Tag: Ride

Electric Fields Festival – Part 2

This week I shall continue the tale of our attendance at the 2018 Electric Fields Festival in Drumnlarig Castle in Dumfries and Galloway. It was a three-day event, but we decided to head up there for Days 2 and 3 which were the Friday and the Saturday thereby missing Orielles, Ride and James amongst others on the Thursday’s roster.

I now had an extra hour on my journey with the initial leg from Manchester to Preston where I picked up Jez Catlow and Uncle George en route. We then decamped at the Booths Café in Fulwood and nursed a cappuccino whilst awaiting John Dewhurst finishing work. We all then dived into John’s transit van with the additions of his brother’s Paul and Tony who were also in attendance.

Now, fate and timing had dealt us a kind hand due to the fact that Paul’s sister-in-law Bernie had recently opened up a bed and breakfast in Dumfries located centrally near the train station. She generously offered to provide lodgings and fed and watered us for the weekend, a lovely lady she was!   

The Electric Fields ‘Red Stripe’ posse. Image Credit Tony Dewhurst.

On arrival, we had a skelp around some of the town’s hostelries before jumping into a cab down to the festival entrance point. We slid down the hill and it was a green tinged and pretty location, and the weather was thankfully behaving itself.

They had pronounced themselves as being encompassed within the boutique festival category, and the set up reminded me of the Connect Festival I attended at Inverary Castle back in 2007. They also had the huge bonus of a real ale tent which provided a welcome alternative to the frothy Tennents Lager!

It was quite a small site, and the acts played across two areas, the Main Stage and BBC Introducing Stage. I have struggled to find a day bill listing so am going to rely on my memory as to who I think played each day.

First up were Out Lines who are on Mogwai’s Rock Action label and are a collaboration of Kathryn Joseph, producer Marcus Mackay and Twilight Sad’s James Graham and they had recorded their one and only album ‘Conflats’ the year before.

There was then some psych-pop from Hallo Maud, MC rapping from Lady Leshurr, indie rock from Soccer Mommy and ex Coventry University students Feet, hip hop from Edinburgh’s Young Fathers and a perennial festival appearance from The Coral.

I witnessed a decent country folk set from Tracyanne & Danny who were a collaborative project consisting of Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura and Danny Coughlan from Crybaby. There was a fun performance from the old troubadours Idlewild who I was witnessing for the seventh time and then Teenage Fanclub who fitted into the day like your old Arran sweater!

The most enjoyable set of the day was from Public Service Broadcasting. They were in fine form and the best I have seen them, and they had just recently expanded their sound to include sporadic blasts of joyous brass which only enhanced the sonics of their performance. There were then some predictable taxi shenanigans, but we eventually made it back to our digs.   

On the Saturday we attended a couple of pubs on the other side of the river to make it easier for a tax pick up. In one hostelry there were a posse of disgruntled Queen of the South fans, Dumfries football team, who had left the nearby ground in disgust when they were 4-0 down to Ayr at half time!

Idles on stage. Image Credit www.pinterest.com

I saw a portion of the Horrors set and some rock/dance crossover sounds from Makeness which consists of a UK based producer called Kyle Molleson. The latter has recently had his biggest tour so far with a support slot with Unknown Mortal Orchestra. I also caught a noisy performance from Brighton band Black Honey and a couple of tracks from Noel Gallagher & the High Flying Birds on the Main Stage.  

My favourite three acts of the day were on the BBC Introducing Stage with first up being Baxter Dury. He has chiselled out of a music career for himself and moved away from being famous just for the fact that he was Ian’s son. Next on were Sunflower Bean, a three-piece from New York who I thoroughly enjoyed with their swirly sounds, reminding me of Fleetwood Mac and The Orielles.

 The undeniable highlight was Idles who are a proper throwback band with their socially conscious ethos, passion and glorious intensity. They pour everything into each performance and must be absolutely exhausted afterwards. The only downside was that we had already booked a cab for a specific time which resulted in only catching two thirds of their show, and I never yet seen them again!  

The New Bazaar. Image Credit cdlh.co.uk

The day’s music wasn’t finished though as when we landed back in town, we headed to Dumfries New Bazaar. The pub’s main claim to fame was that it was the location of the formation of the aforementioned Queen of the South and there is a plaque to commemorate that first formal meeting on 26th March 1919. On the night we saw a local band called Nearly Not Guilty which wrapped up nicely the weekend’s entertainment.

Manchester Venues 149 to 150 – New Century Hall

Of the four main city centre train stations, Victoria would probably be my least attended as it has always been slightly on the wrong side of the tracks for me! Now if you depart the station down the approach heading alongside the tram tracks towards Shudehill Interchange but deviate marginally to the left down Hanover Street, you reach the Sadler’s Cat public house.

Sadler’s Cat pub. Image Credit secretmanchester.com

The Sadler’s was originally known as the Pilcrow which was purpose built as part of a regeneration programme commitment by the Co-operative Society, following the demolition of the Crown and Cushion pub to make way for a new public road. The current name reflects the commemoration of the very site of the first hot air balloon flight in 1785 and the pilot being one James Sadler who took his feline friend with him on the trip! The pub is contained within the NOMA complex and is now owned by the Cloudwater brewery and is a good basking spot in the summer with a suite of outside tables.

Staying with the Co-op theme, across the square from the hostelry you find the New Century Hall which was built as their 1000 capacity Insurance Society building in 1962 and sits adjacent to New Century House. They had many major acts play there in the 1960’s including Rolling Stones, Tina Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Kinks. There is also an anecdote of the Jimi Hendrix Experience performing there in 1966 and a young John Cooper Clarke being denied entry as he was not wearing the obligatory tie, despite being bedecked in Fred Perry and a striped sports coat, bouncers eh! 

John Cooper Clarke. Image Credit pinterest.com

It is a three-storey building with the basement containing the Access Creative College where you can obtain degrees in music and gaming. The ground floor houses the Manchester New Century Food Hall where I first visited in December 2022 on a Christmas works do where we partook some tucker from one of the many food vendors and watched the England v Wales World Cup match. Where the big screen showing the match was located, there is normally a stage, and I have seen a couple of local singers perform there.

Upstairs from there is the Manchester New Century Hall which on first sight I was instantly impressed by with the wood surrounds and tasteful lighting. Even when busy it remains an accessible venue with ability to scoot down the sides to obtain a spot nearer to the stage. I can see myself in the future checking their listings from a venue viewpoint ahead of many others in the city where they become an almighty scrum when reaching capacity, the Albert Hall being a case in point.

My first attendance was in May 2023 with Gill and our good friends and fellow rabble rousers Jo and Paul. We had a couple of drinks around the Kampus area near Piccadilly and in the Northern Quarter. The band we were going to see was The Beths from Auckland in New Zealand. They were promoting their hugely recommended third album ‘Expert in a Dying Field’ which I have given serious airplay to as I love the upbeat nature of it, and I thoroughly enjoyed their set. Their sound reminds me of a fellow upcoming band called Fortitude Valley.      

Manchester New Century Hall. Image Credit manchestereveningnews.co.uk

My next attendance was with Gill in June 2024 where we only shamefully discovered the Abel Heywood Hydes brewery pub for the first time, but we have rectified that by attending a couple of times since. The band that night was the Lovely Eggs who I didn’t enjoy as much as their previous times I have seen them.  

There then followed two attendances in Sept 2024. The first was remarkably for me to see Ride for the first time, however I had previously seen an individual set by Mark Gardener at Preston Continental back in November 2011 where they also showed a screening of ‘Anyone Can Play Guitar’ which provides a story of the Oxford music scene featuring Ride alongside many other bands.    

For the uninitiated, Ride were prime shoegaze pioneers releasing two highly touted albums on Creation records in the early 1990’s. They broke up in 1996 before reforming in 2014 and were touring their latest album ‘Interplay’. The sound quality was poor early on but once they sorted that out, they were excellent.

My latest visit involved a large group of us including my pals Jason Gill and Barry Jury going to see the Go Team for the fourth time and for my first time for 14 years. They played in full their superb debut album ‘Thunder Lighting Strike’ with other tunes interspersed in their set.           

As a postscript I have managed to obtain some degree of numerical symmetry as New Century Hall was the actual 150th Manchester venue that I had visited.