Fiona Ledgard goes drive time on All FM

If you live in Manchester and you love your music, chances are your path will cross with Fiona Ledgard’s sooner or later. A compulsive gig-goer, champion of new music, radio DJ and more, when I speak to Fiona she’s just back from seeing Bob Marley's band The Wailers. (‘Moving and inspiring!’ she enthuses.)

After graduating Manchester University’s ‘Music, Culture and Society' BA, Fiona made a trip to Berlin, returned to the city, volunteered at All FM and has been broadcasting eclectic quality music to south, east and central Manchester ever since. All FM is Manchester’s community radio station and has been soundtracking the city for over a decade now. As well as quality broadcasts, the station offers radio training and other unique opportunities to everyone from the city’s unemployed, to Mancunians experiencing mental health issues, to students in musical training programmes. The station’s remit is all about community and diversity, and for that reason alone it’s a credit to the city.

Fiona’s own commitment to music and culture has seen her interview a crazy range of people, from punk geniuses The Slits to queer icon JD Samson, from fellow DJs like Mary Anne Hobbs and Dave Haslam to radical performance artistes like David Hoyle and Justin Vivian Bond, plus more bands than you can shake a tambourine at.

As of this week, Fiona is taking over the coveted time slot of 5-7pm. That’s’s right, she’s going drive time! Her show will hit the ground running tonight, including three brand new features: Is it 'anging or is it banging?, Rappers Delight and Thank You For The Music. Tune in to find out what exactly they're all about. You're going to hear something that will perfectly kick off another tremendous weekend in Manchester. 

John Grant, John Lydon, and deconstructing Barbarella

I’ve witnessed John Grant perform on a few unforgettable occasions: a bare-bones grand piano set at the Bridgewater Hall as support for Efterklang; on the Glastonbury Park Stage in the middle of the afternoon in shorts and flip-flops (him, not me); and at the hottest evening ever inside Manchester’s Ritz, the day before he had his Mac stolen. Tomorrow (Friday 3 October) I will be pinching myself good ‘n’ proper as I travel to Media City to see John perform select cuts from Pale Green Ghosts with the BBC Philharmonic as part of the ‘Philharmonic Presents’ series, previously featuring Culture Club and Jarvis Cocker. Pale Green Ghosts is becoming an album for all time, one that the Philharmonic will no doubt be able to find new dimensions in.

On 9 October, old punks, young punks, bookworms and musos will be crowding into the Albert Hall on Peter Street to hear Dave Haslam interview the Richard III of punk-rock, Mr John Lydon. Lydon’s autobiography, Anger is An Energy: My Life Uncensored, is just about to hit the shelves so it seems he’s in the mood to talk which is good news for us, and for Dave. Lydon has, in his way, been an acute cultural critic over the decades, often in short and sweary portions, never without substance. Let’s see if he has insight into where he himself exists in the peculiar maelstrom of UK musical culture.

           

It’s hard to believe four years have passed since Peaches Christ and her divine crew of ‘Frisco drag queens turned the Cornerhouse upside down with a live-action show and premier screening of All About Evil, the debut feature length from Joshua Grannell (aka Peaches Christ). I like to think some of that residual performative magic stuck around; there’s been an explosion of drag and performance in the city ever since. On 11 October Peaches returns to Screen 1 with Bearbarella, a drag deconstruction and outré comedy based on the 1968 cult classic Barbarella, which will also be screened. Lady Bear takes the title role while the rest of the cast includes Manchester’s own Cha Cha Boudoir performers, so dress your sci-fi best and be ready to holler; there is nothing else like this in town.

Dave Haslam, the 1970s, and me

I have long been of the opinion that the 1970s is the best decade in music, and I reckon I have at least some objectivity since I’m a 90s kid whose favourite band are from the 80s. Six years ago, in my first earnest and naive year of blogging, before Dave Haslam and I became friends, I heard about his book Not Abba. Newly enamoured of Abba’s The Visitors LP and of Taylor Parkes’ magnificent 1995 essay on the band, I felt it was unfair to peg the whitewashing exercise of the 70s nostalgia industry onto poor Abba. It wasn’t their fault, after all, that the egregious I Heart The 70s­ spectacle – in which professional no-names pretend to spontaneously recall loon pants and ‘Night Fever’ as if they hadn’t been prompted to death by BBC researchers who couldn’t be bothered to delve beyond the Top Of The Pops archives – had sieved an entire decade of musical culture down to their five worst singles and outfits. I dashed off a hurried defence of Abba and musical escapism and thought no more of it.

Being a writer, Dave can’t leave an argument unargued and I returned to the blog some time later to find that he had not only read the piece but had responded with a characteristically cheerful and carefully considered comeback which even now I blush to read. The blog entry has since been visited thirteen hundred times (my eighth most popular piece in six years of blogging, stats fans). Some time after this fateful blog incident I was introduced to Dave at a party to celebrate The Art Of Tea in Didsbury getting an alcohol license. ‘You haven’t made your mind up about me yet, have you?’ was his opening gambit.

If you want an idea of how long the backlog of my reading list is, I have just gotten around to reading Dave’s book now. I finished it an hour ago in fact. I haven’t been able to put it down. I wish dearly I had read it six years ago. Now re-christened Young Hearts Run Free (the new title is nothing to do with me, I'm sure), the book has an Intro, an Outro, and a chapter dedicated to each year of the 1970s. Forget about Abba and I Heart The 70s, forget about my blog entry (every point of which was already covered and expounded in the book), forget revivalism and all the rest of it. The book is about life as it was lived in the 1970s, the soundtrack to that life, how magnificently varied that soundtrack was, and how all of it was connected and entwined together. It’s also about the slippery, emotive nature of memory, and of nostalgia itself. ‘We’ve all forgotten a lot,’ Dave writes. Whether it’s the wilful erasure of hard fact, as exemplified by the Watergate scandal of 1972, or the simple fact Led Zeppelin don’t figure on nostalgia shows because they didn’t put out singles and didn’t appear on TOTP, the effect is the same.

The musical insight is exhaustive and a real education, but as always it’s the (extra)ordinary folk that people the story who are the real heart and soul of a history like this. Jayne Casey, a displaced, misplaced youngster, waif of Merseyside social services, is dreaming of like-minded souls, preferably boys in mascara. These arrive in the shape of Pete Burns and Holly Johnson and the musical scene at the legendary Eric’s which eventually spawned some of the best records of the 80s. Gay punk turned disco devotee, Alan Jones adds welts and fake blood to his Vivienne Westwood shirts and dances to ‘Paranoid’ in gay bars. Clover from Withington falls in and out of the burgeoning Rastafari culture, in and out of love, in and out of her parents’ favour. There are moments that, for better or worse, can choke you with pure evocative impact, whether it’s the BNP’s Kingsley Read responding to the murder of a young Sikh lad, Gurdip Singh Chaggar, saying, ‘One down, one million to go’, or John Lydon spinning ‘Born For A Purpose’ by Dr Alimontado on Capital Radio. Underneath all of this, the power goes on and off, bombs erratically tear apart life and limb in the pubs of Birmingham, an increasingly diabolical Met attempt to turn Notting Hill into a police state, and the unnerving voice of Wearside Jack murmurs and hisses from magnetic tape while the real Yorkshire Ripper continues killing women in allotments and car parks.

It’s also about England as it is now, or at least an England I just about recognise; tribal, energetic, indifferent, violent. Just last night I saw a very drunken and shabby guy harassing a girl at Piccadilly bus station, urging her to vote for the racist UKIP party, complaining about how many children the foreigners were having. The girl was too young to vote, too bored to care. As the bus wove its way through South Manchester, the same drunk guy rolled his eyes and tutted and sighed aggressively as a South Asian woman took a call on her mobile phone in her native language, a very ordinary Mancunian scene, but one that caused him bemusement, anger and discomfort. If only somebody could explain to him that it isn’t Asian women on their phones on the bus who have put him where he is – broke, drunk, hating – it’s other white guys, ones with lots of money. What’s changed in thirty-odd years I wonder?

At the end of the book we peer momentarily beyond the end of the 70s, through the dark door of the 1980s to March 1984 when the miners have just begun their epic doomed struggle. By a pure fluke the majestic nine and a half minute version of ‘The Power Of Love’ byFrankie Goes To Hollywood comes on my stereo, a Number One single in December 1984, the year I started school, the year ‘the miners fought the law, and the law won.' As I read and ponder the strike, the heartache, capitulations and police beatings, Holly Johnson sings, ‘When the chips are down I’ll be around,’ and for a minute it’s all a bit much and I have to stop reading.

I’d still fight for Abba, of course I would (okay, maybe not ‘Bang-A-Boomerang’) but only in the knowledge that there’s never just one story worth telling, and there are no happy endings either, not least because it’s not over yet. That’s what this remarkable book is about.



Coda: I have, of course, made a playlist to go with this blog entry which you can listen to on Spotify by clicking here. It’s not chronological or exhaustive, but all the songs are name-checked in Dave’s book and so it is at least wildly or widely representative of an astonishing ten years of music.

Pixies Week

To celebrate the Pixies landing in Manchester, with brand new material in the bag(boy), Manchester is having a Pixies three-dayer.

First up, on Wednesday November 20th, Dave Haslam goes ‘Close Up’ in conversation with Frank Black/Black Francis himself in a super rare event at the beautiful Albert Hall on Peter Street.

Next, on Thursday 21st, Pixies play their eagerly-awaited sold-out gig at Manchester's majestic Apollo.

Finally, round off the Pixies triple-bill with our full-on Pixies party at the legendary Star & Garter pub on Friday 22nd.

...la la love you! will be airing all your favourite Pixies tracks plus the best of the rest from Frank’s solo records, the mighty Breeders, and an eclectic mix of gems from the 4AD label and Pixies-world, including Cocteau Twins, Husker Du, Kelley Deal 6000, Ramones, Nirvana, Peter, Paul & Mary to name but a few...

So, come and dance the Manta Ray to some good clean Rock Music, wake up with a Headache, we’d la la love you to join us ...

... la la love you!

The Star & Garter, Fairfield St, Manchester

Friday 22nd November

9.30pm–2.30am 

£5 entry, £4 with a Dave Haslam / Apollo ticket stub / Pixies T-shirt / valid NUS

‘Manchester: In Residents’ ... #17: Jenny

'Playing ‘Guess How Little My Rent Is’ with my London friends is easily one of my favourite games...'

What’s your name?

Jenny Oakenfull. As a child I remember being confused as to why my mum found it necessary to spell her surname to everyone she introduced herself to. Then I got older and realised if I don’t slowly reel off ‘Oh-Ay-Kay...’ with a distinct emphasis on the ‘Eff-You-Double-Ell’ at the end, it means sitting through a good five minutes of people asking if I’m related to that ‘Paul’ DJ, or at the very least, several mispronunciations. ‘Oakenfall’ and ‘Oakenfield’ are the most common. ‘Oakenfuck’ by far the most amusing.

What do you do?

I’ve just finished a Masters in Art Gallery and Museum Studies and am now the Charity Manager at Nexus Art Cafe in the Northern Quarter, which means I organise all the exhibitions, art events, bookings and creative things that go on there. Other side-projects of mine this year have included creative evaluation for a kid’s festival, helping produce a series of short films about Postgraduate study skills for the University, and running the social media campaign for Manchester Histories Festival. I like being busy.

Where do you live?

Whalley Range. We just moved here a couple of months ago, and it doesn’t quite feel like home yet. Having enjoyed my student days in deepest, darkest Withington, then graduating to Burton Road in lovely West Didsbury for a year, we decided we wanted somewhere a little cheaper and a little greener, so we landed here. I’ve been writing my dissertation for most of the summer so I’ve spent a lot of time indoors depriving my skin of Vitamin D, and I feel as though I haven’t properly explored yet, but what I have discovered has mainly been the proximity of our house to Unicorn, Pi, Jam Street Cafe, and a bloody massive park. I think I’ll like it here.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

One day, a good eight years ago now, a fifteen year old girl in York was given a musical education by a boy called James. He was in love with all things ‘Madchester’ and taught her about The Stone Roses, The Smiths, The Happy Mondays, 808 State, Joy Division, Inspiral Carpets, The Hacienda, Factory Records, and the beauty of a good pair of Adidas Original Sambas. They took the train to the holy city for their first date, hopping around vintage and record shops in the Northern Quarter for a couple of hours before heading to a British Sea Power gig at Academy 2 on a Magic Bus that only cost 50p from town all the way up Oxford Road. Sadly, that particular relationship didn’t last beyond Sixth Form, but the girl’s love of all things Manchester was unquenchable, and aged eighteen, struggling to decide where she was going to go and spend the next three years of her life, a friend simply turned and said, ‘But Jenny, it’s always been Manchester, hasn’t it?’; and that was that. A light bulb moment that dictated a move to my spiritual home and the longest love affair of my life to date, with a huge, rainy, industrial city: Manchester, you beautiful thing you...

What’s great about this city?

I honestly don’t know where to start, and in a way, that’s just it; there’s so much going on here. I’ve found that with every new person I meet I uncover another secret corner of the city that was previously unbeknownst to me, and it’s always a good corner too. People moan about the weather but the constant drizzle just makes you appreciate those rare sunny moments all the more (and they’re actually not that rare, contrary to popular belief).

People sometimes say Manchester is ‘too small’ but whenever I bump into someone I wasn’t expecting to see, even mid-hangover on a Sunday morning, I count my lucky stars that I know enough people to bump into by chance. Even though it’s undesirable at times, it’s these kind of encounters that make the place feel like home. The size also makes things accessible, in all senses of the word. There aren’t many places I can’t get to on my bike. Social circles are easily maintained, simply because no one has to travel longer than thirty minutes to find you. Career-building contacts are straightforward to make if you put a little effort in the right places. There’s no way I would be able to do the equivalent of my job in London at this stage in my professional life, and that’s down to the fact it’s easier to get ahead and be known in this city because there aren’t quite so many people clambering on top of each other to desperately fill the same role. For this reason I often feel like we are the UK’s best kept secret, that and the fact it’s so wonderfully affordable to live here. Playing ‘Guess How Little My Rent Is’ with my London friends is easily one of my favourite games. If we can’t be smug about the weather, we can at least be smug about that.

What’s not so great?

For whatever reason, Manchester planners and architects of the past sixty years or so have repeatedly made terrible decisions. Why on earth they continually decide that tearing down beautiful buildings and replacing them with ugly monstrosities is a good idea baffles me. Or, equally criminal, replacing original interiors of buildings with generic, anonymous features. I admired the grandeur of The Midland Hotel for years; upon actually visiting it a few months ago, I was dismayed that some misguided developer had pulled out the entirety of the original internal features. There are too many examples of terrible planning decisions to list without getting horrendously irate, but I’ll give you a brief outline of my top three: Hulme, razed to the ground twice; the area that was flattened to make way for the Arndale Centre; and, perhaps the biggest travesty of all, Piccadilly Gardens. In case you are unaware of what used to reside in pride of place in this city, have a quick online search through the Manchester City Council Archives. I defy you not to weep at the beautiful greens, palm trees, and flower beds, now buried six feet under several tonnes of concrete.

Basically, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Elsewhere, I think we should shout a bit louder about the exciting cultural things that are happening here. Visitors are always surprised at how much we have going on. Maybe we did a bit too much shouting around the time of Madchester but it’s definitely time to start raising our voices again. We’ve got plenty to be proud of.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

Many! As the previous rant might suggest, Manchester’s architecture is one of the reasons I fell in love with this city. There are so many amazing ex-industrial warehouses dotted about, hardly changed. Hotspur House is my current favourite, framed through the railway arches on Whitworth Street West. I also, weirdly, really liked Student Castle whilst it was still half finished, all those red steel girders against the green apartments with the windmill by Oxford Road Station made it feel like some kind of post-apocalyptic, steampunk inspired, futuristic landscape (maybe I’m just getting carried away...). Gorton Monastery is beautiful, even in its half-ransacked state. Islington Mill is a really special place. There are too many to name. I recommend looking up above the shops and cafes and bars as much as possible, you never fail to notice something new. I have also discovered that urban exploration blogs are addictive and reveal a great many secrets; the ballroom on the fifth floor of Primark, Hulme Hippodrome and the interior of the Odeon on Oxford Road being prime examples.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

This is a tough one. There are so many people either from here, or who have made their home here, who inspire me that it’s hard to pick just one favourite. They seem to come in groups. There’s the music lot: Ian Curtis, Tony Wilson, The Smiths (even, reluctantly, Morrissey), The Stone Roses ... you know the rest. A lot of the people responsible for the Cooperative and The Vegetarian Society were here, and the Pankhursts called it home, so that’s the radical lot. Then we have the academics; Alan Turing and Samuel Alexander and the like. There are also countless cultural and business innovators spanning the history of the city, and many of the most inspiring are the ones who are active today. You just have to take the example of the Northern Quarter’s development over the past ten years to find some of the most interesting, innovative and creative people you’re likely to encounter, a little microcosm of change and forward thinking. Far too many potential heroes to pick one favourite.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

As a student, trying to find the best of the above is pretty much all we did. Common was the first bar I was taken to, and though the days are long gone where you could get a pint and a ‘posh toastie’ for a fiver, the food is still brilliant and the beer selection is great. I seem to love and respect anything and everything the Trof guys do; much undergrad revision was done nursing a single cup of coffee in their Fallowfield outlet, and it’s a real shame The Corner had to go, but The Deaf Institute is still an amazing venue. The Lass O’Gowrie is a regular haunt, as are Oklahoma and Home Sweet Home. Nexus obviously has to get a mention and if you haven’t been yet then come see us soon; there’s a reason I love working there! As a lifelong veggie the city has always been kind to me; the halloumi salad in Fuel is out of this world, and Unicorn is a real haven. If you haven’t eaten falafel on the curry mile I urge you to do so immediately. Cornerhouse is always spot on for film, art, food and coffee. Aside from that, honourable mentions go to And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon (although having worked there for two years I’m perhaps a little biased) home to seriously great cake, and Folk, just opposite on Burton Road, is probably the only bar that’s ever truly felt like my ‘local’ whilst I’ve lived here. Lastly, the best club night I have encountered here is undoubtedly Revolver at The Roadhouse. I went every single week for the whole of first year and it never got old. I took my Masters course mates a couple of times this year and it turns out it’s still the most fun you can have in a dingy little basement with glittery walls on a Monday night.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Make lectures on Manchester history compulsory for all university students here so they could take something more home with them than just their degrees. They should know that the city extends well beyond the Oxford Road corridor.

Stop all current plans to tear down any more beautiful old buildings, and restore Piccadilly Gardens to its former green glory.

Build some super bike highways so we don’t have to suffer the wrath of crazy taxi drivers and pothole-filled roads.

Oh, and have a party in the Primark ballroom of course.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

My good friend Annie Hargis, who managed to fall in love with Manchester from all the way over in California and is still adamant that she’d rather be in the North West of England than the West Coast of America. And Dave Haslam too. Everything he writes about Manchester is fascinating. He knows his shit.

Thirty One

CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) is a very modern charity. It was founded in 2006 to help tackle the alarmingly high suicide rate amongst young men in the UK (though CALM helplines are open to all). About three-quarters of suicides are men and if you’re under 35 and living in the UK it’s statistically the biggest killer there is.

Tony Wilson was a founding trustee of the charity and his personal investment in it needs no explanation. Appropriately enough it is Factory Foundation who have issued Thirty One, a double CD of music, chosen and compiled by Dave Haslam, to help raise enough money to keep the CALM phone lines open all week round for the people who need them. Thirty One is not only the number of tracks, it is a dangerous age for a young man to be. As Dave points out in the liner notes, many of us know someone who didn’t make it. The need for a charity like CALM is self-evident. Having an opportunity to be open and upfront about how you feel is essential for good mental health. Unfortunately ours is a culture that seems to discourage this skill in young men. It’s ten years since I took my first steps in that direction and contacted a kind lady down the road from my house in Chorlton with a much-needed friendly ear. Once a week I would talk and she would listen and between us we would try to piece together why I was falling apart. The act of talking seemed like a newly-discovered valve for releasing everything poisonous I’d wanted to keep inside. Prior to that I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I was living with my three best friends and couldn’t say a word to anyone about how unhappy I was. Talking to a concerned outsider helped turn my life around, and that’s the very thing CALM are experts at.

Anyway, onto the music. It’s often the case that charity albums are terribly worthy but content-wise, not so great. This is mercifully not the case with Thirty One. It will be a fixture on your stereo. It’s a cracking tribute to the breadth of style and talent in the North West, past and present. Intentionally or otherwise, many songs have a poignant connection to the cause behind the compilation. Guy Garvey’s spoken intro to an iridescent live version of ‘lippy kids’ (my love of which is well-documented) contains sage words about demonisation of the young, while the title of Jez Kerr’s ‘Reason I Feel Like An Alien’ speaks for itself. The mighty Everything Everything contribute their cover of Gloworm’s ‘Carry Me Home’, the lyrics of which reach out with new poignancy: ‘I did everything I could do. It’s just a phase in life that everyone goes through. Carry me home. Don’t be too long…’ Even the sweetly Northern title of Mr Scruff’s ‘Chin Up’ brings a lump to the throat.

Highlights elsewhere include Vieka’s ‘Never’; impeccably icy and avant-garde, built around Glass-esque piano and chilling samples of whinnying horses. Beating Wing Orchestra deliver a trademark global sound-clash with mesmerising vocals. D/R/U/G/S contributes an infectious and spartan bleep masterpiece while J.P. Cooper’s ‘Oh Brother’ is acoustic heartbreak in a jar.

Manc faves such as Noel Gallagher, I Am Kloot and The Whip nestle comfortably alongside young whipper-snappers like Delphic and Dutch Uncles and less well-known gems like Lonelady and Ruby Anne Patterson. Soul, techno, indie, it’s all here; imagine driving round and round the city all night in the summer with the windows open, that’s the sound of Thirty One. Buy it for yourself. Buy it for someone you love or someone you miss. Just buy it, here.

The CALM Helpline can be reached on 0800 58 58 58 and their website is here.

The Manchester Weekender 2011: All Done For This Year ... Or Is It?

I love city festivals. I love that feeling of being on holiday in the place you live. I love disparate events with a collective purpose. I love tearing all over town and Tweeting about it. I love free wine and cheap tickets and good conversation with motivated people. A hectic calendar of Manchester festivals (International, Pride, Jazz, Science, Food and Drink, Literature, Asia Triennial, Comedy, and of course the Weekender) provides this in spades.

The savvy thing about the Manchester Weekender is that it mingles events that might already be happening with new and specially-commissioned work to create mutual enthusiasm and mass encouragement to get out there and see what your city has to offer.

At Castlefield Gallery, Istanbul artists blend ideas of vacation and immigration, utilising everything from suitcases to IKEA-style stills of visa application offices. Entry is through a metal-detecting airport security gate. On the inside, voices of authority are aired through video interviews with visa office employees while the voices of the disappointed and rejected literally envelop the entire gallery on the outside; the walls and windows are papered with correspondence from people denied entry into various countries. The exhibition forms part of the ongoing Asia Triennial Manchester.

Against this backdrop Beating Wing Orchestra give a musical performance with a global and mesmerising blend of influences; old European, pan-Asian, Congolese, hip-hop, Bhangra, all with astonishing vocal dexterity. ‘World music’, explains one of the singers simply. A terrific feeling of camaraderie between band members, and eventually between band and audience too, make this a special event.

Down at the Whitworth Gallery, After Hours present ‘BlackLab’, an amalgam of set pieces that complement the existing ‘Dark Matters’ exhibit. Both play with light, film, delay, transparency, print, music and motion. The slow-mo movie of burning oilfields is weirdly touching while next door live guitar and cello soundtrack short films of traditional paper silhouette stop-motion. Whether the man shouting ‘MARGARET THATCHER! KARL MARX!’ is an installation himself or someone with political Tourettes I’m still not sure. ‘Cosmodrome’, screened in the auditorium, pays melancholic testimony to the heroes of Soviet space travel.

‘Primitive Streak’ is fashion meets life science. Divided between the Royal Exchange mezzanine gallery and the windows of Debenhams, the clothes shown in photograph, sketches or their final stitched form are inspired by the cellular development of living humans, so we get designs for spinal couture, a ‘sperm’ dress and, my favourite, the ‘Anaphase Dress’ which surely should belong to Bjork by rights?

Time to hit the shoe leather for two Mancunian walks. The first sees Ed Glinert from New Manchester Walks take a group of booted and be-torched urban explorers through Manchester’s concealed subterranean history and its fascinating links with Nazi invasion, state secrecy and ambitious canal endeavours. It’s thrilling and unnerving to be metres beneath Deansgate and not hear a sound. Memories of people enduring uncomfortable, diseased hours in the expansive bomb shelters feel all-too tangible in that dank air.

Then it’s back into sunshine and air for a tour of Ancoats, incorporating old and new, alluring decrepitude and ambitious renovation. The ‘Ancoats Peeps’ are discrete viewing portals, historical fragments placed in oblique locations that preserve images of Anocats’ past even as the district develops around them. Beginning and ending at the beautifully designed Cutting Room Square, the tour brought us into renovated cotton mills and the breathtaking interior of St Peter’s Church, soon to provide rehearsal space to the Halle Orchestra no less. A book is available to chronicle and complement the ‘Ancoats Peeps’.

The weekend ends on a high with Dave Haslam’s ‘Close Up with Jarvis Cocker’ in the intricate Gothic majesty of the Town Hall’s Great Hall. Surrounded by Ford Madox Brown’s vivid and edifying murals, Jarvis and Dave talk music, lyrics, sex, Michael Jackson and recession Britain before a rapt audience. Wonderful fun.

Though the Manchester Weekender is officially over, it is in fact a gateway to an autumn/winter schedule packed with events like the ones above. Festival season continues across the city. Check links, get on mailers and Twitter feeds, see what’s afoot. After 48 hours of cultural input it becomes apparent you can make a Manchester Weekender for yourself whenever you like. Get going ...

(Big thanks to Holly Jennison at All Points North)

The Manchester Weekender 2011

The leaves are dying a death but the city’s alive and kicking. Music, art, theatre, politics, underground, overground, lots of it free! That’s what Creative Tourist have magically/manically pulled together for the imminent Manchester Weekender, running from this Friday (14th) to the far end of Sunday evening.

‘It’s all about engaging conversations, big questions, daring performances, secret places and cool spaces,’ says the spiel. Perfect.

The good folk at All Points North have asked me to delve in and report back from the artistic front over this frantic three-dayer, and I’ve accepted the challenge.

A full guide for the three days can be obtained right here, and a more compact version, a clash-finder if you will, is here. Best get planning. Here’s what’s currently taking my fancy …

Primitive Streak … couture meets evolutionary science in these free exhibits at the Royal Exchange and Debenhams

Sounds Like A Gallery … tributes to Manchester Art Gallery and its collection told through the medium of the banjo (!) and other instrumentation

Beating Wing Orchestra … part of Asia Triennial, migrant and refugee musicians make up this collective performing at Castlefield Gallery

After Hours presents BlackLab … a blend of prose, film and still photography, soundtracked live by artist and musician Otto Smart

Gothic Splendour … embrace Manchester’s Victorian roots by visiting Ford Madox Brown’s dozen murals housed in our beautiful imposing Town Hall

Underground Manchester with New Manchester Walks … torch, boots and backbone required for this subterranean exploration beneath the city streets

Ancoats Peeps … the endlessly rich story of the Ancoats streets is the subject of this walk, taking in historical buildings and new installations

Jarvis Cocker: Close Up with Dave Haslam … Round off your epic weekend in the company of a contender for the title of ‘Greatest Living Englishman’ inside the Town Hall’s wondrous Great Hall. Jarvis Cocker will be there too …

If you’re out Tweeting during the Weekender the hashtag is simply #McrWeekender so let’s get trending while we’re trekking.

See you out there…

The Can(n)on's Opening Roar

A joint venture between Creative Tourists’ ‘Manchester Weekender’ and Dave Haslam’s successful ‘Close Up’ venture (previous guests include Mark E. Smith and Kevin Rowlands, future guests include Terry Hall and John Bramwell), it was a massive coup to have Jonathan Franzen appear at the Whitworth Gallery. America’s great literary hope actually made his appearance slap bang in the middle of the great Freedom pulping and the bizarre Situationist spectacle theft the following day. He could not have been hotter literary property as he took the stage and wrestled with a makeshift suggestion-box-cum-lectern. Inside sources hinted that the author’s enthusiasm for promotional duties had been seriously dented by the recall of his long-awaited novel, but he persevered, it was with good humour he took the stage to read to us from Freedom.

The writing is characteristically evocative and wry, always hinting at a vast dramatis personae of the usefully maladjusted that might well incorporate the whole of America. I always think of it as a Hollinghurstian talent, the knack of reproducing odd arrangements of conversational inflection and idiosyncratic syntax that really mark one individual from another, but in all probability Franzen does it best, and I’m still only a third of the way through The Corrections.

He discusses the possibility of his place, according to Time magazine, amongst the pantheon of ‘Great American Novelists’. It seems inevitable The Corrections will one day be a canonical American text, and maybe Freedom too. He is humble but palpably confident about the quality of his work, famously confident enough to deplore the quality of writing elsewhere (see ‘Perchance to Dream’). When he talks he has a lovely habit of taking great long pauses before he answers a question. When Dave opens the floor to a series of pleasingly intelligent questions, Franzen says, ‘Now I know why I remember Manchester. You ask such good questions here.’

He responds to a question from Dave about the need to cultivate a public persona in order to publicise his writing with this: ‘Occasionally one gets irritable and even snaps a little bit and you can feel it going straight to a blog’. Don’t worry Jonathan, I like you. In fact I was so enamoured with him, I went straight home and wrote. Check out the interview transcript at Dave Haslam’s site here.

Disco Bingo Pogo Radio

I can’t really remember what order any of the following happens, but at some point we make a fleeting visit to DISCO BABYLON, aka Pumping Iron at Common. This night needs a dancefloor, the music is amazing. Got a venue? Enquire within! Then it’s Off The Hook 3, the best of the Hooks to date where I play the ‘gig’ of my ‘career’. Ha. No seriously, I’m dead pleased with myself, I am now resident DJ along with Mr Anthony Crank, the crowd are amazing and totally up for it. Here’s some of what got played. At some point I play a special birthday mini-set for Polly Esther’s birthday spesh at Trash-O-Rama too, who are squatting like lovable new wave rugrats in the basement of the monthly Bollox at Legends. Performance! Punk! Pissy lager! Party people! At some point I take a serious hangover to Mother’s Ruin Bingo Night at the Green Room, hosted by Timberlina and Mrs Barbara Nice. Complete laugh. I win TWICE (multi-pack of Cadburys fudge, pair of stencilled knickers in a jar). The night finishes, as so many do these days, at The Eagle, where myself and my friends behave deplorably. I mean, they ought to take the vote away from us, and if I’d stuck to my original intention to keep this blog anonymous, I could tell all. As it is, you’ll have to wait for court transcripts.

Bingo!

I attend the Rambert Dance Company’s 'Awakenings' at The Lowry, my first contemporary dance experience, and it’s fantastic. I take part in a writing workshop about it where I write a very short story on the spot which I’m quite pleased with. A couple waiting for a train become dancers on a stage, the train tracks become the orchestra pit, the rumble of the oncoming train is the orchestra tuning up. I The wonderful Dave Haslam takes me to see The Vaselines who are terrific, part humble indie, part stand-up comedy routine. New album Sex With An X is a gem, ‘I Hate The 80s’ is riding high on my songs of the year. We go backstage and talk about Butthole Surfers. Eugene gives me a beer. I am quietly starstruck. My parents have been married for twenty-five years! Silver Wedding Anniversary! We have a party which is great fun. I appear on the radio for the first time, doing a queer arts rundown on Crank’s Gaydio show. Amazing month. Stay tuned for more ...

The Vaselines @ Deaf Institute