Liverpool Venues 8 to 10

The city of Liverpool, much like Manchester excels itself in retaining the grand architecture of vintage buildings. Meeting this particular criteria, Liverpool Old Bank public house on James Street down near the waterfront was originally the National Bank built in 1920. When it reopened as a hostelry it retained the American style ornate grandeur including the original tiled floors and high ceilings. It initially opened under the First National Bar name before morphing into the Old Bank in 2018.

Liverpool Old Bank. Image Credit theoldbankliverpool.co.uk

It contains a large bespoke bar on the ground floor with a smaller mezzanine bar in the upstairs area and it was on this upper deck that a group of us gathered for my pal Joe Glenny’s leaving do in November 2023 as he was jetting off for a career break in Australia. Whilst we were in residence there was a posse of acoustic musicians playing on a small stage downstairs.

I managed to glean one of the performer’s names so can record I saw a singer called Aidan play there. I did subsequently notify Joe a few months later that Mogwai were playing in Sydney when he was in residence there, but he shamefully missed attending the gig, there’s just no helping some people!

On a separate occasion, I was pottering around near Central station, as you do, and on Ranelagh Street chanced upon Liverpool Ranelagh’s Tavern. It is a ten a penny Irish theme bar and there was a singer called Seamus yodelling away in the corner.

Ranelagh’s Tavern. Image Credit ranelaghs.co.uk

Liverpool naturally exploits their hometown history with the Beatles and there are a plethora of bars paying homage to the band down Mathew Street and the most famous of them all is the Cavern Club where they played many of their early gigs.

In fact, between the 9th of February 1961 and the 3rd of August 1963 they performed there 292 times, and they were initially billed as deriving from Hamburg. They were surpassed only by the Hideaways who followed them as the resident house band who played over 400 gigs and were thus rewarded with their name being included on the wall of fame.

The Cavern opened its doors in 1957 as a jazz club with its driving force being a local chap called Alan Synter who found a cellar space which was being used at that stage as a tropical fruit warehouse and prior to that a World War II air raid shelter. It is said that when the club was at full capacity, the heat resulted in a sweet fruity smell emanating from the walls, which then became locally known as the ‘Cavern Perfume’. 

The club then moved on to embrace the mood of the day and rebadged itself as a Merseybeat venue. Bands who played there in that period include Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Black Sabbath, Queen and the Who and the local lass Cilla Black was employed there as a hat-check girl.

The Beatles on stage at the Cavern Club. Image Credit beatlesbible.com

Its history then became a little complicated when it closed in 1973 to make way for a ventilation shaft for the new Merseyrail underground railway. That however was never completed, and the site then turned into a car park. There were plans to reopen it in 1982, but it was identified that it was structurally impossible to do so. Many of the bricks from the original cellar were then sold to raise funds for the Strawberry Fields Children’s home.

At a 90-degree angle across the road, they decided to build a new Cavern which was recreated as much as they could in its original image. The initial owner was the former Liverpool football player Tommy Smith, but it closed again in December 1989 when it lost its licence following a vicious assault on a customer resulting in imprisonment for those involved.  

In July 1991 three friends reopened it and still run the club today. A chap called Paul McCartney returned to play a couple of gigs and secret warm up events were staged there by Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg, Travis and Oasis over the years. My one visit to Liverpool Cavern Club took place there in 2013 where I witnessed a singer called Freddie. I walked past recently and noted that they now charge simply for the privilege of entering the establishment, so I may not be visiting again!

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.