Tag: Rancid

2025 Gigs – Part 2

I will continue my tales of 2025 gigs with Manchester St Ann’s Square where they have regular events around key dates of the year, for example St Patricks Day. At three at those singular events at different points, I saw the Bovver Boys, Barry’s Brass Band and a singer called Gwenda.  

Nearby to Manchester Piccadilly station resides the old atmospheric venue Manchester Star and Garter where in February I fell into capturing a small segment of an all-day gig there and witnessed some thunderous grindcore from local noiseniks Burnt Body, though I did sagaciously decide to abstain on the moshpit duties at that one!

Burnt Body. Image Credit facebook.com

In July I saw a Philadelphia ska punk act called Catbite whose chief vocalist was a lass called Brittany Luna who had previously trained as a jazz singer. She has recently performed with Laura Jane Grace who was previously the lead singer of Against Me, a band I saw on my 42nd birthday back in 2010. The duo performed some shows primarily paying a homage to Operation Ivy, a short-lived band who were a forerunner of the California ‘East Bay Sound’ in the late 1980’s. In the next step of the family tree two members of the Ivy then set up Rancid in 1991 who are still playing to this day.

In May I returned to the Academy complex for my 101st gig across all their four sites, this particular one taking place at Manchester Club Academy. My enigmatic pal Matty Allen is a Death Metal guru and had for a spell been jokingly sending me gig invites for various events, and I finally threw him a curve ball by accepting an interesting sounding one.  Another friend at work Ben, let’s call him Death Metal guru 2 was also knowledgeable and approving of the bands on the roster.

Thus Matty, his mate Rob and I gathered in Big Hands prior to the gig and had a conflab in their roof garden. The support band were called Cryptopsy who are from Montreal and were formed in 1988 and are now nine albums into their lineage. They were my preferred act on the evening, and the drummer Flo Mournier was particularly impressive, and they also used to have a vocalist with the jocular name of Lord Worm.

The headliners were Decapitated from Poland who formed in 1996 with the members ranging from 12 to 16 at that stage. They suffered untold tragedy in 2007 when the original drummer died in a car crash at the age of 23. They are regularly touted as one of the key proponents of the genre.

An additional observance of the crowd is that due to the intense nature of the music you could perhaps surmise they may have more of an aggressive outlook, but they were in fact one of the friendliest audiences I have ever encountered with a refreshing lack of phones in my eyeline.

Mani. Image Credit yahoo.com

At the nearby Manchester Academy, I caught Black Rebel Motorcycle Club for the sixth time and a full decade since my last sighting, they were playing the ‘Howl’ album which was celebrating its 20th anniversary. It is a softer sounding record but still contains some terrific tunes with ‘Complicated Situation’ being my fave. They were in good form and included a touching tribute to Mani, who had passed away three weeks earlier, by playing a solo acoustic Stone Roses track with full audience singalong.        

Prior to the gig at the aforementioned Manchester Big Hands, I saw a fuzzy and noisy garage rock band called Ahmed & The Romans who contained in their ranks three Italians and the lead singer Ahmed who is an Anglo-Egyptian. 

At the tail end of September Marcus and I trundled into Manchester Yes Basement. The band in question were called The Pill, an act that we had both simultaneously heard playing and being interviewed on Steve Lamacq’s 6 music show. Texts were instantly sent confirming that our interests were piqued and tickets were swiftly purchased.

The Pill. Image Credit genius.com

The Pill consist of spiky female duo Lily Hutchings and Lottie Massey from the Isle of Wight. They derive from the island that has recently spawned the not dissimilar Wet Leg and also Coach Party. They happened on a musical career via an unusual route as they started with the creation of a punk rock Pinocchio digital puppet show. They began to receive a considerable and unexpected following, and the band was the natural next step though Lily had never played before, so she actually learnt the guitar for the formation of the combo!

On the night, they were bloody good fun with tracks such as ‘Woman Driver’ and ‘Scaffolding Man’ with their whip smart lyrics that many prehistoric men would take literally and simply not have a scoobie that they were taking the proverbial!

Glasgow Venue 8 – Rockers

I decided that I fancied a Northern foray to Glasgow to coincide with my 40th birthday in June 2008 and managed to gather a posse of six other friends to accompany me. The first challenge as ever was the transport as it looked initially that there was to be engineering work but thankfully that was subsequently averted.

We headed up on the Friday and stayed at the Premier Inn near Charing Cross Station off Sauchiehall Street and had a cold one in the Baby Grand Bar & Grill directly opposite the hotel where they do periodically have live acts playing on the house baby grand piano.

We then headed on to the nearby Nice N Sleazy, named after the Stranglers song and the bar also featured in the artwork for Mogwai’s Rock Action album. Refuelled by a monster bowl of noodles we travelled over to the East End of the city to a couple of rough and ready pubs including Bairds Bar by the Barrowland venue.

Baby Grand Bar and Grill. Image Credit Glasgow Live

Naturally I had ensured there would be live music developed into the schedule and located a gig that night at Glasgow Rockers. Rockers is situated on Midland Street, and is a small dingy punk club buried in a tunnel below Glasgow Central station with a capacity of probably about a hundred.

When I researched the club, I did find some initial evidence that Green Day had played there in 2009, which I thought highly improbable and surmised that this was in fact a transpositional error. My initial suspicions were confirmed when their past concert list showed them at that time being bang in the middle of a huge stadium tour of America!  

The first band we saw was The Babysitters who were followed by the Eddies from Dundee. The latter formed around the brothers Dean and Dale Hoth, who had just released their second album ‘Twice Around the World’.

Glasgow Nice N Sleazy. Image Credit coolplaces.co.uk

There was a curtain in front of the small stage where you could hear the main band Guns on the Roof warming up. They hailed from Leeds and had already garnered support slots with punk luminaries such as Anti-Nowhere League, Rancid, Stiff Little Fingers and UK Subs.

Our group constituted much of the audience so Uncle George endeavoured to good humouredly liven up the atmosphere by generating a punk style mini mosh pit with the main singer. He was perhaps a tad over boisterous, but the singer was also rather precious which resulted in him uttering the random comment of ‘get off me leg’!  We left soon after and topped off the night with ‘one for the ditch’ in the hotel bar.

We awoke to a gloriously sunny Saturday, and we achieved our first objective by purchasing some breakfast from a local café without the local obligatory option of additional cheese! We commuted back south to Carlisle for the next leg of our journey.

I had discovered there is a train that takes you on the scenic route from Carlisle to Lancaster which literally hugs the Cumbrian Coast, adding two hours to your overall journey but the scenery was a blast!  I think the train now runs from Lancaster to Barrow via those stations.

We passed through St Bees and Whitehaven where I bizarrely once saw Henry Rollins at the Civic Hall. Our first stop off was at Ravenglass to meet Tony Dewhurst who joined the crew from there onwards. On the Main Street there is another station where you can catch a narrow gauge steam train up to Eskdale. Ravenglass was also the location a few years ago for a British Sea Power festival which a couple of pals attended. Before departing we obviously paid a visit to the Ratty Arms pub.     

Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. Image Credit steamheritage.co.uk

For a train buff, the most exciting aspect of this trip was that there were request stops where you just simply asked the train guard to pull in at the next station, which happened for us to be Foxfield. Across the road was the renowned real ale pub the Prince of Wales where we had 55 minutes in the beer garden before the next hourly train came chugging around the reservoir.

Now, there are many legendary tales about Uncle George, yellow box, 8th tee and Rochdale disco to name an initial triumvirate. Ulverston was now added to that list, but paraphrasing from what they say in the movies, what happens in Ulverston literally stays in Ulverston!

We progressed onto Lancaster where we met the Berry brothers in a canal side pub and then had a fine curry in the ever-reliable Bombay Balti and then a subsequent minibus home to complete a rather fabulous weekend.