So, Manchester was the centre of the British political scene. The three men who wanted to be Prime Minister lined up for the country's first ever 'Presidential' style debate in Manchester. Let's ignore that the British electorate technically don't vote for a Prime Minister, we vote for a local representative, but anyway, the Rainy city was once again at the front of things. I'm assuming there are some BBC rules about political comment in the election run up, so I will stop here on this subject.
And go on to ... shock horror ... music!

Two clubs closed this week. They were owned by the same man and next door to each other. The first was The Music Box. In my decade and a bit in the city, I've only been there once to see a few bands. I think it mixed between electro-club stuff and bands, but I've never really made note of what it was doing. It certainly wasn't on my radar in terms of gigs.

The other club was Jilly's Rock World. Now those of you who have seen the film '24 Hour Party People' will have seen the inside of this place,as they used it for all the gig scenes.

I didn't go there during university. Some of my friends did. It scared me. I didn't get the idea of a club where the men wore as much make up as the women. I liked Rock music, but my idea of Rock music included Springsteen, Quo and that like, not RAWK.

Gradually, I started going when I had started working with bands. It was a totally different experience to anything else in Manchester. You went into a foyer area with toilets and cloakroom off it. There were groups of people who hung around there who I'm pretty sure never even went into the club proper. Down a black corridor (all the decor was black) you had a choice of two rooms. The main room had a stage, bar, some pool tables, a dance floor and a lot of tables. The other, darker room also had a bar and some tables. Off the main room was The Fishbowl, so called because it had a wall of windows so that people in the main room could look in. There was another bar, some tables and a small dance area. Off the other room was another small room with its own bar.

Four rooms meant that even somebody, like me, who didn't chuggy moshing metal could find something to listen to, be it punk, indie, classic rock, ska or nu-metal. I was even known to dance occasionally. What I preferred doing though was people watching. Find the right spot and you could watch all the oddities of Manchester's metal scene circulate in the one place they could belong. Yes, I admit, that I found a lot of the girl's costumes both very imaginative and leaving less to the imagination that you'd get in many other clubs.

Often I would sit in a dark corner with a supply of cheap bottles of beer and watch people dancing, it was more entertaining than it sounds!
Friday nights were infamous as even before 24 hour drinking, the club would stay open until 7am, although they stopped serving alcohol at 3. Thursdays used to be the cheap student night and I can recall booking more than one Friday's holiday in advance planning to indulge myself on the Thursday.

But my friends stopped going. It wasn't as enjoyable. It could be age, but they still went to other clubs and gigs, so what was it? I noticed a change in music. I heard less Van Halan and the indie room dedicated itself to emo and other stuff. One room seemed to be just full of cyber-goths waving glow sticks to whatever it is that they call music. Less people I knew were enjoying the music they did play.

The owner has blamed two different things in two different statements.
The first thing he blamed was the smoking ban. I admit that the smoking ban had an effect. Two effects in fact. The first was that I could wake up in the morning not smelling of stale smoke, and nor did my pile of clothes. The other was that that you could kind of smell what the smoke masked in the club. The owner said that people didn't want to go to a club where you couldn't smoke, but I am pretty sure that a lot of people used to go outside to smoke. Most of my friends who stopped going were non-smokers.

The other, he said, was the new licensing laws that allowed pubs to stay open longer. He said that people would not want to pay entry to a place when they could just stay in a pub. True, in a way. But honestly, not much of an argument. Jilly's normally had drinks offers, pubs didn't. The three pubs over the road that were the normal places where people of the metal scene went before Jilly's are all expensive to drink in, don't offer the dancing or the sense of community. Buy a few drinks in Jilly's and you'd saved your entry fee. The student nights barely had an entry fee, it could have affected them could it?

Both of these could be factors, but they could not be the actual cause. There are one or two other metal and rock nights in Manchester, neither of which offered half as much as Jilly's could. This city has a massive student population, a massive alternative and rock scene, and a proud history of nightlife. If you couldn't bring all these together to make your club a success, then you really have to take a lot of the blame yourself.
There are now suggestions that this piece of Manchester History, which was been a number of other clubs beforehand and has seen many famous names play, will be turned into another metro supermarket. There are four within five minutes walk already! If this is true, it is a sad state of affairs, but with Jilly's, one has learnt never to believe rumours. Every year or so, there was a rumour that it only had weeks to live, yet it still soldiered on. These supermarket rumours could be the same kind of rubbish. Who knows? I may have stopped really caring about Jilly's, like many people I know, but I'm sad that it has gone. Let's hope that something bigger and better can take its place.

Till next time

Love peace and Blues

The_Jon_M

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