Tag: Miles Kane

Liverpool Venues 33 to 35

I shall return this week to my ongoing review of the 2025 Liverpool Sound City event, with our next port of call being Liverpool Kazimier Stockroom. As I have discovered when writing these scouse based blogs their background stories of the venues never seem to be simple. So, this particular tale commences with the much touted original arty Kazimier venue in Wolstenholme Square.

The venue opened in 2007 in an old mirror-lined club owned by local boxer John Conteh and came complete with an octagonal dancefloor, outdoor space and a top-deck bar and it was the size of the Titanic. It finally bowed out in some particular style on New Years Eve 2015 after a self-created sci-fi themed Escape to Planet Kronos party with one hundred and eighty performers. A mere four months later alongside Nation, the original home of Cream, the whole area was razed to the ground under the banner of gentrification plans.

Kazimier Stockroom. Image Credit liverpooltheatres.com

A regular performer there was the in-house carnival techno act The Krunk Band. They chose not to perform on stage, instead they mingled into the crowd whilst booting out their tunes and included a mishmash of trumpets, percussions, barrel organ and accordions in their sound. Other bands to play there include Sleaford Mods, Blossoms, Buzzcocks, Miles Kane, Michael Head and The Harlequin Dynamite Matching Band.  

Then in 2016 the newly formed Kazimier Collective opened up a new venue on Regent Street near to the Stanley Dock Tobacco Warehouse. The three storey building comprises of two events spaces, the basement one called Substation, and some artist studios. It was named The Invisible Wind Factory and has a 1500 capacity. Fat White Family, Ride and the Orielles have played there, and it has also been used for daytime rollerdisco events, thereby invoking unwelcome memories of Cliff Richard and Frank Spencer!  

The Collective then opened up the Kazimier Stockroom which is a multipurpose small site with a 100 capacity and alongside being an intimate showcase for fledgling local and national bands they also host film screenings and theatre shows. It has an open courtyard area, and its name derives from its location adjacent to Kazimier Gardens.  

Upon our arrival it took us a moment to find the venue which was located just off from the outside area behind an unmarked wooden door, it was a busy enclosed space and was absolutely sweltering. On stage was a young R&B singer called Immi Dash who was born in Scotland to British and Trinidadian parents, raised between California and Slough and now resides in Liverpool, sounds like an eventful journey!  

Arts Club. Image Credit tagvenue.com

We then moved onto the nearby Liverpool Arts Club on Seel Street, a venue that has existed since 1928 and was before that date The Liverpool Royal Institution. Its original remit under the new banner was as a social club before morphing into a live music venue. Prior to its current moniker it was known also as The Barfly, The Masque and East Village Arts Club.

In the early part of 2023, like many other similar establishments it faced closure, but was subsequently thankfully saved from that ignominious fate by the Manchester based Tokyo Industries. That particular company also own Gorilla, The Deaf Institute and Factory 251 and brought that previous expertise and a major regeneration to this venture. Early gigs by The Wombats and Two Door Cinema Club served to cement its reputation back on the live circuit.

The venue has three individual rooms, the first is the lobby which is utilised as a club space with a capacity of 200 punters. The second is Liverpool Arts Club Loft which has a live maximum of 550 people. When we attended there, we saw a Manchester act called Cooper T who are a duo comprising of two producers Kong and TMNMS. They sported brown shell suits and matching balaclavas and were verging on the grime genre, not dissimilar to Sleaford Mods, a band who has always left me cold, though the crowd around me appeared to be lapping it up!

The Florentenes. Image Credit youtube.com

Along a linking corridor brought you to Liverpool Arts Club Theatre, which was my preferred venue of the two and has a capacity of 550 and the space reminded me of the old Preston Polytechnic venue. First up we saw a local singer called Neil Noa and then later in the day Florentenes. The latter three piece were from Manchester and astoundingly young with the two guitarists aged eighteen and the drummer only fifteen. They reminded me in parts of The View, early Strokes and The Vines and they created a very pleasing racket!  

Stockport Venues 15 to 17

In the Stockport suburb of Heaton Moor you will find the Stockport Moor Top public house. There was originally a batch of six houses that were built on that spot back in 1875 and named Belmont Terrace. In 1953 the Wilsons brewery obtained four, then swiftly demolished them and built the hostelry in their place.

For a spell it was owned by Steve Pilling who at the time owned the well renowned Damson restaurant across the road, but that has now long gone. The pub had a dubious reputation back in the day and more recent refurbishments have endeavoured to change the ‘housing estate pub’ look, though its appearance does remind me of the old 1980’s Preston boozers such as the Spindlemakers and the John O Gaunt.   

Spindlemakers pub in Preston. Image Credit bloggergoogleusercontent.com

They have a large partially covered outside area that is very well populated in the summer months, the inside can be a little soulless with a large open room, but they are always friendly behind the bar. They don’t normally have live music, but I struck lucky one night when I saw a local singer called Marvin performing.

If you then weave off down Green Lane, you reach six bonny self-detached cottages on the left. These are a group of almshouses (defined as originally founded by charity) which are known locally as the ‘Ainsworth Homes’ and were originally built in 1907.   

A right turn from there takes you to the Nursery Inn which at the rear contains a beer garden which overlooks a large bowling green. Opposite the pub is the Bowerham chippy which has proper old fashioned opening hours of 11.30am to 1.45pm and 4.30 – 8.30pm, the latter times surely enabling punters to pick up their fish supper on their bumble home! A downhill path then guides you through to the huge Stockport Pyramid roundabout.

Backtracking onto Green Road brings you to the Stockport Heaton Moor Sports Club. Within their extensive grounds there is contained a rugby, lacrosse, tennis and cricket club and they were originally formed in 1899. They also stage a monthly comedy club that is a sister initiative to the nearby Didsbury comedy club.  

Heaton Moor Sports Club. Image Credit themanc.com

My one and only attendance was on a sunny day to attend the annual beer festival in August 2025, with a cricket match in full flow when we arrived. They were also staging outdoor live music, and I was finally going to see the nattily named Reservoir Dads, who are a South Manchester covers band.

I have missed them thus far on their regular appearances at the Crown pub down the road, and totally unjustifiably had the hope that their name would imply some performance in the domain of Arthur Brown or Ozzy Osbourne in his bat biting stage! I could not have been much wider of the mark as after much faffing they finally hit the stage and were exceedingly limp and even had a mum in the band that day!     

I am now transporting you from there into the heart of the city centre and the grand old marketplace where there is a plethora of pubs surrounding the indoor market hall. One such hostelry was Stockport Doctor Feelgood, which was named after the band who were formed in Essex and gained their initial following on the renowned pub rock circuit in the early 1970’s. Their most famous track would be ‘Milk and Alcohol’.

Doctor Feelgood. Image Credit manchestersfinest.com

They remain an act to this day with a much changed line up, with previous members including the original singer David Brilleaux who went on to form the influential Stiff Records in 1976. Perhaps their most famous alumni would be John Andrew Wilkinson (more regularly known as Wilko Johnson) who developed a highly unusual percussive guitar sound by playing with his fingertips and not the standard plectrum. In 2011 he garnered a part on Game of Thrones where for a couple of series he played the mute executioner Ser Ilyn Payne.

In June 2021 the pub opened as a rock bar staging live music most nights a week, but due to rising costs it closed a couple of years later. It then reopened under a new venture Amp which then closed itself eighteen months later. During its tenure the likes of Bez, Clint Boon, Miles Kane and You Me at Six performed there. My personal single foray was to see Rock Doctors, a band I had previously witnessed at the aforementioned Crown.