Tag: Off The Record

Manchester Venues 68 and 69 Gullivers NQ – Part 1

Located squarely at the top end of Oldham Street you would find the distinctive green fronted Gullivers NQ, one of the stalwart venues of the Northern Quarter. It has a fair old history dating back to 1865 and has an interesting background, at one point existing as a jazz club and a transvestite bar.

It has had several names, once a Wilsons brewery house called the Albert Hotel, then latterly The Grenadier before the ever-reliable JW Lees brewery took ownership and renamed it Gullivers sometime in the 1970’s.

Gullivers NQ. Image Credit tasteofmanchester.com

I have discovered that in Manchester there is a proliferation of small breweries, many around the back streets near Piccadilly station, however a lot of them, for example Cloudwater serve cloudy and citra beers. Though I would never turn one of these down if offered, because that would be downright foolish, I do prefer the more traditional ales and thus JW Lees served in Gullivers and a more local pub nearby me, the Parrswood hits that very spot.    

It is an archetypal grass roots venue and alongside live music, has spoken word, theatre, film screenings and comedy events. The pub has a homely traditional bar leading you into a back room and downstairs venue. The pub sits squarely across the road from another principal and sister venue the Castle.

It has regularly been utilised as a hub point for picking up tickets for multi wrist band events such as Carefully Planned, Fair Play and Off the Record festivals, these festivals accounting for many of my attendances at gigs in this establishment.

It contains two venues, the first accessed down a thin corridor at the rear of the building is the Gullivers NQ Lounge, mainly for acoustic acts with a capacity of 40, though it feels highly populated when only half that number are in residence.

I have attended there four times, the first at Dot-to-Dot Festival in 2016 to see Lyon Apprentice, a folk duo originally from Melbourne who were residing in Manchester at this time and recording in their home studio. 

Later that year, we uncovered a diamond by witnessing an early performance by Katherine Priddy, a folk musician from Birmingham. She was a captivating engaging presence with a distinctive guitar style, dark lyrics and hypnotic voice, a rare treat!

Her stock rose exponentially in the intervening years with her debut ep receiving considerable airplay on Radio 2 and 6Music with folk behemoth Richard Thompson naming it as his ‘best thing he has heard all year’ in MOJO magazine, being so singularly impressed he invited her out onto a support slot on his upcoming tour.

Katherine Priddy. Image Credit birminghamreview.net

Her first appearance at Cambridge Folk Festival garnered her with the Christian Raphael Award, a prize awarded to one deserving developing artist from the festival each year. Her debut album ‘The Eternal Rocks Beneath’ received critical acclaim and she then backed that up with a sold-out national tour.   

Eighteen months later I witnessed singer-songwriter Kate Anita, who around that time released a single called ‘Human’ accompanied by a documentary video which showcased her interpretation of the culture and community within her home city Manchester.  

My final attendance there was to see local Manchester artist Lindsay Munroe, who produced some honest unflinching music with strong vocals epitomised by her debut single ‘Split’. I heard shades of Mazzy Star and Sharon Van Etten in there, the latter I later discovered is a big fan of her output.

Manchester Venue 31 – Night and Day Part 1

Firmly ensconced in my Top 5 Manchester venues is the Night and Day Café situated halfway down Oldham Street, next to the Dry Bar and opposite the legendary Piccadilly Records in the Northern Quarter (NQ). The venue opened originally as a chip shop in 1991 in what at the point of time was a disreputable area of town, before gradually evolving into a music venue.

The Night and Day capacity is 250 and like many small venues has served to be a launch pad for bands on the ladder up to much larger venues. Local band Elbow were a mainstay in their early days and to support the venue in the current pandemic are scheduled to play a Back to the Roots gig there later this year.  

It is recognised as the first real seminal gig venue in NQ and a forerunner on which the whole area was rebuilt upon. This has resulted in the present-day position where there is a tsunami of small independent venues and bars located in the streets and byways adjacent to the venue.

See the source image
Manchester Night and Day venue. Image Credit blog.ticketweb.co.uk

Despite the venue being a mainstay in the area for 30 years, some punter in 2013 moved into the flats above the venue and then inexplicably had the temerity to complain about the decibel levels. A petition with 74,000 signatures was raised in support of the venue and thankfully the council saw sense and only applied some conditions to have a complaints log and set up ongoing quarterly meetings with nearby residents.     

It has a fine geographical location with a 15-minute jaunt to either Piccadilly or Victoria stations to catch the last train home.  

The Night and Day lives up to its name and operates as a café during the day with continental tables outside to watch the comings and goings. It then has an hour crossover period early evening and morphs into a paid gig venue at night.

The set-up is a long thin room with a long bar on the left, DJ stand to the right and the stage down at the bottom. It is a very intimate setting where you can stand right up front though you must carefully navigate the wooden pillars. Alternatively, you can even have the unusual vantage of being up close and personal at the left-hand side of the stage which then leads onwards to the downstairs loos.

There are certain places where I have developed traditions on the drink fronts, any pub up in Kirkcudbright in Scotland (base for Wickerman Festivals) generally incites a Guinness and Raiders nightclub in Preston for many years had Murphy’s Stout as the drink of choice. For Night and Day however, it has always been a cold bottle of Budvar!  

Image result for Budvar Bottle. Size: 204 x 204. Source: www.drinksupermarket.com
A cheeky Budvar! Image Credit www.drinksupermarket.com

I have attended 17 gigs there in totality, placing it at No 7 on my most visited venue list. Ten of those gigs were attended either by blagging our way in following other gigs prior to the last train or part of multi event festivals such as Carefully Planned, Dot to Dot or Off the Record. Quite often it was deliberately the last venue of the night as it is always a cracking place to finish in!