Tag: Psyblings

Manchester Venues 23 to 25

Situated halfway down Oldham Street next to the Dry Bar is the Mint Lounge. I have visited there six times and all those attendances have been part of a variety of multi wristband events.

It was an interesting venue as it is a basement nightclub in its normal ‘day job’ role. Upon entry you head down two flights of stairs which opens into a bar area before heading through the stage. The loos are an adventure as to access the Gents you walk through the Ladies which I am sure will have generated some interesting banter in the past.

My first visit was to see Mimas on 19/10/14 who were a decent Danish post rock band. The following year we went to see the highly touted Kirin Leonard who Marc Reilly had been extolling. Now maybe we missed something but the three of us in attendance were significantly underwhelmed and we scampered off after 3-4 songs to watch something more enjoyable.

In May 2016 I saw Will Joseph Cook, a pop artist from Tunbridge Wells. Later that year we ensured we were in situ to catch a full set by PSYBLINGS. At a previous event I had only caught a couple of tracks. They were in the garage rock genre and they terrific and exuded so much energy into their performance. We had a parlay with them afterwards and they were lovely down to earth lads.

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PSYBLINGS. Image Credit emergingindiebands.com

A couple of years after I saw Joel Baker from Nottingham and my final attendance was to see Alice Jemima, a singer songwriter from Devon.

Further down Oldham Street is the Central Methodist Hall and this venue was for a couple of years the ticket distribution point for the Dot to Dot Festival. At the 2016 Dot to Dot festival myself and Dave Keane were endeavouring to snare all the twenty venues on the roster for that day.

We landed at the venue at some point in the evening to find them having major sound issues. We headed off to tick off a couple more venues and returned about half an hour later to find the situation unchanged. Thinking that our fates were sealed regarding our quest to complete the ‘Full Monty’ of venues, we hung around for 10 minutes.

Then unexpectedly the scheduled act Laureen Aquilina, a singer from Bristol, took to the stage and announced due to the evident constraints she was going to sing acapella. A commendably brave move but by jove she pulled it off with aplomb as she had a superb strong voice.

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Lauren Aquilina. Image Credit Genius

Ticking this venue off enabled us to head off to the final venue Texture. This is a late bar located on Lever Street with a ground floor space and a balcony vantage point. The band in question were called Blooms.

I have been to the venue a couple of other times to see Speak Galactic, a lo fi band from Sweden formed by Owen Thomas, who formerly lived in Brighton. The other being Rev Rev Rev, an Italian shoegaze band who I had high hopes for but unfortunately, they just weren’t loud enough and struggled against the annoying backdrop of chatter in the room.  

Manchester Venues 18 to 22

Following on from the Festival blog last week I am going to concentrate on some Dot to Dot festival venues on and around Oldham Street in the Northern Quarter that I visited at the event which took place on 28/05/16.  

COW is a two-floor vintage clothes shop on the same block of Piccadilly Records and is an archetypal shop for this area of town. From a very unusual vantage point of standing behind a clothes rack we witnessed a young Manchester acoustic artist called Miranda Amess who had a decent voice with a smidgeon of a KT Tunstall vibe about her.  It was also my 250th different venue.

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Cow clothes shop. Image Credit WordPress.com

The Black Dog Ballroom is a downstairs New York style bar situated underneath Affleck’s Palace on the corner of Tib and Church Street. I had only previously been in for a drink and a burger once before prior to another gig. The venue was behind a further door off the main room and had a little bar and stage within. We saw Love for Zero, an electro synth band from Manchester who were in the Editors mould.  

Traversing from the basement to the top floor of Affleck’s you find the Black Milk Dessert Café. The local band on stage were Bright Young People and they had a nice scuzzy Stooges crunch about them. Their debut single was produced by Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen.  

Their performance exemplified the uniqueness of the chosen venue as the American style diner on the third floor with windows overlooking Oldham Street was in great contrast to the sturdy guitar led sound on stage.

The unassuming orange signed Koffee Pot is located at the Swan Street end of Oldham Street. It is very near the Crown and Kettle pub which unfortunately ever appeared only on a festival roster for one day when I couldn’t attend as I was ensconced at Uncle George’s 60th hootenanny, and as a result my friends Jez Catlow and Moggy have beaten me to the punch there.

We saw a three-piece garage rock band called the Slovaks and they were good value.

The Koffee Pot. Image Credit northernnoise.co.uk

I recently read that the Koffee Pot was collaborating with the reborn Deaf Institute by providing the food for the ground floor restaurant space.    

Just off Oldham St lies the 57 Thomas Street Beer House. It is one of several pubs linked to the local Marble Brewery who also have their original flagship Marble Arch pub nearby. They had some devilishly strong ales on display in the ground floor bar and the venue was situated upstairs.

The band Psyblings were a terrific five-piece psych rock combo from Warrington who had met at Manchester University. Unfortunately, we only had time for a couple of tracks, but I made a mental note of their capability and as a result ensured we caught their full set at another event the following year.  

I caught another local band called Easter at the venue later that year.  

The bar has very recently been taken over by Fierce Beer, an award-winning craft beer brewery based in Aberdeen, enabling them to open their first bar North of the border.