September 2024. Manchester.
The first week after the end of Summer brings gigs from an American, a Canadian and an Australian, which is a joke you don’t want to hear.
4 days after Anastasia Coope I’m straight back to Manchester for another heroine AND another tick in the Matthew Curtis Manc Guide, which is actually more important than the GBG.
Mrs RM joins me, more to say hello to our own Matt before he jets off to Berlin to drink cheap lager than to listen to my weird opera tinged Americana, and the drizzle that descends as we reach Oldham Street puts a damper on any ambitions to walk to the Holt Brewery tap tonight.
Never mind. Manchester’s beautiful architecture will always be here for me,
and there’s a new food court to tick at New Century Hall next to that lovely Cloudwater bar (the Pilcrow) they got their fanboys to build.
New Century, according to my lads, is an excellent addition to the live music scene, and the Korean chicken place was top drawer. No cask, so Mrs RM had Salt Jute.
I must have walked past Night & Day several hundred times over the years and never once thought to pop in, despite this wondrous exterior.
It reminds me of a school disco I once attended rather than the cool bar I’d assumed it was,
and the beer range is very bog standard Manc. I must have been having a day off as I had that Guinness 0.0 and a sip of Mrs RM’s Shindigger, which is surely the new Punk IPA.
Mrs RM pounced on two seats close to the raised stage and we joined a hundred or so gig goers of a particular age and inclination lined up round the walls, waiting for the school disco to start with “Don’t You Want Me” or summat.
The descent to the toilets is “Dave’s Pies” scary, but you’re rewarded with the sort of wall art that has easy Berliners visiting the Northern Quarter in their thousands.
I don’t know, what WOULD Andrew Weatherall do ?
Nice people, great sound, £15 your quality Sunday night entertainment.
One complaint, about Manc-Sheff trains again.
Our last train to avoid getting home after 1am was at 10.15, so after only 20 minutes of a magical Haley Blais set Mrs RM was already wondering if she should start the 10 minute walk back to Piccadilly.
I gave her a 5 minute head start, stayed to listen to the wondrous “Firestarter” at the back of the school disco, and still beat her back to the chocolate shelf at Piccadilly Sainsbury’s.
retiredmartin 
“Our last train to avoid getting home after 1am was at 10.15”. Forty years ago the last train left Piccadilly for Stafford at a quarter past midnight, but sadly the railways aren’t what they were.
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Went to one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to there about twenty years ago, to see the late North Mississippi hill country bluesman T Model Ford, before catching a train back to Manchester Airport in the early hours and a taxi home. I can still see him before he went on stage, already an elderly man, at a large table with a bottle of whisky surrounded by admiring young women.
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That was me in case you hadn’t worked it out (don’t know why my phone didn’t log me in). He was touring his latest album, the still endlessly playable Bad Man, at the time, mostly featuring just him on stomping guitar and his equally propulsive drummer Spam.
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