Manchester Venue 129 – Cathedral

In 1215, Manchester Cathedral was built in the centre of the city with additions to the original design being built at periodic intervals over the next three centuries. It survived damage in the Civil War, the IRA bombing in 1996 and the Second World War, the latter causing extensive destruction that required a further 20 years to restore. Following the Arena bombing in May 2017 the Glade of Light memorial was built outside to commemorate the victims. The church is currently one of the fifteen Grade I listed buildings in Manchester and is situated behind the famous Sinclair’s Oyster Bar.

Manchester Cathedral. Image Credit hoteles.com

In the last 15 years the Cathedral has branched out and begun to showcase live music. My first attendance there was in 2012 where I encountered my pal Rick Clegg and his daughter Charlotte on the train over as they were heading on to an alternate Vaccines gig at Manchester Ritz. We parlayed in the pub over a couple of scoops and then headed separate ways.

A couple of years earlier I had attended my debut ecclesiastical event at St Phillips Church in Salford when watching Wooden Shjips. This was a similar set up with slightly more challenges in regard to viewing the stage due to the proliferation of pillars.

The band performing was Dirty Three, an Australian instrumental rock band I had seen once previously 12 years earlier. Their first ever gig took place on ANZAC Day on 25th April 1992 where Warren Ellis utilised a guitar pick up to his violin which created their trademark feedback driven sound which is a sight to behold when they are in their full flow of 10 minute opuses.

Dirty Three. Image Credit fromthearchives.com

Warren was born in Ballarat, Victoria, coincidentally a town Gill and I stayed in when we visited Australia, and he has also been a dual member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds since 1994.  They are a terrific and thunderous live act, and on the night, the journalist/musician John Robb was also in attendance, with whom I had a decent chat.  

The second and currently latest visit was as part of the Manchester Dot to Dot festival in 2016. As ever, my gig ‘addiction’ resulted in a co-ordinated effort to attend all of the twenty geographically disparate city centre venues during the day, which was a logistical challenge.

Never one who has been able to embrace Gordon Gekko’s ethos of ‘lunch is for wimps’; a food stop was taken at the excellent chippy that used to be located at the city end of Oldham Street. This was immediately prior to heading over to the Cathedral, which for the record was number eleven on the venue hit list. The fish and chips were still being munched as I stood outside, and I could hear the band ending their set.

My instant thoughts were that I had made a major tactical error, and this would forever be classed as a ‘missed gig’, but I wandered in any way to pray for a miracle! Due to the nature of the event, there was very strict time periods allocated to each set, but remarkably in this case the gig gods were smiled benignly on me as the band returned to the stage for an unprecedented encore of one additional song.

The act on stage was Sundara Karma, who are an indie band from Reading. I had caught them very early in their career as they had only formed the previous year and were just at that stage leaving secondary school and it was five years prior to releasing their debut album ‘Youth is Only Ever Fun in Retrospect’. They were obviously acquiring some hype as they incited a very enthusiastic crowd reaction. With the near miss thus averted I progressed on to achieve the full twenty venues, ending the gig quest in Manchester Texture in the Northern Quarter.  

Sundara Karma. Image Credit schonmagazine.com

Gill and I had tickets for one other event there which was to see Low in April 2022 however we ended up being double booked so therefore could not attend. This was seven months before Mimi Parker’s tragic untimely death leaving me with memories of previous great Low shows I had been fortunate to witness, particularly at Manchester Hop and Grape and Lancaster Library.

Manchester Venues 23 to 25

Situated halfway down Oldham Street next to the Dry Bar is the Mint Lounge. I have visited there six times and all those attendances have been part of a variety of multi wristband events.

It was an interesting venue as it is a basement nightclub in its normal ‘day job’ role. Upon entry you head down two flights of stairs which opens into a bar area before heading through the stage. The loos are an adventure as to access the Gents you walk through the Ladies which I am sure will have generated some interesting banter in the past.

My first visit was to see Mimas on 19/10/14 who were a decent Danish post rock band. The following year we went to see the highly touted Kirin Leonard who Marc Reilly had been extolling. Now maybe we missed something but the three of us in attendance were significantly underwhelmed and we scampered off after 3-4 songs to watch something more enjoyable.

In May 2016 I saw Will Joseph Cook, a pop artist from Tunbridge Wells. Later that year we ensured we were in situ to catch a full set by PSYBLINGS. At a previous event I had only caught a couple of tracks. They were in the garage rock genre and they terrific and exuded so much energy into their performance. We had a parlay with them afterwards and they were lovely down to earth lads.

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PSYBLINGS. Image Credit emergingindiebands.com

A couple of years after I saw Joel Baker from Nottingham and my final attendance was to see Alice Jemima, a singer songwriter from Devon.

Further down Oldham Street is the Central Methodist Hall and this venue was for a couple of years the ticket distribution point for the Dot to Dot Festival. At the 2016 Dot to Dot festival myself and Dave Keane were endeavouring to snare all the twenty venues on the roster for that day.

We landed at the venue at some point in the evening to find them having major sound issues. We headed off to tick off a couple more venues and returned about half an hour later to find the situation unchanged. Thinking that our fates were sealed regarding our quest to complete the ‘Full Monty’ of venues, we hung around for 10 minutes.

Then unexpectedly the scheduled act Laureen Aquilina, a singer from Bristol, took to the stage and announced due to the evident constraints she was going to sing acapella. A commendably brave move but by jove she pulled it off with aplomb as she had a superb strong voice.

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Lauren Aquilina. Image Credit Genius

Ticking this venue off enabled us to head off to the final venue Texture. This is a late bar located on Lever Street with a ground floor space and a balcony vantage point. The band in question were called Blooms.

I have been to the venue a couple of other times to see Speak Galactic, a lo fi band from Sweden formed by Owen Thomas, who formerly lived in Brighton. The other being Rev Rev Rev, an Italian shoegaze band who I had high hopes for but unfortunately, they just weren’t loud enough and struggled against the annoying backdrop of chatter in the room.