Tag: Salford Islington Mill

Manchester Venues 65 to 67

Continuing the circular route of the Sounds from the other City Festival brings us to the historic Kings Arms on Bloom Street. It is situated deep in the old industrial quarter of Salford, and it is an easy five-minute jaunt from Salford Central train station. The pub was first licensed in 1807 and the original building initially resided on the other side of the street.

Lucy Davis was a landlady there in the 19th century and after throwing her husband out for being a drunken lout, she created a profitable dance hall and den of ill repute upstairs! It has been the base for many interesting clubs, namely the North of England Irish Terrier Club, the Knitting Club and the Salford Friendly Anglers Society, the world’s oldest angling club and a sign of the final listed club is still visible on the gable end of the pub.

Many pubs fell by the wayside in this area, but the Kings continued to flourish being famously taken over in 2011 by Zena Barrie and Paul Heaton of Housemartin’s and Beautiful South fame. They embellished the artistic undertakings and a pot pourri of arts exhibitions, vaudeville, comedy, poetry nights and gigs took place under their tutelage. They were also apparently regularly heard rehearsing in the upstairs function room.

Paul Heaton. Image Credit Hull Daily Mail.

The pub has also been used as a location for music videos and TV shows like Cracker, Fresh Meat and the Hairy Bikers and was always a good gathering point to commune with like-minded souls on the SFTOC monorail, much like the other central hubs of the festival such as Islington Mill and the Old Pint Pot.

It is an olde world pub with a large main bar room area downstairs with seats dotted around the perimeter. At one of the festivals, I saw a Chinese dragon parade the room, it is that kind of quirky place. They are a renowned real ale venue and have been in the Good Beer Guide for the last decade and are a keen supporter of small local breweries. There is also a small beer garden accessed from the back of the pub.

Stairs led you up the Manchester Kings Arms Events Space.  It is a theatre style space and has a standing capacity of 120 and seating capacity of 50.  The venue even holds a wedding licence.

My first visit there was on 06/05/12 was to see Meddicine from London. An appropriate act considering the industrial history of the area as he resembled a lo-fi Death in Vegas though a single released last year sounded more like Eminem.   The other act that day was a good fun two-piece local scuzzy garage rock band called Brown Brogues. 

Five years later I witnessed Manchester electronic artist Vacuumorph and in 2018 I saw AYA, a Manchester rapper and producer who formerly recorded under the moniker LOFT.

Kings Arms. Image Credit kingsarmssalford.com

In a room adjacent to the main bar was Manchester Kings Arms Downstairs Stage where acoustic gigs occasionally took place. In 2012 an act called Yule FM played there and six years later in 2018 a local chap with the vaguely unpleasant moniker of DJ Acid Rephlux performed on that stage.

At the 2017 festival they excelled themselves by creating a third stage putting them on a par with Chorlton Irish Club and the Adelphi in Preston as the only other venues where I have attended three stages.

The only issue was that nobody could find the third stage, before we eventually realised, we had to traverse down the stairs past the kitchen and into the beer cellar. Thus, Manchester Kings Arms Basement became and remains the smallest venue I have ever attended, with about 10 people crammed in and myself outside with my head craned around the entrance peering into the dark interior. The band on the tiny stage was an act called Maeve Rendles 9 Victims, and despite an extensive search I can find no back story behind their mysterious and sinister name! 

The continuing joy for me of these festivals is the chance to visit these types of different venues that in any other context you would not normally attend.

Manchester Venues 27 to 30

Not to be outflanked by their Manchester counterparts the good folk of Salford set up their own festival in 2010 and uniquely called it Sounds from the Other City (SFTOC) and it took over many diverse venues in and around the A6 near to Salford Central train station. I have counted the following venues under the Manchester banner due to their postcodes.

On our first visit in May 2012, we arrived via Salford Crescent Station as there were more speedy trains to that location. The Crescent station only has two platforms but occasionally there is a delightful occurrence of the station announcer excitedly exclaiming ‘Platform Change, Platform Change’ which only in reality necessitates a step forward or backwards to reach the new location! We had only once previously had a couple of drinks around that area in December 2000 prior to watching AC/DC at the MEN Arena.

I have attended three separate SFOTC’s in total and they have always been superbly run chilled events. The central hub for the tickets has been an old industrial building called Islington Mill which is a gig and arts venue with rehearsal rooms within. There is a specific small gig room which in that first year I saw a band called the ABC Club. On a later visit to SFOTC in 2017 I saw Torn Sail, a psychedelic folk-rock band who had the legendary Mark Lanegan contributing to their debut album.

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Islington Mill. Image Credit Fact.

Outside of the festival, we saw Joanne Gruesome there on 18/09/15. They were a five-piece punky band from Cardiff who had modelled their name somewhat bizarrely on musician Joanne Newsom. They were sporadically excellent live in a very intimate setting and I recall the guitarist always facing away from the stage. We had a commendable sally around the local hostelries pre and post gig including a couple of jars in the New Oxford with its array of real ales and were chatting to a couple of punters who travelled all the way across Manchester every Friday to visit the pub.

Down the corridor from the Club room was the Islington Mill Gallery where in 2018 we saw songwriter Claire Wells perform. Outside the back of the building was a large courtyard area where there was a plethora of food options available including appetising looking pizzas. In the corner was a balcony stage called the Engine House where an acoustic duo with a jolly name of White Death were performing.

Our first venue visited at the festival in 2012 was the outermost venue down the A6 away from town, namely The Crescent public house. It was a proper old-fashioned boozer with a distinctive green frontage and a cracking pint of Barnsley bitter on tap. It had a long heritage as it was built in the 1860’s and was a Grade 2 listing building and featured in the good Beer Guide for a sustained period of 25 years. Allegedly Karl Marx and Frederick Engels used to sup in there as they formulated communist principles in the 19th century. The pub sadly closed about five years ago.  

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The Crescent Pub. Image Credit Salford Star.com

The bands played in a very small dark room at the back of the establishment which couldn’t cope with more than 20 people enclosed within.

The first band on were a local act Heroin Diet who produced a 25-minute bracing slab of amusing hardcore punk.  The set curtailed about 5pm on an extremely sunny day so we walked out with ringing ears and squinting like a vampire, thereby creating an interesting start to the day! We returned later to catch sets by an interesting Manchester post rock outfit Dead Sea Apes and a uniquely named 100% Beefcock and the Titsburster, though I cannot remember anything about them bar their name!