I have done a total of 5 gigs which I have loosely badged as ‘Midland Gigs’ and by taking into account some geographic liberties I have further quantified these into West and East. Outside of these, there are numerous others I have attended in Nottingham which I will cover in future articles.
Concentrating initially on the West gigs, the first one was Mogwai at Wolverhampton Wulfren Hall on 03/11/01. The virtually ever present Mogwai fan club of Uncle George, John and I drove over on a Saturday afternoon landing at a Premier Inn on the outskirts of Wolverhampton.
A taxi into town was followed by a sally around a few hostelries involving a bit of Jeff Stelling informing us slightly annoyingly (because we weren’t in attendance) that North End had won 6-0 against Stockport including a David Healy hat trick.
The venue in the centre of town is badged as Civic Hall with two venues contained within. The bigger venue (Civic Hall) has a capacity of 3000 and the smaller Wulfrun Hall we were attending with a capacity of 1134. There is also a linked sister venue Slade Rooms (cap 550) across town.
I recall it being a fairly traditional venue about two thirds full and Mogwai sounded good. After the gig we found a ‘Raiders’ like music pub that I cannot recall the name of near the venue and proceeded to imbibe too much Becks as fine tune followed fine tune.
We had spotted a sophisticated looking Indian restaurant earlier in the evening which we proceeded to topple into, it was fabulous food, but rather expensive and somewhat wasted on us in our inebriated state. Back at the Premier Inn, John for some reason had booked a family room so we had to smuggle him in, and he slept in the cot bed, whilst me and George had the double!
My only other visits to Wolverhampton since this gig have been via the train station travelling onwards with work to the thriving metropolis of Telford.
On 14/09/16 we headed over to Coventry, birthplace of our South Manchester pals Marcus and Tris, to see Mogwai. Me and George travelled down on the train and when heading back from a comfort break late in the journey, I realised that the entire Mogwai band were sat at the end of our carriage.
This made geographical sense as the train starting point had been Glasgow Central. After a double take and brief consideration of extolling them in fanboy style with a glowing testimonial I said nowt and heading back to my seat and then said ‘you’ll never guess what….
I did have a brief parlay as we departed the train but especially loved the fact that the whole carriage was oblivious to the musical greatness sat in their midst.
We met John who had driven down and grabbed some tea in the Earl of Mercia Wetherspoons in the centre. Mogwai were playing the soundtrack to a nuclear age documentary titled Atomic – Living in Dread and Promise at Coventry Cathedral. The documentary was penned by a Coventry born Mark Cousins. So, for that reason and the Cathedral’s history of being blitzed during the war, it was a perfect location.
It was an impressive venue and they had poignantly turned the seats around to ensure the ruins were the backdrop to the dark subject matter displayed on the screens and that allied alongside the eerie soundtrack made it an intense experience.
A loo visit was a trek and a half as they were located way out the back of the basilica and down deep into the crypt.
After, we headed back into town and could hear the unmistakeable sound of a band playing which naturally had to be investigated resulting in catching the tail end of a Terraboula Liar set in Coventry Drapers. They most definitely fell into the ‘After the Lord Mayors show’ category!