for the best independent record store at Music Week and also at the Gilles Peterson worldwide awards. It remains eternally popular and local musicians Tim Burgess and Johnny Marr are regular visitors.  

On an annual basis they used to produce a little book with their albums of the year and also recommendations of timeless lost albums. As a direct result I finally became acquainted with Neutral Milk Hotel’s remarkable 1998 album ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’.

Like all good record shops, they began to showcase and undertake in-store sessions, and a particular one caught my beady eye which was taking place on 31/01/20. It was on a Friday, so I gravitated down there after work. The band in question was the Smoke Fairies who derive from Chichester and consist of Katherine Blamire and Jessica Davies.

Smoke Fairies. Image Credit nme.com

They first met at school in Sussex in the 1990’s and undertook a blues musical education by spending 2002 in New Orleans. Their fledgling music then took another direction when they discovered folk when working as car attendants at the Sidmouth Folk Week festival. They subsequently garnered valuable support slots with Bryan Ferry, Richard Hawley and Laura Marling and were the first UK act to release a single on Jack White’s Third Man Records, produced by the man himself.

They were chosen to provide a cover of ‘Alabama’ for a MOJO compilation to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’. On the very day of the gig, they had released their fifth album ‘Darkness Brings the Wonders Home’ which had a brooding melancholia to it, in the vein of PJ Harvey. The duo positioned themselves by the counter and undertook a short enjoyable set appreciated by a decent size audience. I was also then intending to attend a Lovely Eggs session in that location but that was later cancelled by the pandemic.

In 2021 a previously under-used area on the corner of Dale Street and Lever Street was recreated as the Manchester Mala Secret Garden Bar, the land being previously used as a drugs den with paraphernalia and tents being regularly spotted there. It is situated outside the Chapter One bookshop and café within the Northern Quarter and is also nearby to the Travelling Man shop which quite often catches my eye when I walk past, where they specialise in comics, graphic novels and board games.

Mala Secret Garden. Image Credit opentable.ca

As Mala means ‘garden’ in Hawaiian it has now been converted into a Victorian glass house with ‘Parisian-style gardens’ with cable cars resembling cabins with room for individual batches of six people. There are numerous trees and plants and with an additional children’s play area and within the horticultural space there are picnic benches and long tables placed undercover with capacity for eighty punters.

On a Sunday they stage chilled jazz-tinged events and last year I was in brief residence there and I saw a blues based singer called Stephanie performing a short set.