Tag: Manchester Yes Pink Room

2023 Gigs – Part 1

Continuing the theme of previous years, I will now cover the 2023 gigs attended at venues already reviewed in previous blogs. Because I am sure you are desperate to know lets firstly cover the numbers bit! It turned out to be a record breaking year in that I attended 128 gigs in total which also encompassed 70 new venues.

So, I shall start with the familiar haunt of Manchester Academy 2 and cover my 41st and 42nd visits to that venue. In the cold depths of mid-winter in January Marcus and I headed there to witness the Delgados who are a four-piece band from Glasgow who produce some imaginative music. They formed in 1994 before disbanding in 2005 and then subsequently reformed in 2022 hence this comeback tour.

The Delgados. Image Credit nme.com

I had seen them once before on our honeymoon at Dublin Mean Fiddler in 1998 where they were on an excellent double bill with Nottingham’s Six By Seven. I thoroughly enjoyed their current incarnation as they cut an engaging presence on stage in front of a responsive crowd just glad to witness them back on the gig circuit and their tour culminated with a date in their home city.

The other attendance to Academy 2 also involved a further lengthy gap from my first sighting, in this case 20 years and one week exactly from when I witnessed the Northern Irish combo Therapy? at Preston Mill. Now to be fair I have always been fairly ambivalent about this band and their show on the night unfortunately didn’t alter my viewpoint.  

Prior to the gig there was an obligatory visit to the nearby mecca Manchester Big Hands where they periodically have live bands playing at the end of the room. That night I encountered a noisy Warrington psych rock band called Pray for Mojo who earlier in the year had graced the stage at Manchester Psych Fest. In 2022, they had released their debut album titled ‘Welcome to Mojopia’. They were supported by Swamp Kids.  

I shall now return to the Academy complex with a visit to Manchester Club Academy with the more than welcome return of the Raveonettes. The Copenhagen duo of Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo were back on the circuit after a 4 year sabbatical. They were in fine form and played a greatest hits set with my personal highlight being one of their early singles ‘That Great Love Sound’. They were supported by local noiseniks Dr Dr.   

The Raveonettes. Image Credit discogs

Prior to night one of my Mogwai triple bill (over four nights and two cities) Gill and I grabbed a table and had an aperitif in the Manchester Blues Kitchen Bar. The act on stage whilst we primed ourselves for the upcoming aural assault were called Cry Wolf.   

The next gig derived from my very learned musical twitter (I still call it twitter!) pal @parramaterial who recommended Black Doldrums on their latest tour that included a date at Manchester Gullivers. Thus, the troops were enlisted and four of us popped over to have a gander and they were wholly worthy of the effort. Black Doldrums are a North London trio who released their debut album ‘Dead Awake’ in 2022 and they created a hugely enjoyable psych shoegaze cacophony on the night.

Black Doldrums. Image Credit louderthanwar.com

In June I had a foray over to Manchester Didsbury Park Green for the summer festival where a lass called Sally Smith was playing.  The following week another twitter recommendation resulting in four of us attending Manchester Yes Pink Room to watch Screaming Females. Their driving force was Marissa Paternoster who initially formed the band in 2005 at a high school in New Jersey.

Obscure fact time, she was referenced as the 77th greatest guitarist of all time in the Spin magazine in 2012. They released eight albums in total, all on the terrifically named Don Giovanni record label. I happened to catch them and their very decent stagecraft on their final ever tour as they subsequently broke up later in the year. 

The next two gigs to cover took place at Manchester Ritz where Tony Dewhurst, Rick Clegg, Barry Jury and I (Gang of Four) went to watch the Gang of Four who entertained with their angular post-punk sound. In October we managed to purchase tickets to see the Pretenders and the eternally youthful Chrissie Hynde. Unusually, on arrival the queue snaked back to beyond the Sainsburys on the corner, but we managed to enter the establishment just in time for their excellent show and her voice still sounds terrific. She dedicated one song to Johnny Marr, who was in the audience watching on his birthday.  

Manchester Venues 118 to 120

A couple of months ago in February 2024 I undertook a solo Friday night foray into the city to attend a gig at the Manchester Yes venue.  I had noted prior to setting out that there was an additional performance taking place in the Manchester Yes Roof Terrace which tallied up as my third separate venue in that establishment.  So up the stairs I headed to the top floor to catch Keltio (Nassa) & Josh.

Manchester Yes Roof Terrace. Image Credit Manchester Evening News

On that same night, in a break between sets of the band I had gone to see, I sallied next door to pay a quick visit to Manchester Lass O Gowrie. I have previously paid a fulsome homage in an earlier blog to this venue, and I will not repeat myself here, but suffice to say I have an enduring affection for this venerable old public house. It has many original features and was named after the title of a poem scribed by Scottish poet Lady Caroline Nairne.

The one element I had missed was the opportunity to catch live music there. This omission was rectified on this night by a performance from Tom Fairview and also by earlier performances in February 2022 from the Blues Boys and Tom Mooney who all played towards the back of the pub near the entrance to the beer garden area. To square the circle the latter performance referenced was prior to attending a Nordic Giants show at the Pink Room venue in Yes.

So, one further tale pertaining to Lass O Gowrie if I may. One of my very learned Twitter muso contacts Cath Aubergine brought to my attention a remarkable and unexpected gig she attended there in 2012. There was apparently a monthly residency around that time run by Valentine Records called TAGO>MAGO>, at their final event they became aware of the fact that Damo Suzuki of Can fame was in the country and remarkably managed to persuade him to play a backstreet pub in Manchester.

Lass O Gowrie pub with the Yes venue in the foreground. Image Credit oxfordroadcorridor.com

In my previous Lass O Gowrie blog, I told the story of seeing the cast of Coronation Street in residence at the pub. This must have been a running theme as on the night of the Damo gig the cast of Waterloo Road had a bit of a do there and some of the crew were still in the venue when the gig took place.

When you reach the bottom of the steps adjacent to Manchester Oxford Road station you discover a triangle of pubs, The Salisbury, Thirsty Scholar and Manchester Grand Central. The latter named is a four-storey building located on Oxford Road directly opposite the Principal Hotel. The pub is placed within what was known in 1820 as ‘Little Ireland’, an exceedingly poverty hit slum area at that time. In 1900 the landlord Peter Bostock was listed as one of the licensees who were suspected of selling unadulterated beer which resulted in arsenic poising causing 70 deaths.

It has had many names over the years, Oxford Wine Bar, The Oxford, Schooner Inn, Cork & Screw, The Shady Lady and Beef & Barley (a Steak House). The current name was based on the proximity to the nearby station and a nod to the more well known New York train station. They used to have a club downstairs called Subway which closed in 2002 but there is current talk of possibly reopening it.  The pub was a regular stopping point for punters visiting prior to attending the now defunct Jillys Rockworld nightclub.

Grand Central pub. Image Credit myhospitalitysolutions.co.uk

The musical genre of the establishment is strictly in the rock/metal domain, similar to the Pub in Lancaster. They used to hold a Tuesday night Battle for Bloodstock event with local bands competing for a slot at the Bloodstock Metal Festival in Derby. Additionally, bands play free of charge on a Thursday though that seems to have thinned out in recent years.

I have attended three times, and they are all either before or after scheduled gigs at nearby venues. My first attendance was in November 2012 prior to a Tame Impala gig at the Ritz and the band on stage that night were called Gridlocked. I visited four months later and saw Deformation of Man from Sheffield and their heavy sound had them being hailed as the Steel City’s answer to Lamb of God. My final appearance was in July 2018 where I witnessed another noisy combo called Prometheus.