Tag: Whitehaven Civic Hall

Glasgow Venue 8 – Rockers

I decided that I fancied a Northern foray to Glasgow to coincide with my 40th birthday in June 2008 and managed to gather a posse of six other friends to accompany me. The first challenge as ever was the transport as it looked initially that there was to be engineering work but thankfully that was subsequently averted.

We headed up on the Friday and stayed at the Premier Inn near Charing Cross Station off Sauchiehall Street and had a cold one in the Baby Grand Bar & Grill directly opposite the hotel where they do periodically have live acts playing on the house baby grand piano.

We then headed on to the nearby Nice N Sleazy, named after the Stranglers song and the bar also featured in the artwork for Mogwai’s Rock Action album. Refuelled by a monster bowl of noodles we travelled over to the East End of the city to a couple of rough and ready pubs including Bairds Bar by the Barrowland venue.

Baby Grand Bar and Grill. Image Credit Glasgow Live

Naturally I had ensured there would be live music developed into the schedule and located a gig that night at Glasgow Rockers. Rockers is situated on Midland Street, and is a small dingy punk club buried in a tunnel below Glasgow Central station with a capacity of probably about a hundred.

When I researched the club, I did find some initial evidence that Green Day had played there in 2009, which I thought highly improbable and surmised that this was in fact a transpositional error. My initial suspicions were confirmed when their past concert list showed them at that time being bang in the middle of a huge stadium tour of America!  

The first band we saw was The Babysitters who were followed by the Eddies from Dundee. The latter formed around the brothers Dean and Dale Hoth, who had just released their second album ‘Twice Around the World’.

Glasgow Nice N Sleazy. Image Credit coolplaces.co.uk

There was a curtain in front of the small stage where you could hear the main band Guns on the Roof warming up. They hailed from Leeds and had already garnered support slots with punk luminaries such as Anti-Nowhere League, Rancid, Stiff Little Fingers and UK Subs.

Our group constituted much of the audience so Uncle George endeavoured to good humouredly liven up the atmosphere by generating a punk style mini mosh pit with the main singer. He was perhaps a tad over boisterous, but the singer was also rather precious which resulted in him uttering the random comment of ‘get off me leg’!  We left soon after and topped off the night with ‘one for the ditch’ in the hotel bar.

We awoke to a gloriously sunny Saturday, and we achieved our first objective by purchasing some breakfast from a local café without the local obligatory option of additional cheese! We commuted back south to Carlisle for the next leg of our journey.

I had discovered there is a train that takes you on the scenic route from Carlisle to Lancaster which literally hugs the Cumbrian Coast, adding two hours to your overall journey but the scenery was a blast!  I think the train now runs from Lancaster to Barrow via those stations.

We passed through St Bees and Whitehaven where I bizarrely once saw Henry Rollins at the Civic Hall. Our first stop off was at Ravenglass to meet Tony Dewhurst who joined the crew from there onwards. On the Main Street there is another station where you can catch a narrow gauge steam train up to Eskdale. Ravenglass was also the location a few years ago for a British Sea Power festival which a couple of pals attended. Before departing we obviously paid a visit to the Ratty Arms pub.     

Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. Image Credit steamheritage.co.uk

For a train buff, the most exciting aspect of this trip was that there were request stops where you just simply asked the train guard to pull in at the next station, which happened for us to be Foxfield. Across the road was the renowned real ale pub the Prince of Wales where we had 55 minutes in the beer garden before the next hourly train came chugging around the reservoir.

Now, there are many legendary tales about Uncle George, yellow box, 8th tee and Rochdale disco to name an initial triumvirate. Ulverston was now added to that list, but paraphrasing from what they say in the movies, what happens in Ulverston literally stays in Ulverston!

We progressed onto Lancaster where we met the Berry brothers in a canal side pub and then had a fine curry in the ever-reliable Bombay Balti and then a subsequent minibus home to complete a rather fabulous weekend.

Other British Gigs 1 and 2

As we had never made a pilgrimage to Anglesey, we decided to rectify that anomaly in 1997 with a weekend away in Beaumaris. A friend recommended a B&B which we swiftly booked into and travelled on the North Wales coast road en route to the island.

On the Friday night in a pub down the road, we began chatting to some locals who invited us to attend the main club in the town the following night. On the Saturday we salved our souls by visiting the numerous windswept beaches. We then had a fine curry at the Menai Bridge Tandoori before heading back to the same pub to meet our comperes for the evening.

The renowned club in question was the Beaumaris and District British Legion Club. We were readily signed in as visitors, post last orders in the pub, and the venue was a revelation as it seemed the whole town across all ages were in residence. We played some killer on the pool tables prior to the main musical act hit the stage.

The artist was a Roy Orbison tribute act resplendent in full garb obviously including the requisite dark sunglasses. It has to be noted he was rather good and regularly hit the challenging high notes. Now, I may have been imagining this, but he appeared to be looking regularly in our direction. Was it that we were recognising as newbies or was it thought that we were thought to be talent scouts! After a top night was had by all, we thanked our gracious hosts and bade our farewell.

The tribute act looked a bit like this chap. Image Credit bing.co.uk

In January 2002, we identified that Henry Rollins and the Rollins Band were undertaking a tour and playing the very unusual outpost of Whitehaven Civic Hall. The choice of venue piqued our interest so Uncle George, John Dewhurst and I headed over on a cold Thursday night.

It is a fair old drive into deepest Cumbria via the M6 and A66. The B&B we booked has to be worst I have ever lodged in replete with old fashioned extremely nosey landlady. It was dirty and unhygienic, one shared loo between all the rooms and the breakfast was inedible! Let’s just say we have never rushed back for a return visit.

We grabbed some tea at a local chippy, which served humongous fish, perhaps the close proximity to Sellafield contributed here, but boy it tasted good! There were odd coincidences that night where different cars appeared to follow us each time we turned into a road, even the quiet ones, to the point of us jesting that we were under surveillance.

The Civic Hall was the singular venue in town, containing our venue the Solway Hall (capacity 600) and Dunboyne Hall (capacity 400). The building appears to be still operational with odd tribute band on the gig listings and there are also additional theatre performances on the roster.

See the source image
Whitehaven Civic Hall. Image Credit BBC

The venue was busy with a diverse clientele similar to the Beaumaris crowd with ages varying from 18 to 80, it created an interesting dynamic with stage diving being undertaken by the yoof!

Henry is famous locally for once citing a story when being interviewed by Terry Christian on the old Channel 4 music programme the Word. The tale relates to him being beaten up outside Preston Raiders nightclub when he was the lead singer in his original band Black Flag. As he was back in the North of England, he referenced the incident and his assertion that Preston folk had wafer thin craniums. We glanced at each other and wisely kept our heads down and eyes averted from the stage!