Tag: Mighty Wah!

Lancaster Venues 20 to 22

This week, I am continuing the tale of my inaugural visit to the annual Lancaster Music Festival on a bruisingly cold day in October 2023. The next haunt on our list was Lancaster Cornerhouse located on the junction of New Street and Church Street; a stone’s throw away from the Sun Hotel. The Cornerhouse, formerly Paulo Gianni’s and Sphere Bar, went through a major transformation in 2018.

The driving force of the reformation was Gemma Rowlands from nearby Cockerham, who had previously worked at the site in Paulo Gianni’s days. She then converted it into a gin style palace with a restaurant with accompanying comprehensive menu, a plethora of craft beers and live music offerings from Thursday through to Sunday.  

Lancaster Cornerhouse. Image Credit lancastercornerhouse.co.uk

When we arrived, the place was extremely busy, and we navigated the queues to obtain an aperitif from the bar. We grabbed a seat before being politely moved on as we were inadvertently squatting in the restaurant area! On a small stage in the corner of the main room we encountered a local three-piece band called the Beets. They had ensured they would have maximum exposure across the day by volunteering to play a remarkable seven venues across the city in an overall time span of eleven hours!       

A five-minute walk away brought us to our next port of call which was the Lancaster Royal Kings Arms Hotel.  The place has considerable history in that the Grade II listed building was originally constructed in 1625 and revamped in 1879 after a habitual great fire (arsonists abounded everywhere in that era!). Many royals stayed there and in its early days it was owned by King Louis XIV.

The local archives contain a letter that was sent from Carlisle to the hotel on 11th September 1857 requesting that a room be booked there for a certain Mr Charles Dickens who would be accompanied by his friend Wilkie Collins. They also requested a comfortable dinner (tea in the North!) for two persons at half past 5.    

Lancaster Royal Kings Arms Hotel. Image Credit blog.conferences-uk.org.uk

They were in a midst of a walking tour of Cumberland at that stage which was chronicled the following month in Dickens ‘Household Words’ under the title of ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices’. The hotel is also cited as the location that Dickens scribed ‘The Tale of the Bridal Chamber’ and there remains to this day a ‘Dickens Suite’.

We had been in splinter groups for a couple of hours, but we all reconvened here. There was an excellent band on stage called Native Cult who were also playing several shows on the day. The duo hailed from Barrow and had a pot pourri of influences in their sound. Following there we grabbed some much needed tea and a sit down at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant next door.   

Our next destination was Lancaster Atticus on King Street which initially came into being in 1974 as a bookshop coffee bar above Probe Records in Liverpool. Probe Records is an interesting tale with its initial commencement as an independent underground/hippy establishment and it then morphed into a punk site when it moved to a new location, as a result of their new address being in close proximity to the legendary Eric’s venue.

Many future musicians were employed there including Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Paul Rutherford, Pete Wylie from the Mighty Wah! and Pete Burns from Dead or Alive. The final named was renowned as faithfully adopting the house ethos of issuing ‘constructive criticism’ when parlaying with customers and thus influencing their selections! Julian Cope references the shop in his ‘Head On’ autobiography and the band meetings that took place there with Ian McCulloch when they were in The Crucial Three together.

They set up a record label Probe Plus whose most famous signing was undoubtedly Birkenhead’s Half Man Half Biscuit, a band who refreshingly took a break from the music business between 1987 and 1990 as they didn’t want to become ‘too successful’! They also famously turned down a slot on The Tube Channel 4 TV show as it clashed with a Friday night Tranmere Rovers match.

Half Man Half Biscuit. Image Credit pinterest.co.uk

The shop struggled for a spell through the initial downloading era, but the vinyl renaissance has boosted their turnover, and the record store remains to this day in its current location in the Bluecoat Arts Centre.

The Atticus name was chosen as it has literary connotations but is also useful alphabetically, from a commercial viewpoint, on any book shop listings. They opened a second shop in Lancaster in the 1990’s which subsequently closed in 2001.

The original owner Tom Flemons then returned to the area in 2014 to reopen the store as a not for profit enterprise supporting the Tasikoki Animal Rescue Centre in Indonesia where he had previously volunteered. At this stage it also expanded to incorporate a coffee bar. When we wandered past there was a band called Bay Big playing who are a large host of musicians who play a repertoire of Swing, Jazz and Latin.    

Stockport Venue 1 – The Heatons

With the Manchester HS2 leg now officially aborted and as a result potential funds being freed up for other transport projects, there have been increasing rumours about extending the current metro terminus of East Didsbury all the way into Stockport. I believe this proposed route would cross over the River Mersey and traverse in via Cheadle.

The East Didsbury metro stop with its large car park is my nearest station and lies about 20 minutes’ walk away. From there you can begin to navigate up Didsbury Road past the Dog and Partridge pub and at that point you cross over into Stockport.  

The next touchpoint is the petrol station with an M&S attached where during the dark days of Covid, one of our treats was to visit there and purchase the frites and the fresh strawberries with meringues!  

You then reach the Griffin pub which is an archetypal old-fashioned boozer run by the local Holts brewery, which remains as one of the cheapest beers in Britain. It was built in 1831 and still contains two ornate shuttered bars and other original features.

As you continue up the hill you reach Heaton Mersey Bowl on the right which is a large green area containing a couple of football pitches. I recently discovered that a Moor Fest event was held there in 2005 were Mr Scruff, Tom Hingley, Mighty Wah! Clint Boon, A Certain Ratio and Howard Marks were on the bill. Viewing it now, it would be a natural amphitheatre for such a shindig, not dissimilar in layout to Avenham Park in Preston, but the records show that was a one-off singular event.

Moorfest Flyer. Image Credit mdmarchive.co.uk

If you continue down to the right, you arrive at Burnage Rugby Club where alongside the club they have a combined football/golf pitch and putt course. A couple of years ago they held an open-air movie night on the pitch with a screening of A Star is Born featuring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga. When we visited Australia, we witnessed people queuing for a Rocky showing in an open-air cinema in glorious sunshine in Sydney Harbour. Our event was not in the same league, it was admittedly reasonably well organised, but the issue was the apocalyptic rain, and it was absolutely bloody freezing!

Back on Didsbury Road you then reach the Conservative Club where my political persuasion has ensured I have never crossed the threshold of any such establishment anywhere in the country. Back in Preston, there was once a family christening at the Con Club off Moor Park, and I was genuinely ill and could not attend but at least my ailment took a tricky decision off the table! The local club does have musical acts on, and my gig venue ‘addiction’ was briefly piqued, but the horrific calibre of acts, for example a Michael Buble tribute act at £20 per pop quickly quashed that thought!

Further up on the right is the Crown pub which has a raised beer garden which is a sun trap in the summer months, and it is a pleasure to sit there and while away a few hours with a Dizzy Blonde (the beer!). It is a proper old-fashioned establishment with wood beams, and I believe they used to do a fine Sunday lunch, but they have not had food on since pre-covid.

The Crown pub. Image Credit blogspot.com

There is an extremely steep cobbled incline by the side of the pub leading down to the river that bears an uncanny resemblance to the ‘Hovis Hill’ from the old 1970’s adverts, though the filming was actually undertaken on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury in Dorset. The hostelry was also used for a pub quiz scene in a recent episode of Cold Feet with the characters played by James Nesbitt and Robert Bathurst having a scrap on the aforementioned street.

A little further is St Winifred’s School where their choir had a moment of fame in 1980 with their number one Christmas single ‘There’s No Quite Like Grandma’, beating tracks by John Lennon and Jona Lewie to the top of the chart. The choir included the future Coronation Street actress Sally Lindsay.     

Back up opposite the Heaton Mersey Bowl is the Stockport Heatons. When I first visited at the back end of 2017 hunting a pub to watch a PNE match it was an interesting establishment called the Frog and Railway. Shortly after it closed and reopened under its current name and was more in the gastropub mould. When sampling some food there in August 2021 there was a local act called Heatons Jazz Band providing a soundtrack.

Before I go this week I must add my homage to the genius songwriting talent of Shane MacGowan. I initially missed the Pogues playing at the Paradise Club in Preston in front of about thirty people in February 1985 despite being in town that night and my brother trying to persuade me to attend. Oh, young foolish 16-year-old Jimmy!

Shane MacGowan. Image Credit withradio.org

I saw them three times after that with the second at the long-gone Manchester International 2 in December 1986 remaining one of my Top 20 ever gigs. They were extraordinary and I never since seen an occasion where about 90% of the audience were dancing, creating a huge communal euphoric experience. If only there was a way to bottle or freeze those moments in time!

I am sitting here misty-eyed listening to the marauding intent of ‘Boys from the Country Hell’ and the warped beauty of ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’ to name but two of his astounding canon of material. RIP Shane – ‘I Will Have a Pint With You Sir’!