Tag: Raveonettes

Manchester Venue 59 Sound Control – Part 2

An early blog posting for you this week.

The Sound Control venue is in the perfect classic mould of being located within bumbling distance of the nearest train station. Others to fit these criteria locally are the Star and Garter (Piccadilly), Rebellion Bar (Deansgate), MEN Arena (Victoria) and Kings Arms (Salford Central).

So, much like Esha Ness’s ‘win’ in the Grand National and therefore discounting the ‘gig that never was’ outlined in the blog last week, I have attended the Sound Control Music Room a grand total of seven times.  

My first attendance was on a warm sunny June evening in 2011. On the journey over the train was extremely busy with gig goers and the reason for this significant commuter increase was that the reformed Take That were on a run of comeback dates over at the Etihad Stadium.

Our band of choice that night was the shoegaze gurus Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Now I saw this band five times in total during their career and a couple of those gigs stood out, an initial gobsmackingly fine performance in Chorlton which sat alongside this appearance as an absolute belter.

The reason that this duo of gigs succeeded was that the guitars were ramped up to 10 capturing the intended beautiful sonic fuzz that their sound clearly deserved. The set was in a good way still leaning very heavily on their astonishingly good eponymous debut record, which in my view is all killer no filler. They were supported by a local band called Raffles.  Uncle George had to scoot off prior to the end of their set as he was unfortunately on an early shift the next day, but we stayed for the duration before trekking up and catching the last train from Piccadilly.

Four months later, I saw the Canadian hardcore punks F##&£d Up who with their effervescent lead singer Pink Eyes and surging guitars certainly pack a punch. They are somewhat of an anachronism as their sound could be quantified in the category of intelligent hardcore music and they even start one album with a cheeky flute before the track morphs into something infinitely noisier!

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Pink Eyes in full flow. Image Credit Dreamstime.

Their big energetic tsunami of sound sucked me into the moshpit but that was curtailed prematurely as I toppled over, and I was proper sore and battered in the morning. Some naysayers may say moshpits should be avoided at the age of 43, but I eschew that point of view and eleven years on I will still partake if the mood takes me! Train constraints again meant we missed the tail end of the performance; a pattern was beginning to develop here at this venue.

Mainly due to the ongoing issues around enforced early departures we decided at our next attendance on 01/12/12 to grab a room for the night at Old Trafford Cricket Club, this being in the days when hotels rooms in Manchester were just about affordable, before they morphed into London prices.

The band in question was the rather terrific Raveonettes, the Danish shoegazing duo who had recently released their excellent sixth album Observator and they played a selection of tracks from said record with ‘Young and Cold’ being the highlight. It was a glacially cold night and after the gig we encountered the busiest ever metro in the whole of Christendom when commuting back to the digs.

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The Raveonettes on stage. Image Credit mxdwn.com

At the 2013 Dot to Dot event, we saw a singer songwriter called Billy Lockett from Northampton, who is a classical pianist. He was in the faux familiarity bracket that I can never warm to, in the mould of Newton Faulkner and Beans on Toast and a certain Ed Sheeran who appears to have made a career out of this genre!

Manchester Venue 16 Academy 3 – Part 2

In totality, I have attended Manchester Academy 3 nineteen times thereby placing it in 6th place on my most populated venues list.  

Early in 2001, I began to become aware of the Strokes who released their terrific first album ‘Is This It’ later that year. I adore the way that record is recorded, sounding like they are in a New York basement, in a good way. I read in the NME they were playing Manchester and was fortunate to obtain four tickets from Piccadilly Records to a much-touted band for a sold-out gig.

John, Uncle George and Gill were in attendance on a filthy Thursday night in June. Walking up the steps to the top floor we passed Damon Gough (aka Badly Drawn Boy). He was later ensconced adjacent to us at the bar where a cliched fanboy approached him with the snappy refrain ‘love your album dude…’

The support band was Moldy Peaches followed by the main act who looked nervous initially, but they were excellent and had such admirable poise beyond the tender years.

I was perfectly content in the mosh pit when out of the blue somebody unseen threw a haymaker catapulting me halfway across the pit. Even the band looked taken aback. The assailant must have had a ring on as I had a proper bruise the next day.

Now I am a very chilled chap, but I was incandescent with rage at the sheer injustice of this unwarranted attack. There are unwritten rules for mosh pit etiquette and they were emphatically breached by this muppet!

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The Strokes. Image Credit NME

In April 2005 John Peel faves 65 Days of Static were in town. They had a couple of entries in the previous year’s Festive fifty and were supported by Sons of Slaughter. They were decent live but a tad Mogwai lite.

A couple of years later we headed over to see Goldblade supported by the punk poet Ted Chippington. Everything about that gig was loud including John Cooper Clarke booming out of the speakers in between acts.

Goldblade were thunderous with John Robb vamping it up in his inimitable style. I had imbibed a few sherbets, so when they offered ‘Iggy Pop’ style for punters to enter the fray I grabbed a rare opportunity and leapt on stage with many other like minded folk.

Implausibly, it was even louder up there, and I found myself next to the drummer so proceeded to assist him by slapping away at the drums for one track which was very exhilarating! Another new nickname was christened – ‘Jimmy the Sticks’.

On 22/11/07 an exceedingly rare event happened, namely me driving to a gig! The reason for this unusual anomaly was that we were driving to Centreparcs at Penrith the following day for the weekend.  

We landed in the venue just to catch the last two songs of a rather poor support act Son of Albion and somewhat cringingly for the band you could hear a pin drop when they finished, not even a polite smattering of applause!

The main band was the Raveonettes, a duo from Copenhagen with their fabulous names of Sune Rose Wagner on guitar and Sharon Foo on bass with the assistance of a drum machine. They excel in fuzzed up Mary Chainesque (made up word but describes it perfectly!) sound with gorgeous harmonies but with the additional bite of razor-sharp lyrics.  

To exemplify those contrast shades, they have in their cannon a sugary sounding track in the vein of Strawberry Switchblade, but it then contains contextually the understandingly brutal title ‘Boys Who Rape Should Be Destroyed’. They have produced a suite of excellent albums across their lineage.

They were a captivating experience in the live setting and were immensely enjoyable.

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The Raveonettes. Image Credit Ents 24.

When approaching my 42nd birthday I fancied attending a gig on the day so instigated a search and found that Against Me, a Florida punk band, were playing that night. Uncle George, Dave Keane and I sallied over on the quick train.  

This remains one of the four gigs I have attended on my actual birthday, Neil Young on my 19th and I saw a band in Liverpool and Manchester respectively on my 43rd and 51st birthdays.

They were one of those bands that seem to instil intense loyalty from their fans and that was evident in the fervent atmosphere at the gig. They had an individual sound and it was a fun night.