It's very easy to lose a sense of perspective when you get the opportunity to review shows in arenas, theatres, and cavernous academies. But it takes evenings like tonight to remind you that minuscule basement venues like retro here in Manchester is where rock 'n' roll came from and, for the majority of the North-West scene, continues to dwell. Peter from The Black Spiders continually describes the confined surroundings as being someone’s living room, and he is not half wrong.
Read MoreWhen your show is part gig and part theatre, it must be quite hard to find an appropriate support act. Tragedy tonight gave us a couple of local bands, kicking things off with the scouse humour and somewhat weird sound of Mr Ted. I’ll be honest, watching all the man-buns and hipster beards nodding along to their rather strange mishmash of sound made me feel really old. It was a bit avant-garde, a bit, well, odd really.
Read MoreLast time I went to watch Attic Theory I managed to miss most of them due to parking issues. This time I was there for the whole set but I might as well not have been. it was somewhat spoiled by some serious sound issues. They came on dancing, but despite there being 3 guitars on stage I couldn’t really hear them distinctly, it was just a wall of noise. I moved about the room a bit and it did improve, but not enough I felt for me to be able to get the full Attic Theory experience.
Read MoreFirst gig of the year and I am starting my review, as usual, by complaining about the traffic. Well actually not so much the traffic this time as the parking. Jimmy’s is a cool little basement venue under a bar/restaurant just on the edge of Liverpool’s China Town, which means that there is limited on-street parking nearby which was all full, and an incomprehensible one-way system of little streets that saw us drive past 3 times before we finally found our way to a pay and display within walking distance. Sadly this meant that my enjoyment of openers Attic Theory was restricted to their last song. This was frustrating because on the strength of said song they appear to be a decent band. They have two vocalists, some nice whoa-oh-oh chorus and a hint of Chilli Peppers. Hopefully I will be able to check them out properly at some point.
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