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Breakfast at Gorilla

By
July 30, 2012
Drink, Food, Uncategorized

I clocked him before he reached our table gliding serenely, lighter than air, across the polished exposed floorboards.

‘Strumming my pain with his finger…,’ Lauryn Hill purred from the PA system. I stared at his tray, my eyes popping out my skull at the sight of the oreo cookie garnishing the glass. Pathetically grateful and desperate for sugar.

The sweet creamy milk laced with woody chocolate cookies, diffused with flecks of ice: the sugar instantly absorbed, the ice soothing my throbbing head.

‘…and so I came to see and listen for a while.’ sang Lauryn. It was a perfect moment. Serene.  After a slurp I pressed the glass to my temples, one at a time, and prayed the staff wouldn’t judge me.

Despite questioning in a previous post if Manchester’s bar and club scene was becoming a little  samey,  I have to admit I like Trof’s latest offering, Gorilla, on Whitworth Street.

Not sure how I’ll feel about another Black Dog Ballroom, mind. The night before we’d been past it as we stumbled through the Northern Quater on our way to Stevenson Square, a long line of Printworks refugees tailed around the corner.

But Gorilla I like. It’s got a dinner feel to it with these angular aluminium tiles above the bar, and there’s a gin parlour upstairs that, thankfully, is not open at 11am on a Saturday morning, which is when I tend to stumble in, pick something off the breakfast menu and slump on the table waiting for someone to bring me liquids.

Last time, I chose the waffles, bacon and maple syrup, which was possibly a mistake. Kristian went nuts for it, figuring there’s nothing not to like about a dish that contains salty, sweet and bready elements. But I’m someone who likes savoury and pudding to be clearly signposted and the bacon just seemed out of place to me. Good coffee though.

This time round there was no messing about. I was dying and there was no room for error. I plumped for the vegetarian breakfast, knowing that my stomach couldn’t handle a plateful of pork.

I asked for extra veggie black pudding, our server told me that I was making a wise choice. I felt comforted by his assurances.

The Mediterranean vegetables that it came with were glossy with olive oil and herbs de provence. The homemade hash brown, that came separately, was like tasting a hash brown for the first time, as it should be. Pure and good. The egg, perfect and fresh.

And our server had been no false prophet; while the veggie black pudding lacked the depth of its blood-filled counterpart, it was crumbly and unctuous.

I work close by and I’ve popped  in once or twice on my way home. They have a deal going on cocktails and wines between five and eight, but if I’m drinking on a school night it’s because I want something specific and Augustiner Helles comes in at around £4.50, which while not far off the going rate for a decent beverage can still come as a bit of a shock.

I was pretty enthusiastic when the waiter politely asked if we’d enjoyed our meal.  I said it was          amazing and maybe that was a bit much, but it seemed, with the sugary milkshake working on my hangover, that anything was possible now.

I could go into town, watch a film, get out of the city, catch a train to the coast, I could do it all again if I wanted to. It was all there for the taking now that I’d steeled myself with grease and milk.

(I ended up in Bury.)

The One Where We Went to See Friends at the Academy

By
May 9, 2012
Academy, Music

I had a bit of a moan in my SFTOC post about delayed running times. I guess this is a little “square” of me. After all, “it’s rock ‘n’ roll, man.”

If a train I was expecting to catch were to run 45 minutes late I would complain loudly, possibly in writing (well, maybe I’d compose a passive agressive tweet). But artistic tardiness I’m expected to take with good grace because, as everyone knows, creative people can’t possibly be expected to be punctual too.

The band were meant to come on at 9:30pm and, not being too bothered about the support act, that’s what time I showed up. The audience were a mixed bag; half second year undergrads, half responsible-looking over thirties. As 9:30pm came and went the rag-tag audience were treated to a half hour of various band members and roadies tooling around with the main keyboard.

Wires were disconnected before being reconnected to sockets and heads were scratched in confusion. The undergrads sipped on blue VK’s and waggled their arses to retro house filler tracks. The over thirties chatted politely before fixing their increasingly impatient gazes upon the people ineptly trying to reconnect the non-functioning instrument.  At two minutes to 10, someone had a flash of inspiration and replaced the broken keyboard with one that worked. Genius.

I guess I was just tetchy because it was a week night and I had work in the morning. I wanted to see the gig and get home in time for a brew and an episode of South Park before bed. As you creep closer to thirty things like a brew and an episode of South Park before bed become increasingly important to you. It’s not Friends’ fault I work a nine-to-five.

Anyway, Friends.

Friends are a five piece band from Brooklyn, who are currently on a UK tour. They are comprised of lead singer Samantha Urbani and her childhood friend Lesley Hann on bass, percussion and backing vocals, with  Nikki Shapiro on guitar, percussion and the ill-fated keyboard, Oliver Duncan on drums, and Matthew Molnar playing second keyboard, percussion and bass.

Given the shaky start the band and the audience took a little while to warm to each other, but once the gig got going there were moments of magic. “I’m His Girl,” released last October as part of a double A side,  was one such instance.

The song is about being in a loving relationship but still being individual and independent. It’s catchy and has the feeling of an anthem to it. It’s something you might sing when you are on-top-of-the-world in love and every girl in the Academy was dancing like it was written about her and her man.

There are R&B influences to Friends. Their music is bright and funky with Urbani at times channeling the spirt of Debbie Harry. Percussion-fuelled and dreamy, “Friend Crush” saw her sashaying around to the twangy top-noted melodies, and was a high-point of the 40 minute set.

Urbani’s a great frontwoman, drawing the crowd into her performance with Monroe-like purrs and whoops as she slinks about the stage like a veteran disco cat. You can imagine groups of kids playing jump-rope (as they might say in New York) and chanting Friends lyrics. However, Hann’s moody backing vocals and the group’s penchant for raw percussion stops their sound from becoming overly saccharine.

All in all, worth getting home slightly too late for that before-bed brew.

Sounds From the Other City

By
May 7, 2012
Music, Salford
2 Comments

Sounds from the Other City is a one-day independent music festival set up by Maurice and Mark Carlin seven years ago after they decided they wanted a platform for promotors to showcase the best new artists emerging from Manchester and beyond.

Having established its pedigree by hosting ‘career-changing performances’ from  Marina and the Diamonds, The Ting Tings and The Whip, I felt that this year I needed to check it out.

For me, listening to new music and planning who I want to see is all part of the fun of going to a festival; I’ve even been known to go as far as colour-coded spreadsheets. So, true to form, in the run up to SFTOC I listened to as many of the artists as I could, devising a list which included Verity Susman, New Hips, Withered Hand, Au Palais, Butcher The Bar, Molly Nilsson, The Kites of San Quentin, Ghost Outfit, Easter, Keep Shelly in Athens, Walls, and (finally) Maria Minerva.

Well, that was the intention; my meticulous list-making failed to take into account the effects of numerous beers, delayed running times, bumping into friends, and generally everything else that happily goes along with being at an all-day event.

I began in St. Phillip’s Church, on time to watch Withered Hand, but because the venue was already running half an hour behind schedule, I saw the whole of Dancing Years and only half of the act I’d come to see.

No matter though, for Dancing Years provided an excellent and unexpected performance. “Father” won the award for best song of the half hour set, with the line “Father I know I’m not the best son, because I always make a mess” holding poignant resonance beneath the church’s stained glass depiction of the crucifix. I managed to catch the first half of Withered Hand, but had to leave before  ”Love in the Time of Ecstasy,” in which Dan Wilson is at his lyrical best.

I headed over to the cavernous, grungy Islington Mill to see Au Palais, who are a two piece from Toronto (via London). Their music is electronic pop with dark overtones and sinister, nonchalant vocals. I felt that they would have benefitted from a later slot; the crowd were really getting into the title track of their latest EP Tender Mercy – a subtle onslaught of a song that just keeps pushing – and had they been on at 10 rather than 5, the crowd’s Red Stripe bop would have turned into fully fledged shapes.

Speaking of beer (and at Onward, Manchester we so often are), Islington Mill had a lot to offer. The selection behind the bar was respectable, and in the courtyard there was a stall featuring some gems from Dunham Massy, amongst others. I really appreciate it when venues give a bit of thought to what punters are drinking, and it cheered my boozy heart to sip on quality real ale while getting down to some top music.

After Au Palais there was a break in my schedule, and it was time to replenish my energy levels with food. So it was on to one of Salford’s best kept secrets, the Kong Won Express.

To call it a restaurant would be a bit of a stretch. The neon pink interior could only hold twenty-five covers max and the colour co-ordinated plastic chairs don’t really lend themselves to a fine dining experience, but trust me, this is the best Chinese food to be found in Greater Manchester. I shared the Four Treasure Rice and Szechwan Pork and Pancakes. Both were succulent and well-flavoured and the knowledge that they deliver to my postcode can only be bad for my overall health.

Refuelled, it was on to The King’s Arms to catch Molly Nielson. I arrived a little late, weighed down with a happy belly, and clearly half of Manchester wanted to hear Molly’s dreamy, DIY, bittersweet stylings. I had to do some quite shameless queue jumping in order to get into the gig, but it was worth the sideways glares and quiet grumbles to hear “Hotel Home” live.

Having sated my appetite for what could good-naturedly be described as 90s instructional video music, I walked back down Chapel Street and stopped off at the New Oxford to sample its wide selection of draft beers.

As someone who falls into the category of festival spreadsheet fanatic, and who likes to know exactly what she’s going to listen to and when, I sometimes have to remind myself to freestyle it a bit. And for the most part, it’s generally a gamble worth taking.

The New Oxford was playing host to a selection of spoken word performances, and I arrived just in time to catch Les Malheureux (Sarah-Clare Conlon and David Gaffney) perform a series of short stories that comically twisted subjects from potato smiles to class divides to dress down Fridays and set them to honky keyboard music against a backdrop of PowerPoint projections. It was a thoroughly funny half hour and I was very glad I caught it.

Post-Les Malheureux I tottered down to the Creation Cafe, along the way taking in the disparity between recently installed blue-stripped pavements scattered with sleek geometric benches and the burnt out offices and bricked-in pubs of Chapel Street. I arrived in time to watch the crowd raucously jigging to the last couple of Frazer King numbers before settling into the set of Crumpsall four-piece Easter.

From there it was back toward the city centre and The Black Lion for Walls, who I saw  supporting The Field at the Deaf Institute last year, but who are well worth watching again. Unless, that is, they keep you waiting for over an hour.

Of course you can’t expect a festival with no less than 18 stages and more than 80 acts to run without any hitches, but by this point I’d been drinking since 2pm and was beginning to flag. I listened patiently to Dam Mantle, an accomplished Burial-inspired techno artist, and waited another half hour for Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis to connect an infinite number of wires, as well as check instruments and projectors before they began their set. Two tracks in though I realised that it was time to call it a day.

I headed back downstairs, just in time for the main bar to call last orders. I bought one more drink and stood about, sipping on end-of-the-night pints and swapping notes on who had seen what with friends before slipping off into the night, and the chaos of Manchester city centre on a bank holiday weekend. It had been a good day.

2012 in film: part one

By
February 12, 2012
Cinema

Shame


An unflinching look at sex addiction starring Michael Fassbender as Brandon and Carey Mulligan as his damaged, destructive sibling. Set in a nightmarish New York geared toward making sex as cheap and easily accessible as possible, this is a difficult film filled with grim, explicit scenes. What drives Brandon relentlessly toward fulfilling his desires is never fully explained, though a troubled childhood is hinted at with the gorgeously simple line “we’re not bad people, we just come from a bad place”. Instead, Brandon’s sexual compulsion is portrayed in dark tones, exposing the desperation of an addiction that is on par with substance abuse.

Highlights: The running scene and Mulligan’s rendition of “New York, New York”.

An Education


Carey Mulligan stars as 16 year old school girl Jenny, who is on course to win a place reading English at Oxford when the charismatic yet disreputable David offers her a lift in his Bristol sports car and a way to break the monotony of suburban lower-middle class life. The title’s double entendre is played out over the proceeding hour and a half, as Jenny becomes submerged in David’s murky world of lies and deceit. The film is based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber, which are given a cinematic makeover by Nick Hornby. It is at times a little predictable and maybe a touch sentimental, with easily drawn characters, but it works well as a coming of age film and serves to fill a couple of satisfactory hours on a Sunday afternoon.

Highlights: To be honest I won’t remember this film forever, but it did reacquaint me with the work of Lynn Barber, who is a very good interviewer and feature writer and not at all forgettable. So in my opinion the best part of An Education is reading Barber’s interview with Marianne Faithfull afterwards.

The Artist


The Artist tells the story of silent movie actor George Valentin, whose fame is on the wane, and Peppy Miller, who is a rising star of the newfangled ‘talkies’. This is a heartwarming story told with artistry, a lightness of touch and universal appeal. It’s not particularly surprising that it has been nominated for eleven Oscars, and it is the simplicity of the story and the sincere performances of Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo and John Goodman that make this film genuinely memorable. However, it seems a little excessive to nominate The Artist for eleven awards when a film as well-crafted and adrenalin-filled as Drive has barely scraped one. While The Artist has much to recommend it – it is beautifully shot, well-performed, artistic, accessible – a friend made a good point when asking “would this film have rated as highly were there spoken dialogue?” and I’m not sure it would have. Still, certainly worth a watch if you haven’t seen it.

Highlights: The smartest dog you are ever likely to see on screen.

War Horse


Ah, War Horse. I was desperate to see this film from the moment I read this illustrated review on The Hairpin. For those of you who have been living under a rock War Horse is the tale of a plucky and courageous horse called Joey and the people (mainly men) who fall in love with him, set during WW1. Directed by Stephen Spielberg for Disney, this film has the schmaltz factor turned up to eleven and I’m not ashamed to say I cried on several occasions. If you love shots of horses running through fields, being brave and watching grown men struggling to conceal their amorous equestrian inclinations then you’ve struck gold with War Horse.

Highlights: There are so many fantastic moments it’s hard to know which to rate highest without giving the ending away. The goose is pretty cool though.

Drive


Telling the story of an unnamed Driver (Ryan Gosling) who quietly falls in love with his neighbour, Irene (Carey Mulligan), who is unfortunately married to an unsuccessful criminal. When the Driver attempts to help him out things go disastrously wrong, and he finds himself in over his head with some dangerous characters.

Driver appeals on several levels. It is a cool sensory feast, beautifully styled with an excellent soundtrack and some breathtaking stunt driving. Gosling’s central figure is a classic strong silent type; a version of John Wayne reimagined by Quentin Tarantino. I defy men (and women for that matter) not to form a little crush on Gosling in this role. Whilst not perfect – it’d easy to pick a few holes in Drive’s plot – this a really enjoyable, heartbreaking, exhilarating romp of a film and deserves to have received more recognition from the Oscars than a single nomination for its sound editing.

Highlights: There was nearly another score for Drive and it’s really worth a listen. You can find here. And if you fancy getting your hands on a shiny scorpion jacket of your very own you can do so here.

Blue Valentine


If you’re feeling particularly disenchanted with love this Valentine’s Day, then Blue Valentine – with its bleak, harrowing depiction of a relationship in its death throes – might well be the film to reassure you that you’re better off alone. Or you can watch it with your partner and argue over who fucked it more, Ryan Gosling’s Dean or Michelle Williams’s Cindy.

The story of their relationship is told via flashbacks to their early days, showing us how they initially bonded and fell in love alongside their final moments following a visit to a tacky love-hotel. Whilst the film is difficult to watch in places, it’s a beautifully told story with some touching moments and leaves you with plenty of food for thought afterwards.

Highlight: Dean serenading Cindy with the song “You Only Hurt the Ones You Love” outside a discount wedding shop. The same song is played again over the credits.

New Year, New Post

By
January 28, 2012
Manchester

Okay, so given that we are in the home stretch of January it’s probably a bit late for us to be doing a ‘new year post,’ but considering that we’ve been less consistent than we’d have liked in updating our blog we figured that a catch up, ‘we’re back’ kinda post was in order.

The tail end of 2011 was a bit hectic, and in between various trips across the country, Christmas, work and the party season (and to be completely honest some general laziness) we lost our way as far as Onward, Manchester was concerned.

But new year, fresh start and all that. So in 2012 we hope to keep on writing about our Manchester-based exploits, the issues we care about and our day-to-day craic for anyone who cares to read about it. Rather than have ‘resolutions’ (if we’d had any we’d have given up on them by now anyway), we have things that we’d like to do in 2012, which coincidentally is the Chinese Year of the Dragon.

We want to continue the festival precedent that we set in 2011 by attending ATP in March and Primavera in May/June. Festival-type events are something this city has done really well in recent years; Eurocultured, Sounds From the Other City, Carefully Planned and FutureEverything are all on our 2012 to do list.

Over the winter it has been really cold and often we’ve found we’d rather be sat in with a boxset than out getting cold and wet. This seems to have had some positive effects on our respective bank balances as well as ensuring that we finally finished off The Sopranos (ending = awesome) and made a respectable start on The Wire, which has taken us a stupidly long time to get round to watching.

This year we want to continue with the box set drive, partly because we’re getting really bored of the bland Come Dine With Me repeats, Master Chef semi-finals and rubbernecking documentaries that seem to be the mainstay of all the major channels at the moment. Whilst TV definitely provides some thought-easing, head space of an evening, there’s no reason that space shouldn’t be filled with something that is both well crafted and entertaining. So we’ve got Mad Men, Deadwood, Homicide: Life on the Street, Bored to Death and 30 Rock on our list so far, but any other recommendations would be very welcome.

Eating well is also high on our list of priorities this year; both in terms of looking after ourselves through the food we eat (sounds boring I know) and also in eating lovely food out. We stumbled upon this Gold List of places to eat in Manchester so we plan to work our way through them as well as adding recommendations of our own. Hopefully it’ll be delicious and fun!

We both have things that we’d like to individually achieve (Sam: swim 5k for Marie Curie, get involved with feminism in Manchester; Kristian: write his first novel before the end of the year) but that’s all we can think of for now.

Happy (belated) New Year!

Comments Off

By
November 10, 2011
Uncategorized

Not so long ago we posted an article that attracted a critical response. The article was seemingly innocuous enough, and despite not really agreeing with the commentator’s thrust I felt  the essence of the comment was fair enough, if unpleasantly expressed. After all, you can’t please everyone all the time, and if you have an opinion you can bet your life someone else will have a contrasting point of view.

But it didn’t stop there. Next came emails, and sinister ones at that. Soon it became obvious that the person concerned had gone to a fair bit of trouble; setting up a separate email address under an alias and tracking down where we might be at a certain time. We both felt strongly that this person was a coward and would lack the balls to actually come down and present their grievances face to face.

Turned out we were right.

And in the grand scheme of thing this was a relatively mild experience. Just a bit of trolling really. Other people we know who write blogs have had similar experiences. I sincerely hope I’ll never have to receive anything similar to Guardian writer, Suzanne More.

But this experience did get me thinking about how easy it is for people to behave a certain way online and the role of comments pages in facilitating  debate. Are they useful? Do they really add anything meaningful to the reading experience? Should moderator standards be more stringent? Should the IP addresses of people who send threatening emails be passed on to the police?

It’s an interesting debate, one that I can see both sides of. On the one hand, it can be argued that a bit of stick every now and then is the price that you pay for having a platform. However, bulling in any profession or walk of life should be unacceptable.

@zephyrtron presented some interesting points in his post over at Write Now. If comments were locked into social media platforms (which in turn are locked into a person’s offline life) then we would most likely see people begin to comment with a bit more thought. He also presents an interesting point about free speech being built on personal responsibility.

I agree with much of what is said in his post, although I would be sad to see the end of comments completely.

Often comments on certain articles can add another angle to the story or contribute information that’s relevant to the topic being discussed. But it really gets my goat when people comment on Mariella Frostrup or Pamela Connolly pieces just to say  something along the lines of  “once again Mariella/Pamela has given some rubbish advice.” You can almost see them rolling their eyes derivatively while they type, filled with a false sense of superiority.

Perhaps it is time we began to apply the rules of what we consider acceptable publicly to the way we behave online.

Follow the conversation on Twitter: #killcomments

From Mancenion to Manchester: A tale told by Ford Madox Brown

By
October 23, 2011
Art, Manchester

Though it was touched upon in our second A Long Weekender post, I felt that the Ford Madox Brown murals – which decorate a chamber on the first floor of Manchester Town Hall, and depict the history of our city in a series of twelve scenes – deserved a post all of their own.

As something of a history lover, I’ve often wondered what Manchester was like in the Middle Ages; there’s ample evidence of the city in the 19th century – you can’t help but notice all the mills and factories dotted about the place – and the Roman fort in Castlefield is testament to the city’s longstanding history. But what about all that time in between then and now?

If, like me, you’ve ever asked yourself these questions, then these murals provide a very concise introduction. Each is painted in the vaguely romantic style, which is technically a Hogarthian version of Pre-Raphaelite. Apparently.

The story begins with The Romans Building a Fort at Mancenion, with a Roman general and his wife inspecting the work being carried out (detail showing a solider inspecting the plans below).

The next image shows the baptism of the pagan King Edwin to Christianity. Though this took place in York the conversion brought Christianity to Manchester.

The Expulsion of the Danes from Manchester portrays Mancunians, rather than Saxon soldiers, expelling Danish invaders. From there we move on to The Trial of Wycliffe A.D. 1377, a man who is credited with brining non-conformism to the North of England.

Wycliffe was an unfortunate bloke who was tried for heresy in London in 1377; however, through his protector – John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster – he became linked to the origins of non-conformism. In the full scale image Chaucer is pictured taking notes. I liked the detail of these two gossiping in the foreground about the drama taking place behind them.

Detail from The Trail of Wyclif: Wyclif was an unfortunate bloke who was tried for heresy in London in 1377 but through his protector, a man named John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster he became linked to the origins of non-conformism in the North of England. In the full scale image Caucer is pictured taking notes. I liked the detail of these two gossiping about the drama taking place behind them.

Next, The Proclamation Regarding Weights and Measures A.D. 1556 shows that streamlining the system of general measurements was as unpopular in the 16th century as it was in 2000, when UK law compelled traders to sell in metric measurements.

Crabtree Watching the Transit of Venus A.D. 1639 depicts William Crabtree, from Broughton, observing the transit of Venus, before Chetham’s Life’s Dream A.D. 1640 shows the origins of the current Chetham’s School of Music.

Next, Bradshaw’s Defence of Manchester A.D. 1642 presents a Manchester under siege as Royalist troops surround the town. This was the last murial to be completed before Brown died; having lost the use of his right hand after a stroke, he had to complete it with his left.

We then move on to more familiar times with John Kay, Inventor of the Fly Shuttle A.D. 1753. As Kay tests his invention rioters try to break into his workshop and break it. We stay with the origins of the Industrial Revolution with The Opening of the Bridgewater Canal A.D. 1761, before finally moving on to Dalton Collecting Marsh-Fire Gas, where we see Dalton collecting bubbles of gas from the water of a pond. His experimentation with gas led to the him developing atomic theory.

And there we have it; some of the key events that have help shaped Manchester history over the ages. I’m not really sure how accurate the murals are as a historical record, but regardless they are lovely to look at, and before we saw them as part of our Weekender events I had no idea they were even there.

If you would like to find out more from the comfort of your computer screen you can take a look at the Manchester Government website. Or you can go down to Manchester Town Hall Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm.

Part four of a four part series in conjunction with All Points North, providing coverage of Manchester Weekender and other regional festivals.

Good at the Royal Exchange Theatre

By
October 15, 2011
All Points North, Creative Tourist, Royal Exchange Theatre, Things to do in Manchester

We’ve rarely been disappointed at the Exchange and we arrived last night hoping the evening’s performance, and our inaugural Manchester Weekender event, would be no exception.

It wasn’t. Good is a play that is hard to forget, one that will roll around in our minds for some time to come.

This production of C.P. Taylor’s 1981 classic, directed by Polly Findlay, tells the story of Professor Haldler, an academic living in 1930s Germany who is struggling to balance the responsibilities of an infirm mother and a hapless wife with a burgeoning infatuation with his student.

To deal with his frustration at his mother’s declining health he writes a pro-euthanasia novel that catches the attention of the Nazi Party, who enlist his services to add ethical weight to their anti-Semitic policies. At crucial moments of moral choice Hadler’s tendency to imagine beautiful music playing leads to him making ethically dubious decisions, almost without him realizing the impact of his actions until it is too late.

The action unfolds in a series of overlapping scenes that act as a means of deliberately disorienting the audience. This device leaves you feeling empathetic with Hadler, played by Adrian Rawlins. We switch from a scene with his mother, to his Jewish friend, to his wife, to his love interest, all the time witnessing how Hadler’s attention is constantly moved from the moral focus of his predicament by his own musical delusions.

With its multitalented cast Good was a show filled with tight performances. Particular highlights involved the switch from straight acting to musical performance. And the climatic scene of the first half was a delight, complete with light pyrotechnics – the description on the Exchange’s website of “1984 meets Cabaret” is entirely apt.

After the opening minutes, you become quickly acclimatized to this pace, and begin to share the disorientation of the main character. The musical interludes seamlessly integrate and feel entirely believable as a means of distracting Hadler from the situations of those around him.

The main question Good asks is “what would you do?” if faced with the same situation and the same choices. It is a question subtly asked; implicit in the creation of an emotional reality so complete, but also one regularly broken by dramatic techniques.

With the demands placed upon him by the supporting characters you can, as a viewer, sympathize with Hadler; however, in one of the final scenes between Hadler and his Jewish friend Maurice I actually wanted to get out of my seat and slap the central character, for sleepwalking from a position of sympathetic protagonist to an attempt to convince his now deceased friend, and himself in the process, that the actions of the Nazi Party are entirely justifiable and are, in fact, the fault of the German Jewish population.

The performances were, without exception, extremely accomplished, showcasing faultlessly how each character around Hadler is so wrapped up in their own psyche and the intricacies of their own experience that they have few faculties left with which to explore the wider implications of their actions.

Good runs until the 5th November, and we would certainly urge you to go and see the play for yourself. Tickets can be booked through the Royal Exchange website, and as always significant discounts are available for people under 26.

Part one of a four part series in conjunction with All Points North, providing coverage of Manchester Weekender and other regional festivals.

The Warehouse Project: All Good Things…

By
October 7, 2011
Music, Things to do in Manchester

It happened like this: you heard a rumour there was a secret afterparty, location as yet unknown. You danced wildly and formed firm friendships with complete strangers that never lasted longer than the opening hours of whichever club you happened to be in.

At kicking out time you piled into a taxi armed with a text on a friend’s phone telling you where the afterparty is. You would pull up at a disused building on the outskirts of the city centre to be ushered through a series of dank, dark rooms before emerging into a world of moody, smoke-diffused lighting and griding, popping beats.

In the early 2000s it was often warehouses or disused factory buildings. There were lots of them empty. Today, it might be an abandoned house or a meadow close to a bustling suburb. Same format applies; a text, a location, a party. Hopefully the police don’t show up.

But since 2006 you haven’t needed to know someone who knows someone who knows where the party is. The Warehouse Project has done the leg work for you.

And it’s not done it badly. There have been plenty of must see lineups and some really fantastic nights – one of the defining moments of my early twenties was losing myself to Modeselektor in the old Boddingtons Brewery – but this year will see the last party to be held at the Store Street venue, and perhaps the last of the Warehouse Project altogether.

This is certainly what was hinted at when Marcus Barnes spoke to one of the organisers Krysko for the Independent blogs section. In the interview he described the parties as “a little bit naughty, a little bit grimy.” And they are. But for me, last year that raw quality that made the parties electric to begin with felt contrived.

As word spread more people naturally wanted to go, which took some of the ‘secret party’ sheen away. For the first couple of years the Warehouse Project felt ‘underground’, as it should have done given that the event is modelled on free, illegal raves.

As the popularity grew the marketing machine went into overdrive. Beautifully designed posters and flyers flooded the city, and you would see them everywhere. Consequently, every tit with a valid ID and a pair of shutter shades had a ticket.

And as more people turned up the opportunities to part them from their money became all the harder to resist – when I went last year there was an honest to God merchandise stand. Not really in keeping with the spirit of the underground, is it?

I guess you could say it has become a victim of its own success, and the organisers will be taking a noble step if they put this cash cow to bed and look for new projects, despite knowing they could get another couple of years out of it easy.

And who knows? Maybe they will. In the interview Krysko stops short of saying that this is the last we’ll see of the Warehouse Project in Manchester, and the website simply says “end of Store Street” rather than “this is definitely and absolutely the end of the Warehouse Project forever, thank you and goodbye!”

Either way, this feels like the right time to call it a day. It would be so sad to see it become an embarrassing Madchester-esque cliche.

All good things can and should come to an end.

The Reading List: The Classic Slum by Robert Roberts

By
September 30, 2011
Salford, The Reading List

Salford is seen by some as the black sheep sibling of Manchester. This is unfair. Having spent time on the other side of the Irwell, I can attest to the fact that it is an artistically vibrant city filled with warm-hearted people rightly proud of their rich history.

I’ll even go so far as to argue that it’s a place of beauty. Whilst volunteering as a news broadcaster at Salford City Radio I had to travel from Manchester to the station pretty early in the morning. There was something about sitting on the top deck of the 36 and driving past Salford Shopping City, watching the sun play on the glass-paned tower blocks that enchanted my skewed, romantic sensibilities. Maybe that sounds silly, but to me it was beautiful.

But there is no denying that Salford has its social and economic problems. Now, I’m not qualified to say how best to solve them; that is a massively complicated question best left to cleverer men and women than I. However, reading The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts, it becomes clear that these problems have existed for a long time.

Roberts was born in a Salford in 1905, and in this tome he describes working class life in all its complexity. In prose of meticulously researched detail, coloured with anecdotes drawn from his own experiences, he does away with the much-touted myth of the good old days. He shows the truth of George Bernard Shaw’s maxim “the greatst of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.”

The book is divided into ten chapters, each covering a specific topic such as Possessions, Culture, and Class Structure. Personal favorite chapters featured descriptions of foods that made up the typical diet, the relationships between families and wider society, and the social connotations of different types of clothes.

Roberts shows how the First World War changed the life of working class people (and the whole of England, for that matter) forever – taking us from a world still hung up on Victorian moral codes to an age recognisably modern, showing us along the way how the prison that poverty creates can rarely be broken free from.

The Classic Slum is a compelling read. This was the first book I’ve purchased that could be classed as social history, and I initially chose it almost as a Horrible History for adults, expecting half-humorous descriptions of dilapidated slums, gory disease, jolly patrons of music halls, and looming factories. But the filth and the grim reality of people’s lives left me in no doubt as to the seriousness of existing in such a condition. Frankly, it’s horrible to think we ever allowed people to live like this – even more frightening when you consider the distance that still exists between the richest and the poorest members of society.

For all that, though, this is not a relentless tale of misery. There some particularly heartwarming scenes involving Roberts’ mother and some hugely comic moments too. One in particular that springs to mind involves the quickest way out of Manchester – the route taken being directly to the pub and the destination being a drunken stupor.

If the history of our area interests you, you will enjoy this book immensely, and it’s available from Blackwells on Oxford Road or online at The Book Depository. Go forth and read!

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