On saturday I was browsing the books in Fopp, as I often do, looking for something to read on the bus home. A book entitled 'The Manchester Musical History Tour' caught my eye. I love music. I love Manchester. So here was a book that could've been written for me.
Reading the back cover convinced me further that I would enjoy the book. Written by two Manchester music enthusiasts, the book is essentially a tour of venues and landmarks of interest regarding Manchester's music scene over the last few decades.
What interests me the most about this book, for obvious reasons, are the places I'm most familiar with. It's absolutely fascinating to read about the venues I've frequented over the last 10 - 15 years with a sense of historic relevence.
For example, when I was 15 my friends and I were desperate to go to a club night. Despite the fact that at 15 I looked more like 11, we'd heard that it was notoriously easy to get into The Ritz. And we weren't wrong. We started going there on a weekly basis (thankfully our parents were ignorant of our endeavours) and it became a regular thing.
We liked The Ritz, not only because we could get in, but because it played music we like. I distinctly remember hearing Pixies' 'Monkey Gone to Heaven' and The Smiths' 'Panic' and thinking it was weird to hear music my dad liked in a club that he would kill my sister and I for going to.
So, I'm on the bus home from town, happily reading 'The Manchester Musical History Tour' when I come across a sentence that excites me so much, I suddenly realise I'm grinning like a bastard on the 101; "...many a band have also performed here, including New Order, Magazine, and The Smiths, who played their first concert here..."
What?! The first club I ever heard The Smiths in was also the very first venue The Smiths played? That is total madness. And exciting that it all happened in the city I call home.
But that got me thinking, how many other venues in Manchester have I spent quite a bit of time in and not considered their history?
When I was about 17 I started going to Jilly's Rockworld. It was considered slightly "cooler" that The Ritz (or The Shitz as we'd started to call it) so we decided to try our luck with the bouncers there. It worked a couple of times and by the time we were 18 we were completely sold. There were several rooms including the main room which played general rock and heavier stuff and our favourite Room 1 (the punk room) which played anything from The Clash to Saves the Day.
Me and my sister, Claire started going there as much as we could to get our fill of pop punk and pester the DJs for our favourite songs. We'd become friendly with the DJs after a while and they started to play our requests without us even asking. Tony, who also ran Roadkill Records at the time, decided to quit DJing as he also DJ'd at another clubnight, so I saw my opportunity and went for it.
For the next couple of years I'd DJ every thursday in the punk room and occasionally in the fish bowl on a saturday. I always thought it was awesome that 24 Hour Party People, the story of Tony Wilson and Factory Records, was filmed in the club. The fact that I'd worked there was my claim to fame. But reading The Manchester Musical History Tour, I discovered that there was a reason they'd filmed it there.
According to the book, the first meeting between Tony Wilson and Warsaw (who would go on to become Joy Division) happened in Rafters which changed it's name to Jilly's Rockworld years later. As if that isn't amazing enough, a young Morrissey tried his hand at freelance music journalism reviewing shows at the venue. If you're as big a fan of The Smiths as I am it's very difficult to get your head around the fact that Morrissey hung out at the same venue I did twenty years later.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Manchester bands and music. Especially if you know Manchester pretty well. I go through Manchester every day and I've never stopped to think about the musical history of the places that have become so familiar to me.
The Manchester Musical History Tour was written by Phill Gatenby and Craig Gill. I'm definitely going to embark upon the tour this summer.
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