Tag: That Petrol Emotion

Nottingham Venues 9 to 14

For my 50th Blog entry I return to Nottingham. While in attendance at my first Hockley Hustle on 17/06/07 I caught a couple of bands in Dogma. Hockley was a suburb in the centre of town with a swathe of venues within its boundaries. The venue was located on Byard Lane and had three floors with a main ground floor bar and a restaurant located upstairs. The music stage was in the nightclub setting downstairs.   

I have always found venues such as this metallic sparsely populated basement nightclub layout to be in stark contrast to a daytime gig, especially on a sunny June day.

I don’t recall the first band Arias Ashes, but the second band Dust Collectors were a peculiar seven piece infused with Victorian jazz influences.  

The venue closed in 2014 following a stabbing and reopened as a Tapas restaurant called Barasca.

Lee Rosy’s Tea Café was situated on Broad Street. As it was a little café its musical direction was strictly in the acoustic mode. I visited there twice, the first witnessing Ying and Herbidaceous in June 2007.

My other attendance was to see Alun Parry at the 2009 Hustle. He was a traditional folk singer with a social conscious streak in the mould of Woody Guthrie. He was also a community music festival organiser and resided in Liverpool.

The physical café closed in 2018 but the business is still alive and kicking as an online entity.

Nottingham Lee Rosy’s Tea Cafe. Image Credit Yell.

On my second Hustle in 2009, we visited Browns on the corner of Park Row and East Street Circus. It was a rather pretentious brasserie and a bar where the bands were playing. First up were Tasty Morsels with their melancholic keyboard tinged vibe.

We also witnessed Free Control and The Amber Herd. We only caught the final two tracks of the latter, but they had a promising presence about them complimented by lead singer Neil Beard’s soothing vocals. They were at that stage obtaining some decent support slots with The Delays and That Petrol Emotion and appear to be still active.

Escucha on Fletcher Gate was another plush late-night bar and we saw the five-piece Matt Chandler Band who sat strictly in the jazz mode and was a bit too sleepy loungecore for me. Matt Chandler was originally from Derby and appears to be quite renowned in his genre playing regular London gigs and working with luminaries such as Youth from Killing Joke and Polystyrene from X Ray Spex.  The venue now appears to be closed.

Situated right next to Broadway cinema on Broad Street is Shaw’s, a small tapas restaurant and bar. We saw a Nottingham soul singer called Natalie Duncan. A couple of years later she appeared on Jools Holland alongside Muse who she must have impressed to the extent that they asked her to appear in the support slot on their upcoming tour.

At the tail end of the 2009 Hustle we were heading back up Pelham Street towards the tram stop when we heard a cacophonous racket emanating from an upcoming shop doorway. We soon discovered it was the delightfully named local band Ocean Bottom Nightmare who were kicking up the racket in one of the oddest venues I have ever encountered. They were ensconced in a retail unit called 28 Barbers with props such as clippers and trimmers in view behind the drum kit. It was a bracing unusual end to the festival!

Nottingham 28 Barbers. Image Credit Local Data Company.

Manchester Venue 2 – International 1

Aah, let me count the ways I loved this venue: –

  • Low strung roof which assisted greatly with the acoustics and created a fabulously sweaty communal venue when busy
  • Bars either side serving Colt 45 or Schlitz
  • Responsive DJ playing fab tunes when requested and memory tells me or tricks me that they played Long Ryders ‘Looking for Lewis and Clarke’ every visit
  • Loos at the side of the stage to allow you to swiftly rejoin the moshpit
  • Like minded brethren in the audience
  • Main bands rarely came on before 11 and of consistently high calibre
  • Cheeky little food hatch with un nutritious snacks to soak up the ale
  • All in all, what’s not to like?

I visited 20 times between 1985 and 1989, the venue closed around 1992. In my new Manchester pad I live a couple of miles away from the old site. It is now a Turkish deli/supermarket. I always had pretensions if winning the lottery to reopen the venue, but my odd £25 prizes are clearly not enough to achieve that aim.

The hallowed venue now! – Image Credit Jimmy Crossthwaite

My first visit was to see Hüsker Dü with the prior knowledge we wouldn’t get home and involved train and a fair bus ride as it was on the outskirts of town in Longsight. Whilst queueing up lead singer Bob Mould clattered out the doors past us to buy some cigs in the small newsagent next door which was exciting for us avid fans. They were mighty fine in front of a sparsely attended venue. The remainder of the night was trekking back into town to  Victoria and crashing in the waiting room while they loaded the paper trains before catching the first train back at 6am. Being a durable 17 year old I recall a couple of hours kip, on to Preston North End to sell programmes, watch the match and then inevitably out again that night. A few years after I became friends with another chap who was there and also napped on the station prior to a trip back to Blackpool (Spig, if you are reading this).

There was always an obliging driver in the crew to ferry us there before trains became the regular route to Manchester gigs. There was always a couple of aperitifs as we always travelling in via Holts and Boddingtons pubs in Prestwich, I believe the Friendship Inn is still standing and the afore mentioned Holts was 64p a pint (cheapest beer in Britain!).

Some of my favourite early gigs were here, notably astonishing performances from Lone Justice (what a set of pipes Marie McKee has and a fantastic cover of Velvets ‘Sweet Jane’), 10,000 Maniacs (stunning vocal also from Natalie Merchant) , Hüsker Dü again and the first ever gig in England for Meat Puppets in 1987 supported by the Inca Babies.

Picture shows the infamous Lone Justice gig on 20/02/1987. Image Credit radiox.co.uk

There was a dream joint headlining tour from Throwing Muses and Pixies. I read somewhere that it was something like the Pixies 26th ever gig and Black Francis cut a very menacing presence howling like a Banshee with me joyously bouncing round the moshpit despite having at that age an ever present nose bleed!

Other bands seen were Shop Assistants, a polished Robert Cray, That Petrol Emotion, Proclaimers and Rhythm Sisters, joyous Bhundu Boys (twice and once with a compelling hangover after a quiet night at the infamous Strawberry Duck at Entwistle!), Screaming Blue Messiahs and Wild Flowers, Wonderstuff and Darling Buds, Triffids (laconic Aussies) and Waltones, Amayenga and finally a thunderous Loop.

Flyer from 1986 – see Wonderstuff and Voice of The Beehive dates. Image Credit mdm.archive.co.uk

One notable exception was Green on Red and Steve Earle where it was just one of those nights where the gig didn’t work, the set was dull and to top it off the transport home had been vandalised and was bereft of a coat and a back seat window so was bloody freezing all the way home especially for Dave Keane in the back seat!

Two remaining standouts were Voice of the Beehive which was the first gig I attended with my then girlfriend, now wife Gill. The other was a carload of us attending the Stiff Little Fingers comeback tour on 18/12/87 which despite being sub-tropical outside remains one of the hottest gigs I have ever attended with a maximum of two songs in the moshpit before an obligatory rest station on the DJ’s steps.

Despite not attending a gig there in 30 years, and over 900 gigs since it still sits proudly as my 5th most attended venue.