Tag: Mogwai

Gateshead Gigs – Part 1

I have travelled up to Newcastle many times with work traversing regularly over the scenic A66 from Kirkby Stephen to Scotch Corner where at the services by the roundabout they used to have the coldest M&S in the whole of Christendom. It became a tradition on those trips that from that very store I would purchases a Roast Beef and Horseradish Sauce sandwich!

Despite these sojourns I surprisingly never attended a gig in the Toon until 2011. When Mogwai announced their tour for that year we naturally hit the Manchester date on 26/02 and decided to follow that up with the Gateshead gig the following evening. Thus, on the Sunday the established Mogwai trio of Uncle George, John Dewhurst and I headed from Preston back to Manchester where we had returned from 12 hours earlier and then caught the onward train to Newcastle Central.

Mogwai on stage. Image Credit The Upcoming.

Whilst on the train, a chap was asleep in an aisle seat opposite and the person next to him nudged him as we were approaching the next station and he needed to exit the train, the aisle chap proceeded to open his eyes for a millisecond and then fell asleep again. In the end we had drag him to his feet to allow the other person out, Mr Sleepy then bumbled about briefly with us enquiring about his welfare and eventually got at the station himself. To paraphrase an old Northern idiom, ‘there is nowt so queer as folk’!

On arrival we decamped to our digs at the Premier Inn at the Quayside. Shortly after in a local boozer we watched the culmination of Birmingham’s dramatic win over Arsenal in the League Cup Final, and also on that day was a World Cup cricket match between England and India resulting in a tie as both teams scored a remarkable 338 runs each. I also recalled us visiting the Vineyard pub where literally the only beer option was Duvel, so we swiftly headed elsewhere.

We were navigating the city for the first time and despite everything I had previously heard about Newcastle and the Bigg Market etc we seem to end up in a blind spot and encountered a dearth of boozers but did eventually find a couple of watering holes.

The gig was in Gateshead Sage Stage Two within the futuristic looking building, which was facing us on the opposite side of the River Tyne. The Sage was opened in 2004 at a cost of £70m as a concert and music education hub and links in with Gateshead Quays development alongside the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and the Millennium Bridge. Besides a regular roster of gigs from every genre it has hosted party political and NUS conferences.

The venue is home to the Royal Northern Sinfonia Orchestra and has three concert spaces, Sage One with capacity of 1640, Sage Two with 600 capacity and a smaller rehearsal hall.

Gateshead Sage. Image Credit Pinterest

It was a very impressive setting and within Stage Two we were encased in the small standing area right down the front within the maximum blast radius of the sonic noise emanating from the stage. ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’ was my fave track on the night and we topped the evening off with a curry in a nearby restaurant. The following morning, we bizarrely nearly got mistaken for some local dignitaries for a TV interview outside the hotel, but after sidestepping that we headed for the train home.     

Manchester Venue 82 – The Castle Hotel

The Manchester Castle Hotel located at the top end of Oldham Street was built in the late 18th century and began trading as a public house in 1816 and it is estimated the grand olde world interior complete with Victorian tiles and mosaic floor dates as far back as 1897. It has had many previous monikers including The Crown and Sceptre, The Crown and Anchor and The Clock Face.

Manchester Castle Hotel. Image Credit Flickr.

There has always been a musical ethos within the pub incorporating the involvement of John McBeith who went on to launch the Roadhouse venue, fondly remembered by me as being the first venue I ever saw Mogwai. The Castle was also the site of a famous John Peel interview with Ian Curtis in 1979 and Fall’s Mark E Smith also chose the pub as a meeting point for some of his abrasive monologue interviews.

The pub fell on tough times and closed in 2008, before subsequently being refurbished and reopened with a linkage to its sister pub Gulliver’s across the road and has gone from strength to strength since that date.

Despite being a fairly small hostelry, they have incorporated an eighty-capacity venue off the corridor to the rear of the pub. Facing the small door entrance is the mixing desk and the stage is to the right, and I must say it is one of the most cramped areas I have encountered when a gig is sold out!

I have attended eleven gigs in total with only the first one being where I have paid a singular ticket to see the band, the others being part of other multi wrist band events such as Carefully Planned and Dot to Dot Festivals.

Thus, on 23/10/11 I saw Veronica Falls who were a four-piece formed in London in 2009. They formed from previous bands The Royal We and Sexy Kids and are still active though sadly their drummer Patrick Doyle died in 2018. They first came to my attention via their excellent debut single ‘Love in a Graveyard’ which was a combination of C86 meets the Raveonettes, and they were good fun in a live setting.   

Veronica Falls. Image Credit Clash

Three years later, Space Blood were in town, a two piece slightly jokey instrumental combo from Chicago and I would place them in the math rock vein, and they have a couple of albums on the books. The following year I witnessed bands called Face, Georgio Tuna  and The Stay Aways, an all-female four piece based in Brighton and London. 

In 2017 I saw a young rapper called Tobi Sunmola from Nigeria, who moved from the country of his birth at the age of 17 and is now living in Manchester. The following year I saw Grand Prix and Thyla, the latter being a four-piece dream pop band who all met while attending university in Brighton. When one of their original guitarists departed in 2021, they decided to call it quits and their final ever gig was at the Hope and Ruin in Brighton on 25/05/22.

In May 2019 I saw another four-piece band called SUN SILVA who initially got together whilst at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Six months later I witnessed Winnie and the Rockettes, a funk and soul band who have supported Chaka Khan and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and have also headlined the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. My latest and only post-Covid visit thus far was in April 22 to see a Manchester band called Another Country $$$$.