Tag: Manchester Psych Fest

Manchester Venues 201 to 202

This week I will complete the tale of my night in Manchester on Friday 29th August 2025. In a couple of recent blogs, I outlined the five new venues I had sourced and attended, and the evening finished with a sixth by making my debut visit to the Manchester Skate Park (known locally as the pump cage).

In 2001, there was a blanket ban on skateboarding introduced into the public spaces of Manchester. In reaction to this announcement a then 23 year old chap called John Haines co-founded a new venture called Projekts MCR and worked with Manchester City Council to fundraise and take ownership of underused land under the Mancunian Way. They transformed it into a 1400 square metre thriving skate, scooter and BMX park which also doubles as a community hub and is utilised by over 20000 people annually, most under the age of 35 and a quarter being female skaters.

Manchester Skate Park. Image Credit rideukbmx.com

They initially concentrated on the core logistics by obtaining funding for ramps, floodlights, heating and the obligatory café. They persevered for three years to obtain a long term lease and commendably gathered a further £2m in funding from various sources to expand and improve the site. It is now the largest community led skatepark in the UK with a core staff of 26 people.  

In those two intervening decades skateboarding has burgeoned as a sport to the extent of it debuting as an Olympic event at the 2020 Beijing games. The park is in the south of the city and lies five minutes’ walk from Piccadilly train station and it is in my eyes a perfect urban location for such a venture where you can go and embrace your inner Avril Lavigne!   

Around 2022 I initially became aware that they were also starting to stage gigs at the park, the roster concentrating in the main on guitar bands in synch with the backdrop. In March 2023 I endeavoured to make a visit as part of a double gig venture as I was also in attendance at an event at Gullivers that night, but in the end, I couldn’t make it work.  The site was a niche hidden venue until they raised their profile via inclusion on the roster of the Manchester Psych Festival.

 

Avril Lavigne in Sk8er Boi phase. Image Credit tapeciarnia.pl

So, on the night of my visit Marcus and I mulched down to the venue and encountered a very slow moving queue to enter the site. We grabbed an aperitif and encountered our first challenge as to where to position ourselves. An obvious constraint of a skate park is that it contains many peaks, hills and hollows which serve to restrict your viewing capability.  

For the support act we were literally perched on the side of a slope and throughout the evening we were wary as to where we stepped as there were many ‘ankle wrenching’ risk points, especially more so after a couple of scoops!

The first band on stage were Keo for which the main nucleus is the Keogh brothers (Finn and Conor), hence the name, who have music in their bloodstream as the majority of their childhood was spent touring around UK, Ireland and USA with their dad’s one-man music and comedy show. They were in a school band called the Deverills and honed their craft with tireless busking. On the night they provided a decent slab of grunge noise.

In the gap between the acts, we managed to upgrade our position to a raised platform with infinitely better views. The headline band were Gurriers, an act who took their name from the Irish term for a lout or a street urchin. They initially met and formed in Dublin in 2020, but their initial inertia was stalled by the pandemic. However, they continued to remain productive and prepped their material via numerous zoom calls and were thus ready to play their debut gig on Halloween 2021 at Dublin’s Workman’s club. They followed that by releasing their first album ‘Come and See’ in 2024.

Gurriers. Image Credit gurriers.net

I would concede they were not the most original band I have ever seen live, but the counterpoint is that they created some cathartic noise and most certainly had an energetic stage presence illustrated by one of the guitarists at one point perching off the gantry.   

One of the access routes in and out of Piccadilly station is via the busy footbridge which arches over London Road. As you head downwards towards Aytoun and Canal Street you can view to your left Manchester Piccadilly Park Square which is an open area ringed by retail units including the requisite phone repair shop.

When heading that way one evening to catch a train home I noticed they had set up a temporary stage in the square and there was a local artist called Sammy performing in front of a small audience.  

Manchester Venue 175 – Night People

Manchester Night People was located on Princess Street about equidistant between China Town and Canal Street, just around the corner from the Satan’s Hollow venue. I can find very scant history online for this establishment, but I think it opened in around 2017, and I believe it closed post-covid for a 6 month refurbishment, but it looks like it never subsequently reopened.

I visited there four times in total, and I know they were included on the Psych Fest roster, an event I have never yet attended but also for the now defunct Dot-to-Dot festival which I was present at for several years.

I recall they used to stage Northern Soul shindigs for the Twisted Wheel events and due to the age now of many of the participants they staged it on a Sunday afternoon. I am sure the intimate downstairs setting would have made it an ideal location for such a gathering, and I recently located a flyer of the legendary Geno Washington and the Ram Jam band playing there in 2018. I would estimate the capacity of the venue would have been somewhere around 200.

 

Night People flyer. Image Credit mdmarchive.co.uk

My first visit was in February 2018 in the company of one of my Northeast correspondents Jamie Young. We were already attending a gig at Night and Day that evening so grabbed the opportunity to undertake an earlier foray to the new venue on the block! We met initially in the iconic Marble Arch public house before sampling some tea at the Mackie Mayors food hall and then headed down to Night People.

The first act was the Mancunian band slowhandclap who appear to play a lot of gigs at the Northern Quarter venues, and they provided a slab on noisy post punk. Also on the bill were Chester two-piece DEH-YEY who like many duos produced a fair old racket of fuzzy dark sounds with the driving force being the guitarist/vocalist Cash Burns. They have released a slew of singles thus far and have garnered a support slot for the much touted Belfast band Enola Gay.  

Three months later as part of Dot to Dot we saw an American singer songwriter called Kyle Craft. He was born in an isolated Mississippi river town in Louisiana and his first introduction to guitar music was a random purchase of a David Bowie compilation at his local Kmart store.

I think we can all attest to our own individual epiphany to hearing music that will go on to change and influence our life. My personal individual ‘journey’ (a much over used reality show phrase nowadays) was via my dad’s Neil Young and my brother’s Husker Du records and also hearing Stiff Little Fingers for the first time as a young pup at an early school disco.

An early 2018 sighting of Fontaines DC at the venue. Image Credit whenthehornblows.com

Kyle subsequently moved to Texas, and he formed a band called Gashcat who then broke up a couple of years later with the slightly bizarre reasoning of ongoing adverse comparison to Neutral Milk Hotel! In 2016, he recorded his debut album ‘Dolls of Highland’ on Sub Pop Records and then gathered together a live band callee Showboat Honey and secured a support slot with Drive-By Truckers.  

On the afternoon I saw him they produced an excellent set of deep fried Southern rock , where I could hear shades of Green on Red, Lone Justice and The Band, his strong vocal complemented by a fine backing band was a good combination. My next trip was again linked to Dot-to-Dot and the band on show this time was a local combo called ELM.

My final visit was on 26th February 2020 when the spectre of Covid was just beginning to gather pace. I attended with my pal Paul Wilson who had other Preston folk in tow including Aidy and Janet from Lostock Hall. I recall we met in one of the Wetherspoons before having a bevy at the timeless Lass O Gowry. Throughout the gig between bands there was a DJ set from writer and broadcaster Dave Haslam who is primarily famous for being DJ for over 450 sets at the Hacienda nightclub incorporating a Thursday night residency at the Temperance club night from 1986 to 1990.  

The first act on stage was Mick O Toole and the main support were the Gallowgate Murders, a five-piece Celtic punk band from Edinburgh who had only formed the year before. The headliners were the Rumjacks, a rumbustious combo from Sydney in Australia who were also in the Celtic punk mould. They were formed in 2008 and they were renowned for their energetic live shows and lived up to their billing. Their most famous song ‘An Irish Pub Song’ went viral and has garnered over 85m hits on YouTube.

The Rumjacks. Image Credit iheart.com

I recall a generous chap we had never met buying us a round at the bar before Paul and I entered the thrashing, flailing white hot intensity of the mosh pit. It had been a fair while since I had been in such a vibrant pit and my first since turning 50, and I had to recalibrate instantly to peel off my outer layer of clothing and take my watch off for safe keeping and then dived back in.

It was a very small area not helped by some inopportune bruise inducing shelves around the perimeter, but we were in there for the last hour of the gig, and it was a bloody good sweaty fun, more so in hindsight when the first lockdown kicked in a couple of weeks later!