Tag: Screaming Trees

Warrington Festival 2021

This is a particularly exciting blog for me to pen as is it is the first one that involves attending gigs after the fateful March 2020 date. This was not quite my first post pandemic gig but details the first festival I attended when we were allowed to do so again! This year’s Warrington Festival was pushed back from its original date to 04/09/21 but despite the autumnal date the weather gods smiled on us.

I had looked at the Warrington event previously, but this year Marcus and I decided to make an appearance to catch the Saturday bill. Transport options were weighed up because as you know I never drive to a gig and the most feasible was train there and taxi back.

The local train was fine but the Manchester to Warrington leg was extremely busy resulting in us being jammed in between carriages with a worrying lack of mask compliance. It was a huge culture shock and felt more claustrophobic than normal due to the COVID connotations. It was such a welcome relief when the door finally opened at Warrington Central station.

Warrington is a place I have rarely visited despite it being handily placed on the West Coast main line and I always link it geographically with the shopping hell that is IKEA. I can only recall one distinctly average night out years ago and my abiding memory was the plethora of Greenall Whitley pubs!

We sallied over to the venue of Victoria Park, about a 15-minute walk from the station. En route, we grabbed a comfort break in a Wetherspoons hostelry, though no supporting drink was purchased as a protest against their rather shameless Pandemic approach to their staff. As we departed, we noticed there was a Green Day covers band playing at an outdoor stage in an adjacent pub Postern Gate, we listened to one of their jaunty tunes, then headed onwards.

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Warrington Postern Gate. Image Credit tripadvisor.co.uk

On arrival to the site and due to my permanently guilty expression I was obviously subject to a full search, bringing back memories of regularly being refused entry to nightclubs when I was younger! It was a busy site, but it was very well proportioned with three stages at good distances from each other.

We spent much of our time at the Big Top stage. The first band we witnessed was the Big Moon, an all-female 4-piece from London who have previously supported the Pixies on tour. They cut a gentle engaging presence and when they played a Fatboy Slim cover they nearly had me in floods of tears. It wasn’t that track, it could have been any song, it was the realisation at that point that I was back doing something I love after the horrendous period we have all been through. I managed to recalibrate, have a slurp of my overpriced beer and everything was back on an even keel!

Continuing the maudlin theme because as I pen this article, I have just heard of Mark Lanegan’s untimely death at the age of 57. I must say this one has hit me hard, with the same resonance of Grant Hart’s passing, as I was a huge fan of Screaming Trees. I have read his brutal unflinching autobiography detailing his troubled soul and addictions and was fortunate to see him live four times. However, his legacy will live on with his utterly unique vocal delivery and stellar albums such as Dust and Bubblegum. 

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The idiosyncratic Mr Lanegan. Image Credit malapu-pro.com

The next band was the much-vaunted Murder Capital, the post punk group from Dublin. They didn’t quite cut if for me as their music was somewhat dour and directionless, I much prefer their city counterparts Fontaines DC. They were followed by the Gang of Youths from Sydney, Australia. I had been privy to some of their material beforehand and placed them firmly in the Triffids bracket thereby having decent expectations. They had their moments, but the lead singer David Le’aupepe loved himself a little too much, not even in a semi-ironic way!

We grabbed some food and began chatting to a young engaging couple from Stoke. A worrying aspect of the conversation was that they had no firm plan of how they were going to travel home at the end of the day, I wonder where they are now!

The Viola Beach stage was the next port of call where we had earlier seen Lona. The headliners were the Orielles from Halifax and despite their main vocalist Esme Dee Hand-Halford losing her voice early in the show their slightly wonky intelligent sound was as enjoyable as ever.

As we had walked round to the entrance earlier, we had heard the unmistakable summer sounds of the Coral on the Main Stage drifting over the perimeter fence. We caught a smidge of Sam Fender and the days special guest Jake Bugg.    

The main headliners were James and we headed down closer to the front and caught most of their set before heading off to our taxi rendezvous. The traffic on the Warrington streets was chaotic and as a result we were relieved to eventually find our ride. Unfortunately, he then made a wrong turn and diverted us down the M60 instead of the correct M56 route adding an extra 20 miles to the journey. Fair play to him, he took it on the chin and no extra fee was incurred and I subsequently arrived home around midnight.    

London Fifth Trip

I headed down for a London weekend via a £25 Apex ticket on the 12.15 train from Preston on Friday 10th May 1990. My brother picked me from Euston in his mini and we darted back to his current digs in Woolwich. We grabbed some tea and listened to some Screaming Trees and Husker Du’s Metal Circus.

We headed out at 9pm and picked up my brother’s girlfriend from her workplace on some random industrial estate in Thamesmead on the way to London Subterania in the west of the city. The venue was opened the year before by the Mean Fiddler Group. It was subsequently closed in 2003 but relaunched in 2018. It has a capacity of 600.

We were there to see Thin White Rope, the Californian desert rock band who disbanded a couple of years later. It was my first gig for four months at that stage, so it was good to be back in the fray. Unfortunately, we were a tad late in arriving and the band were already 20 minutes into their set and the place was half full, mainly comprised of students.

I grabbed an expensive bottle of Newcastle Brown and headed down to the front. They were a laid-back combo and produced a reasonable set, including two encores.     

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Thin White Rope. Image Credit LastFM.com

After the gig we headed into the city centre to Tower Records which was open until midnight as my brother wanted to purchase the latest Thin White Rope release.

The following day was the FA Cup Final. That particular year we had endeavoured without success to obtain match tickets, in those days that option was more feasible than it is nowadays. Our alternate plan was to see the parade the next day if Crystal Palace won which looked likely when Ian ‘Je Na Sa Quoi’ Wright scored in extra time before Mark Hughes scuppered it with a late equaliser for Man United. We had a gentle gather in the local Poly Bar that night.

We lazed around on the Sunday morning prepping some Wedding Present and REM mix tapes. In the late afternoon we headed back into the city visiting Petticoat Lane and Camden Town where I purchased the Last Exit to Brooklyn novel.  We then drove to Notting Hill and grabbed some grub at a cheap as chips fab Indian restaurant called Khan’s where I ordered Chicken Shahi.

Post meal we headed over to Brixton Fridge landing about 8.30pm. The venue previously had a couple of homes, one of them above an Iceland store, hence the name. The location when I visited was converted from a 1913 cinema, the Palladium Picture House. The venue closed in 2010 before reopening the following year under the new moniker Electric Brixton. It was a large slightly soulless venue with a capacity of 1789 and was almost full that night.

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Brixton Fridge. Image Credit wikimedia

We handed over our £8 entrance fee and purchased a can of Breakers and caught the last song of Benny Profane’s set. The main support was the C86 Bristolians Groove Farm. I recall chatting to another punter who I jealously discovered had seen Minutemen and Husker Du in Washington in 1984 when they a support band.

Wedding Present came on at 9.45pm. They had been collaborating with Steve Albini and it had certainly resulted in a hardening of their sound. They played ‘Brassneck’ early in the set and Dave Gedge broke a guitar string due to some Hendrix impressions.    

They played ‘Everyone Thinks he Looks Daft’ and a seemingly endless but joyous ‘Favourite Dress’. It was stiflingly hot in the moshpit resulting in me re-emerging at the end as a virtual puddle when they left the stage at 11pm. I thought they were superb, arguably better then the first time I had seen them a couple of years earlier at Manchester University as their strengthened sound was of significant benefit.