Tag: Oasis

Manchester Venues 52 to 53

Located close by our present abode in South Manchester is the large Burnage Tesco store, where I have frequented numerous times to purchase my frozen peas. Near the entrance, they periodically have had an admittedly ramshackle but ultimately worthy Cancer Research band playing, who I have witnessed four times.  

As you traverse out of the shop to the traffic lights at Burnage, a right turn into Burnage Lane and a further right takes you into Cranwell Drive. This street contains the childhood home of the Oasis Gallagher brothers. This is almost opposite the Royal Tandoori Indian where they serve the best onion bhajis in the city! Other notable Burnage residents are actors David Threlfall, Max Beesley and John Thaw.

Heading across Kingsway (A34) brings you to Burnage train station which sits on the Manchester Piccadilly/Manchester Airport/Crewe line and when Northern trains are reliable it is a 10-minute journey to the city centre.

Kingsway was initially built in 1928 and initially contained a tram line in the centre of the dual carriageway. It is an extremely busy road but one of the enduring pandemic images for me is that from March to June 2020 it was virtually deserted, almost resembling a Walking Dead set, minus the zombies!

On 28/04/1910 the nearby Barcicroft fields were witness to the completion of the first ever powered flight in a biplane from London to Manchester. It won the French pilot Louis Palihan a £10,000 prize from the Daily Mail. Two special trains were chartered to Burnage station for spectators and many others waited through the night to witness history. 

After the station, there is a row of shops and takeaways including Sifters Record shop where the Gallagher boys bought their first vinyl and the owner who is spookily called Mr Sifter is referenced in the lyrics to ‘Shakermaker’, the second track off their debut album. The shop was also referenced in Liam’s Pretty Green fashion label campaign and is a regular stop on the Manchester Music Tour bus.

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Sifters Records. Image Credit atlasobscura.com

A random Gallagher grouse of mine is their perceived lifetime dotage to Manchester City. I don’t doubt their fanaticism however they famously left before the end of the play-off game v Gillingham in 1999, assuming they would lose before their miraculous recovery to win the match. Now, as a PNE fan who arguably have suffered more than any other club in the play offs, all I would say is despite those continual defeats, I have always been there at the end to applaud my team off the pitch!

On the other side of Fog Lane, you will find the rather fabulous Reasons to be Cheerful beer café and real ale bar. The bar opened in January 2017 and is named after the Ian Dury track and is the self-styled best bar in the Kingdom of Burnage and who am I to dispute that worthy claim! I am so relieved it has survived the pandemic, it is a cosy, friendly venue and highly recommended and we visit when we can.  

Reasons to be cheerful bar. Image Credit reasonsbeercafe.co.uk

A left turn then leads you to the Parrs Wood pub and behind there on School Lane resides St Catherine’s Club attached to St Catherine’s Church and School. They previously sporadically had music events such as Clint Boon DJ sets, but they now have an excellent comedy night once a month.

It is also the site for the annual Didsbury Beer Festival which is a superb event and utilises most of the school area. Like many events they have been pandemic affected and they had to undertake a takeaway event in 2020 and a reduced capacity event in 2021. I am now a proud owner of one of their Beer Festival glasses. I attended the full event in 2018 and within there I saw the James O’Hara Blues band from Leeds.

Preston Venue 23 – The Mill Part 1

There used to be a plethora of pubs in the Plungington/Brook Street area of the city, many such as the Royal Oak, the Tanners, Plungington Tavern, General Havelock, The Cottage and the Brookhouse have all now bitten the dust.

Around the corner from there is Aqueduct Street where there used to be a couple of further boozers, Prince Consort a Whitbread house run by an ex-wrestler which closed in the 90’s. The other being the Lime Kiln, a small, homely pub that subsequently turned into a slightly chaotic Chinese restaurant. Located between those two hostelries was a landmark Preston venue called the Mill.  

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The Lime Kiln pub. Image Credit Flickr.

For about three years around 2003-2005 this venue burned very brightly and attracted some big indie names to an unprepossessing back street venue. It is located near a West Coastline railway bridge and opposite a dance club I cannot recall the name of but subsequently become a LGBTQ venue called the Boiler House in 2019.

It was originally a venue between 1993 and 1996 called the Mill where Oasis and Pulp played early gigs, annoyingly I have also just discovered Buffalo Tom played there in 1993, which I was wholly unaware of at the time. It then had different signage under Club Sugar and the Marquee before closing in 2002. A year later the owners of Leeds Cockpit were looking to open a gig site in the North West and chose this location under its original name. The opening of a bigger rival venue called 53 Degrees precipitated its subsequent downfall in about 2007 as Preston was not big enough to justify two main venues, I believe it is still operational as a recording studio.

There were steps leading up to the entrance which brought you into the centre of the venue with a large dance floor, stage to the right and a long bar facing opposite. Somewhat bizarrely in about 2005 they launched a split room approach to try and create a separate bar and gig area which personally did not work for me. On non-gig nights they opened as a nightclub which I frequented a few times, and this was where Paddy Finch and I used to pogo around the dancefloor.  

This former cotton mill in Aqueduct Street has undergone a number of changes as a venue and has recent incarnations, featuring a Shisha bar and the newest addition the Escape Room Preston, where players take part in prison-break type experience. The Mill opened as a nightclub/music club focusing on alternative music in 1998
Preston Mill venue. Image Credit Lancashire Evening Post.

I saw 15 gigs there in totality which places it 8th on the all-time visited venue list and joint 2nd in the Preston venues list. I attended there twice in its original incarnation. The first in 1995 to see Cement, which was a band formed by lead vocalist Chuck Mosley who was previously in Faith No More and the legendary and influential Bad Brains. I recall them creating a rambunctious slab of noisy garage rock.  

My second appearance was the following year was to see a Battle of the Bands event and we witnessed Wunjo Station, Tripitaka, King Mambo and Fervid.

There was a seven-year hiatus before my next visit in 2003 at which point it was becoming increasingly evident that the venue was beginning to attract a decent calibre of bands to play there. I missed an early performance by Snow Patrol as I was attending an alternate gig that night, doubly regretful as I was a big fan of the material produced by their spin off band Reindeer Section, especially their terrific second album Son of Evil Reindeer.

On 23/09/03 the Swedish band Wannadies were in town and they produced an excellent set with their quirky lead singer Par Wiksten in full flow. It was a poignant gig for me as I was still recovering from a particularly unpleasant sustained bout of shingles and some noisy poppy guitars only served to aid my recovery!