Tag: Stiff LIttle Fingers

Gigs from Abroad Part 23 – Belfast Part 2

My second trip to the fair city of Belfast was on the lads first post-covid trip in 2023 as we thought we would reboot the annual shindig that year by going for a nearby location instead of mainland Europe.   

We headed over on an early flight from Manchester to the International airport with five of us in total but additionally with Moggy and Gareth ploughing an alternate furrow into the City airport. Late morning found us tucking into a huge fry up in one of the numerous cafes dotted around the city streets.

A proportion of the travelling crew were fans of the Slow Readers Club who happened to be playing in town that very evening. In fact, Moggie and Gareth had earlier had a star spot when they encountered members of the band at the airport, and it transpired after a brief chat and photo shoot they were also on the same flight.

After we located and booked in at our hotel in the Cathedral Quarter and Jez Catlow found his room which was down an ‘infinity and beyond’ corridor. He was also not assisted later on by the fact that his door card needed resetting a couple of times which involved each time a long trog to reception and back! 

John Hewitt pub. Image Credit niplanner.com

Our first port of call was just around the corner to the John Hewitt, the namesake being a poet and socialist who opened the Unemployed Resource Centre in 1983 which evolved into the public house and restaurant in 1999. It is the first social enterprise bar in Belfast. They had some fine ales available and regular live music, and we did return the following night to endeavour to catch some tunes but were denied entry as they had closed the doors due to the rest rooms being unavailable. 

Our next venue was the Belfast Kitchen Bar which prior to its opening in 1859 was a women’s boarding house. It was located next to the Empire Theatre so hence regularly full of actors and thespians. In July 2004, it was controversially and shamefully demolished to make room for the Victoria Square shopping centre. The bar then moved to a new location nearby in 2005 and they host regular live music including a chap called Gerry on our sojourn there.

The next hostelry of choice was the Belfast Garrick on Chichester Street, it was a homely traditional pub with three bars. It has been in situ at that site since 1870 and evolved into its current name in 1892 with a purported nod to the fashionable Garrick Club that was in vogue in London at that time. They have regular bands performing and on the night it took me a little time due to the hubbub in the establishment before noticing there was a ceilidh band playing quietly away in a corner by the door.

We then grabbed some tucker before heading down to the main event at Belfast Limelight 2. The venue has been in operation since 1984 and consists of three separate spaces, the first being the rooftop terrace the Rock Garden which stages live shows, the second is Limelight 1 which is the newest kid on the block and Slayer and Steve Earle have played there. We were in Limelight 2 which is the slightly smaller venue, which was in place when the club first opened, and luminaries such as the Strokes and Joe Strummer have performed in that space.    

Slow Readers Club on stage at Limelight. Image Credit limelightbelfast.com

Slow Reader’s Club evolved in 2009 from the ashes of 2000’s rock band Omerta and the four piece contains Wythenshawe siblings Aaron and Kurtis Starkie. In the spirit of the 1980’s ethos, they have been patently DIY in their approach via relentless gigging, social media endorsements and the self-release and design of their first two albums. These components all resulted in developing a loyal fanbase which reminds me of the Hold Steady level of fervency. Their third and fourth albums bore the fruit of these endeavours as they both hit the Top 20. They are not totally my bag, but they put on a decent show live and are firmly in the Interpol/Editors mould.

Also in the audience was my pal and superfans Ian Watson and his wife Elise who were travelling around watching the band and attended the Dublin show the following night. Post gig, we decamped to the nearby Belfast Pug Ugly’s Draft House which was a tidy little bar with an orange exterior. On an elevated stage there we saw a chap called Eamonn playing.  

The following day we jumped on the train to the bonny town of Bangor with its funfair and its seaside walks. The second pub we visited was the famous Trident pub immortalised in the opening lines to Stiff Little Fingers ‘Alternative Ulster’, namely ‘There’s nothing for us in Belfast, The Pound’s old and that’s a pity, Okay, there’s the Trident in Bangor, and then you walk back to the city’. We stayed there a while and watched a chaotic Grand National.  

Bangor seafront. Image Credit sunnybangor.com

When we landed back in Belfast, Uncle George, Jez and I had an excellent curry in one of the local restaurants before heading back to Belfast McConnell’s near our digs.  It was a cavernous pub with several rooms, and we negotiated our way past the bouncers into the large music room. There was a bash em out band called Aidan’s Boys, and the venue was absolutely bouncing with a terrific atmosphere. We leaned on the corner of the bar and sampled a couple of fine Guinness’s.

On the Sunday we worked our route via a couple of hostelries prior to arriving back at the airport. We had a less troubled route than Moggy and Gareth whose flight was cancelled, and they were subsequently put up for a night in a hotel before departing the next day. They were also fortunately provided with a small stipend with which they chose to spend on more ale! 

Gigs from Abroad Part 23 – Belfast Part 1

Perhaps in comparison to many other European cities, Belfast has encountered a particularly varied and challenging history. It all began as an English settlement in 1613 and evolved into becoming the capital and the primary port of Northern Ireland. Along the way they had the small matter of a rebellion in 1798, joined the GB union two years later and gained their city status in 1888.

They were the largest linen manufacturers in the 1900’s and also utilised the waterfront with their huge shipyards which covered around a quarter of all UK trade. One of the chief proponents were Harland (not the Manchester City player!) and Wolff, who were responsible for that big ship called the HMS Titanic which they built in 1911 for a cost of £1.5 million, which now equates to a contemporary cost of £180 million. The company still have their famous landmark (known as Samson and Goliath) within the now titled Titanic Quarter and their vastly overpriced museum. The structure has been utilised as a backdrop to many TV shows.

Harland and Wolff cranes. Image Credit Northern Ireland

The ‘Troubles’ commenced in the 1920’s with an astounding occurrence of over 2000 bombings in a single kilometre area of the city centre between 1969 and 1977. Anyone who lived through this period even from a geographical position from across the water will recall that you eventually became somewhat anaesthetised to the regular bloody headlines on the daily news feeds. I have worked in government offices all my life and I recall the monotonous regularity of bomb scares, and in those days you didn’t argue and ensured you exiting the building post haste!

There is a recent BBC documentary titled ‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’ which has interviews with people from both sides of the divide, many who had never publicly spoken about it before. It is an astounding bruising watch and investigative TV at the top of its game.

The historic Good Friday agreement was struck and signed on 10th April 1998, memorably prefaced in Billy Bragg’s idiosyncratic style on his 1996 track ‘Northern Industrial Town’ off the ‘William Bloke’ album. This has resulted in the regeneration of the central area of the city into a vibrant tourist location, but the old hostilities remain in the suburbs and will probably take a generational change before they hopefully finally dissipate.

Billy Bragg. Image Credit theconcertdatabase.com

Perhaps understandably set against that tumultuous backdrop the city was immersed in the punk scene with my faves Stiff Little Fingers early output including ‘Suspect Device’, ‘Tin Soldiers’ and ‘Wasted Life’ which literally oozed with barely concealed anger and disillusionment. Fellow city residents were the Undertones who were managed briefly by Terri Hooley of the Good Vibrations record shop and label, who famously dropped a tape into John Peel of ‘Teenage Kicks’, and the rest as they say is history!

They are the smallest city to host the MTV Europe Music awards in 2011 and in 2021 became the third British location after Glasgow and Liverpool to be awarded the UNESCO City of Music. They have two universities and two airports, the George Best Belfast City in the centre and the International airport located fifteen miles to the west. Many famous people have Belfast as their place of birth and these include David Trimble, Ian Paisley, Gerry Adams, George Best, CS Lewis the author of Chronicles of Narnia and the musician Van Morrison.

I have visited twice, and the first trip was with Gill and a couple of friends in 2009. Fortunately, Blackpool Airport was still operational then, so we headed out from there with only a handful of customers on the flight whilst encountering the novel situation where they deliberately spaced us around the plane to ensure the required balance! We then traversed in on the 45 minute shuttle bus ride and had a hotel near to, but not in the Europa which is the most frequently bombed hotel in Europe.

Hotel Europa. Image Credit drifttravel.com

With a remarkable flurry of late results my football team Preston North End had managed to secure an unexpected end of season play off tie against Sheffield United. However, the kicker was that the first home leg was on the day of our outward travel. So, it transpired that I was watching the first half in a very busy bar on a small TV with no sound from a fair distance away and randomly swore at one point with other punters looking at me askance!

At least we had a better viewpoint and a seat in another bar to observe the second half. Still no volume, but we had cold Harp (tastes sharp until the bottom of the glass!) on tap. We drew 1-1 that night but unsurprisingly lost the second leg three days later. We had a fine 48 hours there and took a liking for the vibrant student areas and had a fantastic meal at the Red Panda Chinese restaurant located very close to the famous Crown Liquor Saloon.

A postscript this week is that I have hit a literary milestone of 200k words in total thus far in my 293 articles. For the record, the 100k word was Manchester and slightly anti climatically the 200k word is ‘place’, though pertinent as either the venue or in this context as city of birth.