Mancunian Blues
Created | Updated May 5, 2004
So, its April in the mildly damp city of Manchester, England and I'm underground. I, The_Jon_M, have escaped from my life of being hunted for cash I don't owe to hide out in a basement of a small pub under a majestically drab multistory car-park.
So here is where I chose to begin my first Post article, well at least the surrounds should improve in future Posts. About 6 years ago I went into exile from my home and kingdom in the Dengie Marshes of Essex and have made my home in this city. Since then I seem to spend most of my life watching the musicians of the town try and recapture the scene that has seen the city at the forefront of popular music for much of the last 50 years. Gone are the hundreds of coffee houses and folk clubs of the 60s, bankrupted are the labels that funded the baggie Madchester scene of the late 80s but, as we hurtle into the 21st century, what is there live music wise in this city?
So that is what brought me to The Retro Bar next to the UMIST campus in the south of the city centre. Well that and the fact that my alter-ego - The Master Bluesman, Comic Protector of the Blues - had been recruited to compere a night of punk based bands.
I will, hopefully in future postings, talk about the marvels of bands that I have seen and provide cunningly phrased, sparkling anecdotes about people I have met but, today, I am going back to talk about hangovers.
No, I didn't have too much to drink last night. I'm thinking of the ten year hangover that's made a lot of the musicians up here unwilling to face the new morning. They started drinking from the barrel of Britpop in the heady days of cool Britannia, they had round after round of Defiantly Maybe and (What's The Story) Morning Glory. They binged on Urban Hymns, and threw back many shots of vintage Ian Brown.
The result is a lasting hangover where half the front men in Manchester still cling to the notion that Liam Gallagher is the only man to model yourself on. For those unfamiliar with the Oasis frontman's style imagine, if you will, the school hard-case at an art gallery, swaggering up and down, eyeing everything with equal disdain, then he sees something he likes, sidles up to it and then starts singing at it. Okay, so the school bully isn't likely to sing at a slice of Salvador Dali surrealism, but swap the Dali for a microphone and you've got a basic Liam.
There are two poses a wannabe can now adopt. First is the classic lent pose of which Gallagher is the prime exponent; placing hands behind the back, he leans up from underneath the microphone. The other pose is the more favoured, standing up straighter, holding a pint of beer in one hand and a roll-p cigarette in the other, you are expected to try and dance a little while exaggerating the effects that the nicotine and the alcohol have had on you, asking the crowd to believe that you have had a quick herbal break in the toilets prior to taking the stage.
When, ten years ago, a few men did this kind of act, it was praised as being the start of a 'get up and play your music' revolution, it was about doing your thing and not caring what people thought and then stereotypically sticking your middle digits up at the world. Sadly, today, very little of the creativity and spark from that original scene remains as bands struggle to accept that many things have changed since St Tony the Liar invited Noel Gallagher into Downing Street. They dislike the bland manufactured pop that they see on television, but fail to see that what they are doing is the same. Some people grow up wanting to be the new Robbie Williams, some people grow up to be the next Liam and think that they will achieve this status by copying not only his moves but his attitude. What they cannot recreate is the originality that has been lost over the past decade.
Having most frontmen pretending to be the same person means that it is very difficult for the average punter to remember which band is which, surly not a recipe for success? In my humble opinion the beer, fags and machismo stage antics rather lose the majesty and the event that live music should be.
I have to stress that there are a huge number of great bands in this city and there are a number of movements such at the Hetrocamps and the Blues Revivalists who contribute to a stunningly varied scene and I'll hopefully witter on about some of them in coming issues.
So, if you have read this far, I wish to thank you for your attention in reading my first article and I will hopefully be back with more tales of Manchester, music and misadventure in the very near future.
Love, peace and blues
