Tag: Mogwai

Liverpool Venue 4 – L2

On the November 2001 Mogwai British tour there were rather unusually for them no Manchester dates scheduled, thus plans were hatched to watch them in Wolverhampton and the following week in Liverpool. So, on Friday 09/11/01 we boarded the Northern Ivor the Engine express to Liverpool Lime Street.

John Dewhurst and I deposited our overnights bags at our accommodation and proceeded to have a sally around a few Liverpool bars with Uncle George joining up with us later after he had finished his work shift. When meandering down Matthew Street I unexpectedly heard the hollering of my name, which always throws you when you are out of town. The source of the shouting was a mate from Preston called Pete Lester whose latest band Bridge were playing the famous Cavern that very evening.

We joined him for a bevy in the said venue, whilst perusing the tiny old stage where the young Beatles played, before checking out the back room where a more modern stage had now been erected.  In the final pub before the gig, we were subject to some barracking from a group of Everton fans regarding our status as Preston fans. In retrospect, this all seemed highly ironic when six months later they came to poach our young manager, David Moyes!

Liverpool Cavern. Image Credit thousandwonders.net

The venue that night was Liverpool L2, situated on Hotham Street.It latterly changed its name to Carling Academy and then O2 Academy. There are two halls with respective capacities of 1200 and 500 and I am not sure which one we attended, but more likely to be the smaller one at that point of Mogwai’s career. The venue had a decent pedigree as within the couple of years preceding my visit Mercury Rev, Moby, Flaming Lips, Travis and Muse supported by Coldplay graced the stage there.

My brother was also in attendance at the gig whilst visiting friends in Southport and was aiming to surprise me, but we ended up missed it each other!

I have given this some thought and stand by the assertion that this remains my favourite ever Mogwai performance. It wasn’t the noisiest I have seen them as that would be surpassed by Glasgow and Sheffield gigs, but it was the fact that the sound was so crystal even the quiet elements were loud. It was further assisted by an excellent relaxed venue and their choice of set list and as ever at that stage they finished with their twenty minute ‘hymn’, ‘My Father My King’.

Post-gig, we considered going to the cavernous Krazyhouse nightclub, but deferred on that option, subsequently visiting the club for my only appearance a couple of years later.  Our preferred alternate was to purloin some supper in China Town.

Liverpool Krazyhouse nightclub. Image Credit Liverpool Echo

When walking back to our hotel, a young chap pulled up in a car next to us. It became instantly obvious he was stoned up to the eyeballs and was babbling incoherently to us before driving off. We allowed him a very safe distance before we set off again!   

Our digs were the Campanile hotel on the docks, a somewhat dubious establishment, where we got very little sleep due to the noise levels of other residents. So, the morning dawned finding us hungover and dehydrated, a trio of bumbling nodders traversing back to the station.

On arrival, our dilapidated states were not helped by the fire alarm going off and an evangelist punter who approached us and coined phrases such as ‘you can’t be a winner if you are a sinner’. I had no energy to compose a cutting riposte and thankfully my withering look served to keep him at bay!    

When we landed back in Preston, we refuelled with a couple of pints and a homemade curry in the Welly pub on Glovers Court before heading home for some much-needed sleep.

Manchester Venues 63 and 64

Located deep in the Northern Quarter there used to reside the Cord Bar. It was situated on Dorsey Street off Tib Street, almost directly behind the Gullivers public house. Apparently at the start of the millennium, it was one of the ‘go to’ places in NQ as it was cited as a favoured DJ venue and like many in this area of town was a visiting spot for an embryonic Elbow.

It suffered declining numbers over the years and a reboot attempt under the name of NYQ in 2018 was unsuccessful, however I visited its latest incarnation a couple of weeks ago prior to watching the Courettes at Night and Day. It is now called Alvarium with a restaurant called Lazy Tony’s Lasagneria where we had a table by the old stage!   

I visited there three times under the auspices of the Dot to Dot and Carefully Planned multi venue festivals and quite liked the establishment as it always reminded of an archetypal New York diner style bar you would see on the American cop shows. The bands played in the downstairs bar, and this could be accessed via a choice of stairs at the front or rear of the venue.

Cord Bar. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

My first attendance on 19/10/14 was accessed from the latter steps and the acts played in an alcove where rather quaintly and somewhat niffily the space for the small number of punters was located outside the lavatories! The artist was a young local acoustic artist called John Ainsworth who released his debut album the following year.

When I landed there a year later, I discovered the stage was in the same place but was now thankfully facing the opposite way into a larger less pungent room. We saw Howie Reeve, who is a self-titled acoustic bass troubadour from the South of Glasgow. In May 2016, on my final visit I witnessed another local musician called Sam Frost. 

Nearby in the famous Afflecks Palace block there is a fine basement bar and live music venue. The club has had a couple of entrances, either from Oldham Street or Tib Street. It has also had a few name changes over the years, originally a singular 500 capacity music venue called Moho, then a hybrid site called Manchester Dive NQ. It is now called Dive Bar and Grill and is more focussed on being a food/sports bar and it appears that live music is now longer on the roster, and it is a late-night DJ location only.   

My first visit in April 2012 was in the Moho moniker era and we accessed the gig from the Tib Street entrance, and I thought the place had a decent layout.

Manchester Dive NQ. Image Credit venuescanner.com

Now, from the starting point of being a humongous Mogwai fan I have always searched out other like-minded bands positioned in the post-rock genre. However, a few of these have turned out to be in the Mogwai lite category, God is an Astronaut and I so I Watch from Afar spring to mind.

An exception to this was the band that night with the vaguely threatening but musically promising name of This Will Destroy You from Texas. They were an excellent live band, and it looks like the band are still operational and under their revised name of TWDY they are scheduled to play the ArcTangent festival later in 2022. It was also jointly my 150th different venue and my 150th gig in Manchester.  

After the change to Dive NQ where they moved the stage to the front of the venue, I attended four other times between 2016 and 2019. The first was to see a local blues-rock band called Turrentine Jones. The second was to see a young Sheffield band called Exhort, who were perhaps unsurprisingly heavily influenced by Arctic Monkeys. This was prior to attending a Julia Jacklin gig.  

On the penultimate visit whilst at the Dot-to-Dot festival we saw local act China Lane led by Reuben Hester who apparently after the band disbanded appeared on the reality TV programme Little Mix the Search. This was just before walking across the road to Night and Day to catch a young astounding Fontaines DC for the first time. My final attendance there was to see Saytr Play.