Tag: Manchester Piccadilly Records

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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.

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As you traverse down Oldham Street in the Northern Quarter from Piccadilly Gardens you pass the iconic Night and Day and Piccadilly Records and just after the junction with Hilton Street you reach Manchester Freemount. It commenced its tenure as a traditional Tetley Brewery public house before morphing into the Northern and then into its current moniker. There are two entrances with one on Tib Street alongside the Oldham Street access.

Manchester Freemount. Image Credit tripadvisor.com

It is an old-fashioned homely establishment with impressive glazed emerald green filed frontage with exterior seating for those rare sunny evenings. It has regular live music and often to quite a late hour as they remain open until 2am every night. Those timelines are handy for catching some cheeky bonus gigs before pottering off for the late train. I first encountered some live tuneage there in October 2018 prior to an Orielles gig at the aforementioned Night and Day when I saw a local artist called Adie playing. My second most recent attendance was earlier this year with my pal Riggers after a gig at the Band on the Wall venue and we witnessed an artist called Monty.

The pub is owned by the Urban Village Bars company who also have Another Heart to Feed bar/restaurant on their roster. They now have a recently added third string to their bow with the Wayfarer pub on Swan Street which has the same frontage as the Freemount. They also apparently have live bands there so I shall have to put it on my list of places to visit.

If you then head up Newton Street towards Piccadilly Station, you arrive at Manchester Hold Fast. located down some steps in the basement of Hatters Hostel. The hostel is named to commemorate the Joseph Wood & Sons Hat Factory that resided in the Victorian building where it is located. The factory was built in 1907 and the three-storey glazed ‘arcades’ were designed with the concept of adding additional light into the building.

Manchester Hold Fast. Image Credit themanc.com

The hostel retains some of the original features of the porcelain sinks and a spooky old lift (probably like the one featured in the ‘The Long Good Friday’ movie). They have received some high level customer service scores, possibly because of the fact they have a games room including a pool table and free tea and toast all day, I mean what is not to like about that!   

The bar also has its own small cinema space, designed for lazy ‘hangover Sundays’, where you can watch old black and white movies whilst nursing your self-imposed headache. There is also a further vintage games room with old Sego video games which included Sonic the Hedgehog and early versions of Football Manager.

Being of a certain age myself I recall the astonishingly basic Pong games in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s where the Tennis and Football used to blip and blop across the screen and were virtually identical! I also remember playing the early Grand Prix driving machines, there used to be one in the New Britannia pub on Heatley Street in Preston, and also Track and Field. My all time personal favourite though was Galaxians, which you would sometimes see as a tabletop version.

Hi-tech Pong video game. Image Credit Timetoast.

Hold Fast is an intriguing nautical themed bar, apparently inspired by Jules Verne’s novels, specifically ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea’, and is a dimly lit space with numerous ships lanterns and candles dotted about. They have a suite of craft beers available to imbibe. They also have open mic nights and live music events and one such evening in 2018 Gill and I saw a local chap called Edwin play there. The venue closed in 2019 and was touted to reopen in November 2023, but it is unclear on their website whether that actually happened.