It is only a few short weeks since I took my first tentative steps back into blogging. I was a little disappointed with my last effort. I was writing about a great holiday and a great subject but felt I hadn’t rediscovered my blogging Mojo. Since then I have attended a CRAFT Club meeting which made me feel good about life again. I also shared a past blog on Twitter with an American Blues fan (Everton FC not the musical genre) which went down well and made me realise that letting my emotions takeover is powerful therapy.
This morally corrupt government has switched my personal kettle on and thoroughly boiled my piss! The latest jaw dropping example is the Owen Paterson affair. This goes beyond cronyism and descends into the netherworld of corruption. Sadly Boris Johnson can’t see what he has done wrong. Even sadder is the fact that the Conservative party is still ahead in opinion polls. When I was young my mam would forgive me for anything but she made clear to me that I should never tell lies. I am not alone; many of my contemporaries were brought up the same way. We have instilled the same values in our own children so what has gone wrong??? It is my generation that are voting for this pack of shysters. I still remember the claim that the NHS would get an extra £350 million a week as a result of Brexit. They have actually got nothing. Businesses are struggling, the economy is fucked but there has been no apology. Does anyone truly believe we are better off from Brexit?
I woke up early on Sunday 31st October, All Hallows eve. This was the day of our first gig since the Covis outbreak. The previous week had seen rain that Noah’s Ark would have struggled to cope with but the sun shone in my heart as I prepared for our trip to Manchester.
Manchester has so much going for it. Two world class football stadiums and two world class teams who boast many of the world’s best players between them. There are many fantastic music venues; The Bridgewater Hall, The Opera House and my personal favourite the Apollo. There is the Academy and Academy 2, The Lowry and many great small venues in the Northern Quarter. On the downside there is the dreadful Manchester Arena, one of the country’s most soulless venues.
Musical luminaries from Manchester include The Hollies, 10CC, The Fall, The Joy Division, The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and Oasis. There are many more I could mention but I’m sure you will agree it is a pretty impressive CV.
With such riches on offer you may be surprised to hear that I hate the fucking place!!!
The rain poured relentlessly on the drive down but by the time we arrived in Manchester the sun was shining. First stop on arrival was Vinyl exchange on Oldham Street.
This place has a great selection of vinyl but I find it somewhat of a let-down. I can’t put my finger on why but I don’t really enjoy vinyl scavenging in there. On this visit I managed to pick up a couple of LCD Soundsystem albums plus a Roy Buchanan album. Almost directly across the road from Vinyl exchange is Piccadilly records.
This place is another with a great selection of records. Prices are on the high side in both compared to Pepperland and Fat Bob’s in Barrow but it is a major city after all. The shop was full of browsers and posers but I couldn’t summon the enthusiasm to wade in and forage. I was happy with the records I had bought so headed off to meet Pat. As I got to Piccadilly Gardens it had started to rain. Everywhere was uncomfortably crowded and misery swiftly kicked in. We nipped down Fountain Street and into Shakespeare’s for a well-deserved pint. One of the oldest pubs in the city centre, it can usually be depended on to serve a decent pint of real ale. Sadly, they had no cask beers on tap. We’re having trouble with deliveries said the lady behind the bar. They had no problem with stocks of shite beers! I had a pint of an American IPA which was drinkable I suppose. We then headed off in the rain and cut down King Street walking past shops that ironically now we can afford to buy from don’t hold any attraction. We sheltered from the rain by dipping into Mr. Thomas’ Chop House. They served a decent pint of Landlord but it was £5 a pint in both pubs which was a little steep in my opinion.
We left and headed for the Moon under water on Deansgate. This is probably the biggest ‘Spoons I have been in but it is as dependable as the rest of the chain when it comes to getting a decent pint. As usual in ‘Spoons, prices were dirt cheap.
We left at 4.0 p.m and ventured onto a dark, wet, miserable Deansgate. We ate at La Vina which is a huge Tapas restaurant. The meal was good, nothing remarkable, but good all the same. I went to book an Uber but nothing was available for 15 minutes so we booked a local cab company, Street cars. They arrived in less than 5 minutes and cost considerably less than Uber was quoting.
After drying off and getting changed we headed off to the gig. I checked Uber availability which was 10 minutes and £10. We booked Street cars again who came straight away and were charged a fiver!!! I am an enthusiastic Uber user but they are now routinely more expensive than a ‘normal’ cab. When we were in Liverpool a couple of weeks earlier we dived in a black cab as Uber were quoting a 15 minute wait. It was £3 cheaper than the Uber quote and a damn sight more comfortable.
This was my first visit to the Opera House. This venue on Quay Street was built in 1912 and has a capacity of 1950. It is a grade 2 listed building and is quite magnificent. The website advised that proof of Covis vaccination was mandatory. The guy at the door asked if I had said proof but not to worry if not, he would just take my temperature, hmmm……….Ticketmaster said that only e tickets were allowed so make sure that I had their app om my phone. There was a problem with the Ticketmaster site so it was a good old fashioned list of names which was ticked off. Where would we be without Technology??? It was a breath-taking £6.50 for a bottle of beer or small bottle of wine which could be taken into the theatre.
We took our seats and caught the last few songs of support act Katherine Priddy. I was quite impressed and will check out her debut album The Eternal Rocks. The last time we saw Richard Thompson he was touring his Electric album and played with a great trio. This time it was a solo show, just Richard and an acoustic guitar. He opened with Stony Ground from the aforementioned Electric album and the sound he got from his guitar was mesmerising. There were 4 guys sat behind us who had been debating whether anyone could touch Bob Dylan. They were impressed with this opening. A couple of songs later came Salford Sunday from the same album which was an obvious choice to play in Manchester. The way Thompson arranged both these songs for solo acoustic guitar was impressive to say the least. At this point in the show Richard read a short passage from his recently released autobiography Beeswing following it up by playing the song of the same name. Beeswing has long been one of my favourite songs. I found out recently that it is allegedly about folk singer Anne Briggs with whom he had a relationship. I read up about Briggs and found her backstory fascinating. Naturally, I had to buy an album to check out her chops. She sings unaccompanied and I found it a really good album of folk songs.
Richard Thompson – “Beeswing” – YouTube
There are a half dozen short readings from the book during the evening and they wetted my appetite so will look to read it as soon as possible. There is a great tale about playing in Hamburg with Fairport Convention that drips in pathos and is really funny.
My all-time favourite Richard Thompson tune is 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. He didn’t play it the first time I saw him but he didn’t let me down tonight. It was absolutely stunning, grown men in the audience were heads down air finger picking along!! One of the guys behind us said “this is fucking unreal” and it was brothers and sisters. It is incredible that one man can make it sound like a guitar orchestra is playing the tune
Richard Thompson – ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning’ (live acoustic performance) – YouTube
About halfway through the set he was joined onstage by Zara Phillips his current partner in life. Zara possesses a fine voice which provides the perfect foil to Thompson. The first song they duet on is the sublime Wall of death, one of the evenings many highlights. The set ends with another Richard and Linda Thompson classic I want to see the bright lights tonight. After a short break, Thompson returns on his own to perform Fairport Convention classic Meet on the ledge. Zara Phillips came out again and they finished with Tinker’s rhapsody and the Storm won’t come. A great show that was even better than the first time I saw him. It is amazing how he kept the audience spell bound for an hour and forty five minutes. Just one man and an acoustic guitar. It was a great way to get back into live gigs again. We have tickets to see The Delines and The Animals on successive weekends in February next year at The Met in Bury, one of our favourite venues. It is the Animals farewell tour which seems timely as sadly they have mostly passed away. They will be fronted by one of my favourite singers, Maggie Bell. Another musician with a fascinating backstory which included being managed by Peter Grant and recording on Led Zeppelin’s Swansong label. Her two Swansong albums Queen of the night and Suicide Sal are well worth checking out. Fans of Glaswegian detective series Taggert will know her as the singer of theme tune No Mean City. She also starred alongside Billy Connolly in TV drama Down among the big boys in 1993.
The Delines feature Willy Vlautin who is now better known for his novels, many of which have been made into movies. They are a great band and singer Amy Boone brings Vlautins songs to life. I can’t wait for their new album which is due early next year.
The Delines – Colfax Avenue (Live on KEXP) – YouTube
Post gig we headed back out onto Deansgate and stopped for a pint in The Lost Dene. The beer was shite and that’s putting it politely, We both ended up leaving our glasses half empty (spot the metaphor) and headed back out into the night. We passed roaming herds of young people in Halloween costumes heading for the cities various nightclubs. We passed a good few long queues at such venues with social distancing decidedly off the menu! We trudged down Deansgate in the pissing rain and ducked back into The Moon under Water. After drinking too much shite beer over the course of the day we both opted for Large G&T’s which were ludicrously cheap as ever in ‘Spoons. There was a young couple at the next table. She was, to put it politely, shit canned! When Pat headed to the bar to order another round her fella was ordering her a tonic. She probably didn’t notice!! We cabbed it back to the hotel as it was too miserable to walk and headed for the bar. Pat ordered the drinks while I nipped to the gents. She asked the bar tender for two G&T’s, he asked if she wanted to make them doubles and Pat asked what’s the difference? You get drunk quicker came his reply, tip well earned! The bar manager well and truly pissed me off when he said that 90% of the city’s homeless population actually earned £2000/week and were faking it. I’m sure the people huddled, shivering in shop doorways in the pissing rain were not faking it. Not a single one of them asked us for money! What a twat, he summed up this miserable midden of a city for me.
It was great to get to see a gig again after way too long. Although I spend a large portion of my leisure time listening to music, there is no substitute for watching artists play live. I prefer smaller venues with great acoustics than vast arenas with no soul and shite sound. As I said earlier, Manchester has many great venues but I just can’t warm to it as a city. The Northern Quarter is really good, The Curry mile is great but the city has no soul. Give me Liverpool and its warm, friendly people any day.
We’ve booked next year’s holiday in the USA. California is (sadly) off the menu to be replaced with our first visit to New Mexico. I look forward to the food, the Margarita’s and to trying a hot air balloon ride. We have booked some cool looking hotels and I am looking forward to relaxing and checking out the art scene. We have booked a cool looking Airbnb in Austin. It’s expensive but the free parking makes it worth it. Austin hotels charge around $40/day on average which is a rip off in my eyes. I don’t mind paying for valet service or tipping those who park/ bring out the car but $40 is daylight robbery I’m afraid. Everywhere we are staying in New Mexico has free parking and free, fresh cooked breakfast.
I have read many great books recently. Mary Gauthier’s Saved by a song is even better than I thought it would be. An emotional roller coaster that tells her life story through the medium of song lyrics. I also enjoyed I wanna be yours the autobiography of Mancunian poet John Cooper Clarke. He doesn’t pull any punches when describing the decades he spent dancing with mister brownstone.
I have just finished I alone can fix it which is the follow up to A very stable genius. This book by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig covers the last two years of the Trump Presidency. The description of the events of 6th January when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol is truly chilling. UK and European newspapers are becoming increasingly convinced that Trump is likely to win back power in 2024 and the fact that his supporters in the Republican party are changing laws in swing states to ensure his victory should frighten us all. It is ironic that the potential leader of the free world favours a totalitarian state where he is voted president for life. Similarly, In the UK the Tory government is changing electoral boundaries to favour its own politicians. Before you vote next time, consider if it is a truly fair election. We all want our own favourites to win but the concept of democracy guards us against dictatorship and allows common people to influence the way we are governed. Don’t let yourself succumb to unfair bias propagated by politicians. Here endeth the sermon comrades! Here’s to the next CRAFT club meeting in December and our next visit to Liverpool.