Tag: Manchester Yes Basement

2025 Gigs – Part 2

I will continue my tales of 2025 gigs with Manchester St Ann’s Square where they have regular events around key dates of the year, for example St Patricks Day. At three at those singular events at different points, I saw the Bovver Boys, Barry’s Brass Band and a singer called Gwenda.  

Nearby to Manchester Piccadilly station resides the old atmospheric venue Manchester Star and Garter where in February I fell into capturing a small segment of an all-day gig there and witnessed some thunderous grindcore from local noiseniks Burnt Body, though I did sagaciously decide to abstain on the moshpit duties at that one!

Burnt Body. Image Credit facebook.com

In July I saw a Philadelphia ska punk act called Catbite whose chief vocalist was a lass called Brittany Luna who had previously trained as a jazz singer. She has recently performed with Laura Jane Grace who was previously the lead singer of Against Me, a band I saw on my 42nd birthday back in 2010. The duo performed some shows primarily paying a homage to Operation Ivy, a short-lived band who were a forerunner of the California ‘East Bay Sound’ in the late 1980’s. In the next step of the family tree two members of the Ivy then set up Rancid in 1991 who are still playing to this day.

In May I returned to the Academy complex for my 101st gig across all their four sites, this particular one taking place at Manchester Club Academy. My enigmatic pal Matty Allen is a Death Metal guru and had for a spell been jokingly sending me gig invites for various events, and I finally threw him a curve ball by accepting an interesting sounding one.  Another friend at work Ben, let’s call him Death Metal guru 2 was also knowledgeable and approving of the bands on the roster.

Thus Matty, his mate Rob and I gathered in Big Hands prior to the gig and had a conflab in their roof garden. The support band were called Cryptopsy who are from Montreal and were formed in 1988 and are now nine albums into their lineage. They were my preferred act on the evening, and the drummer Flo Mournier was particularly impressive, and they also used to have a vocalist with the jocular name of Lord Worm.

The headliners were Decapitated from Poland who formed in 1996 with the members ranging from 12 to 16 at that stage. They suffered untold tragedy in 2007 when the original drummer died in a car crash at the age of 23. They are regularly touted as one of the key proponents of the genre.

An additional observance of the crowd is that due to the intense nature of the music you could perhaps surmise they may have more of an aggressive outlook, but they were in fact one of the friendliest audiences I have ever encountered with a refreshing lack of phones in my eyeline.

Mani. Image Credit yahoo.com

At the nearby Manchester Academy, I caught Black Rebel Motorcycle Club for the sixth time and a full decade since my last sighting, they were playing the ‘Howl’ album which was celebrating its 20th anniversary. It is a softer sounding record but still contains some terrific tunes with ‘Complicated Situation’ being my fave. They were in good form and included a touching tribute to Mani, who had passed away three weeks earlier, by playing a solo acoustic Stone Roses track with full audience singalong.        

Prior to the gig at the aforementioned Manchester Big Hands, I saw a fuzzy and noisy garage rock band called Ahmed & The Romans who contained in their ranks three Italians and the lead singer Ahmed who is an Anglo-Egyptian. 

At the tail end of September Marcus and I trundled into Manchester Yes Basement. The band in question were called The Pill, an act that we had both simultaneously heard playing and being interviewed on Steve Lamacq’s 6 music show. Texts were instantly sent confirming that our interests were piqued and tickets were swiftly purchased.

The Pill. Image Credit genius.com

The Pill consist of spiky female duo Lily Hutchings and Lottie Massey from the Isle of Wight. They derive from the island that has recently spawned the not dissimilar Wet Leg and also Coach Party. They happened on a musical career via an unusual route as they started with the creation of a punk rock Pinocchio digital puppet show. They began to receive a considerable and unexpected following, and the band was the natural next step though Lily had never played before, so she actually learnt the guitar for the formation of the combo!

On the night, they were bloody good fun with tracks such as ‘Woman Driver’ and ‘Scaffolding Man’ with their whip smart lyrics that many prehistoric men would take literally and simply not have a scoobie that they were taking the proverbial!

2024 Gigs – Part 2

My opening gig of the year was on the 9th of February at Manchester Yes Pink Room, where I attended a novel event. The band playing was Mull Historical Society who are the brainchild of singer and songwriter Colin MacIntyre who was born on the island. He has recorded five albums under that band name, one of them on the Blanco y Negro record label which released possibly my favourite ever album, Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Psychocandy’, which is now somewhat astonishingly 40 years old, but in my view remains a timeless recording.

It was declared as an early show as he was undertaking two sets, and he proceeded to rattle through his plethora of folk tunes. Outside his musical pursuits he is also a novelist and published his debut tome ‘The Letters of Ivor Punch’ in 2015 which is unsurprisingly set on Mull. Therefore, it made a degree of sense when he brought the prolific Scottish crime fiction writer Val McDiermid onto the stage.

Mull Historical Society record flyer. Image Credit mullhistoricalsociety.com

She has created many different series and personas in her books, two of which have been dramatised for television, namely Wire in the Blood and Karen Pirie, the latter I have been watching recently and thoroughly enjoying. She has been badged in a sub-genre rather lazily described as ‘Tartan Noir’.

Mr Macintyre had recently created an album called ‘In my Mind There’s a Room’ where he approached many authors including Ian Rankin, Nick Hornby and Jacqueline Wilson to pen articles describing a past or present space that has had a significant impact on their life. He then devised music to complement these personal words and scribing’s that had been kindly donated to him.  

Val was chosen for the Manchester date as she used to reside in the city and has used it as a backdrop for several of her novels. She was also the Manchester Evening News crime reviewer for four years. Her contribution on the night was to read a couple of passages pertaining to the room where she writes her books.

I had one further attendance there later in the year to see Chubby and the Gang. The band derived from members of the British hardcore punk scene that was in place at the start of the century. They had previously been in groups such as Violent Reaction, Arms Race and Gutter Knife. The driving force throughout has been a chap called Charlie ‘Chubby’ Manning-Walker. You could certainly see the spirit of Ramones in their sound and approach, and I enjoyed their short but spiky set.

One advantage of the Yes venue is that there are two music locations within the same building and with some chicanery and schmoozing you can sometimes smuggle yourself into the other venue after your particular gig has finished. Thus, on the night I saw Mull Historical Society I managed to catch the last three songs of Hayden Pedigo’s performance in Manchester Yes Basement.  

Hayden Pedigo. Image Credit The Fader.

Hayden was raised in Amarillo in Texas, and he had guitar lessons from an early age and subsequently sent in a video of him playing in an abandoned school into Maramara Records label. This resulted in him being signed up and releasing his first album ‘Sevens Years Late’ in 2013, at the tender age of 19.  

He launched an unsuccessful campaign in 2018 to run for a local council seat, but his quirky and sometimes surreal approach garnered national attention. He has also runway modelled alongside other musicians including St Vincent at Gucci’s 100th anniversary fashion show.

I believe he was undertaking his first ever British tour, and his music was in the folky acoustic nit-picking guitar instrumental domain. He reminded me mostly of John Fahey and you could literally hear a pin drop in the venue.  

On a weekend in the middle of September we undertook a double header with Ride on the Friday following by a gig at Manchester Bridgewater Hall on the Saturday. It was a late summer type of evening, so the show was preceded by a couple of scoops in the Rain Bar beer garden.

Upon entry to the venue, we encountered a very civilised circular queue at the bar, which is somewhat synonymous with the establishment in general. We had a fine seat right above the stage and the act that night was the old troubadour Marc Almond who I was seeing for the first time.

Marc Almond on stage at Bridgewater Hall. Image Credit weshootmusic.com

He was born down the road in Southport and has been performing for around 50 years and initially came to prominence in Soft Cell in the early 1980’s. He had a horrendous motorbike crash in 2004 resulting in being a coma for a month. In 2018 he received an OBE for his services to arts and culture.

When he arrived on stage, he did outline that he had nearly cancelled the gig as he had a sore throat, but like the trooper he is, he carried on and you really could not notice that he had an ailment as he had a fine set of pipes for a 67-year-old. He was premiering a covers album and was playing no original tracks thus us a result he did not play my favourite track ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’.