Mmmmanchester...
 

Recently moved to Manchester... what's good to do here? I saw that Mogwai and The Go Team are playing soon, might go to those, but what else is interesting here? Could do with a rough guide, if anyone can be bothered...

Thanks

Eat a barm cake? Feel superior to scousers?

I don't think that feeling superior to scousers is just limited to people from Manchester :)

true. but they're the only ones to have turned it into a raison d'etre.

Transport links for places that aren't Manchester are very good. I'd recommend using them to visit somewhere that isn't full of Mancs.

I should say that, while I don't like Manchester as an idea, every Mancunian I know is really ok. And Coronation Street is (obviously) the jewel in the crown of British popular culture.

Hollywood is shooting Captain America in the northern part of Manchester. It's doubling for 1940's Manhattan.

Liverpool > Manchester

the smiths > the beatles


yeah. I said it.

Wow. What a blindingly uncontroversial opinion. The Smiths weren't even the best band from Salford, by the way.

so you agree. the beetles were shit. at least until they found drugs. then they were "slightly less than" shit.

you agree.

^^^ atari could never resist the gravitonic pull of such a brilliant troll. never. ever.

No, the Beatles were shit. I'm tired of saying it, people are tired of reading it. No-one really cares. If other people like the Beatles, good for them, but essentially they were shit, and from Liverpool. None of this 'slightly less shit' just because they decided to make more boring music. Shit. They were shit. Shit shit shit.

blind leading the deaf

The point isn't whether the beatles were shit or not (they weren't) but that Liverpool's contribution to British pop music pretty much ends with them. After them, there's Dead or Alive or The Farm or A Flock of Seagulls. Hardly worth mentioning. Elvis costello makes a big thing about being a Liverpudlian despite the fact that, while his mum was from there, he grew up in Twickenham! Frankie Goes to Hollywood were a big deal (for about a month) but very much a puppet outfit for a manc (Paul Morley) and a geordie (Trevor Horn).

Whenever I think of Liverpool I think of former glories: music for a brief period in the 60s; football in the 70s and 80s; Brookside in the 80s. Even their supposedly great tradition of comedians has dried up. Arthur Askey, Faith Brown, Tarbuck, Stan Boardman, Tom O'Connor, Alexei Sayle are very much of the past, now replaced by John Bishop, who's only ever really funny when he's talking about how much Mancs hate scousers. And none of the above were ever funnier than Bernard Manning or Les Dawson, anyway.

Liverpudlians do still have the best accent in Britain, though.

but Dead or Alive brought us Wayne Hussey, and being goth, that makes them downright ICONIC.

where were Sigue Sigue Sputnik from? if I were to guess, based soley upon their FANfuckingTASTIC style and sound, I'd say mmmmmmmanchester.

Haha, I never knew Hussey (a Bristolian) was in Dead or Alive. SSP were formed in London but their members came from all over. Mostly Birmingham, I think.

Teardrop Explodes? Echo and The Bunnymen? Just two of the more popular names.

Yeah, but claims made about Liverpool being some kind of inherently 'musical' city still seem massively inflated to me, and almost entirely based on it having once spawning The Beatles.

it's worked before

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZOQ5oIXfoA

or was it the other way around

Fair enough dood.

Gan on Bristol dem! See also: Mark Stewart, Roni Size, Portishead (who are technically from Portishead, but let's ignore that), Flying Saucer Attack (I think), Chikinki, Ross Conway (yes!), Adge Cutler (fuck yeah!), Fuck Buttons, Nik motherfucking Kershaw, Strangelove...

Fucking hell. That's a bit of a shit list, innit?

manchester, never liked it all that much but its alright i suppose and not to be confused with salford. lets see its been a while since i was up that way but i recall there was some squat or house or other in levenshulme that had bands on fairly regular and also a pub called the star and garter that was alright.

leeds is way better, move there.

Leeds is awesome. Salford is also legions less shite than Manc. There's a pub in Bristol called the Star and Garter which, all joking aside, is the sort of place that I wish I could take everyone ever. I once saw a bouncer walk up to a bloke in there and say 'sorry mate, we're going to have to ask you to leave'. He said 'Why me? Those people over there are clearly dealing' to which the bouncer said 'yeah, but in fairness mate, you're a bit of a posh cunt, and I don't really like your shirt'.

I may write a book made up exclusively of great Garter anecdotes one of these days.

I really wish that was true, but it sounds a bit Withnail to me.

In all honesty. Really and very seriously. I swear that actually happened.

Ive just realised, thats how Topshop got started.
To think, you were at the epicentre of that great movement for democratic change through cheaply produced tshirts with overconfident saying printed on them

I can hardly think of a song by The Smiths that isn't at least a good one. Not the same with The Beatles. Quality control peoplez!