This week I went to my last live gig of the year last night, and to be honest I nearly didn’t go!

I bought a ticket to see Shed Seven on their ‘Shedcember Tour’ back in April, when it looked like things might be getting back to normal a bit, but over this last week or so, there’s been a lot in the news about the new Omicron strain of the virus, and how it’s spreading much faster than previous variants. I’d been following some stuff on Twitter and saw that quite a few other bands had decided to postpone their gigs in the run up to Christmas, but not Shed Seven! I understand that they’re probably in a ridiculously difficult position that rearranging dates would probably cost them a lot of money, but I was hoping they’d take the decision away from me by rescheduling!

Anyway, I decided to go – but to try and not get to close to other people, and to obviously wear my mask the whole time! For some reason, I originally actually went to the wrong venue! I’m so used to going to gigs at the Apollo that I went there, parked up, and then wondered why it was so quiet, and then saw the shutters were down on the doors! At that point, I took a look at my ticket and realised the gig was actually at Manchester Academy by the university – somewhere I’ve not been to for nearly 10 years!

So after finding somewhere to park about 15 minutes away from the Academy, and getting drenched walking there through the pouring rain, I eventually got to the venue! It’s pretty basic – lowish ceiling and no slant to the floor, so the view is a bit more restrictive, and I think I’ve been spoilt by the sound quality at the Apollo because it was overly loud, to the point where it was quite hard to make stuff out properly at times because the sound’s so harsh on your ears! But I did enjoy it – it was a really good performance, and the crowd were really up for it.

Got to admit, I was surprised that out of the hundreds of people in there, I could count the number of punters wearing masks, including myself, on one hand! And there were a lot of very drunk people in there, so I made sure to try and keep clear of them, and I did move into the crowd a bit, but tried to make sure I didn’t touch anyone! Hopefully I managed to keep the virus at bay – the mask definitely stayed on for the entire time!

Setlist:

Room in My House
Casino Girl
High Hopes
She Left Me on Friday
Devil in Your Shoes
Victoria
Dolphin
Ocean Pie
Speakeasy
Where Have You Been Tonight?
On Standby
Bully Boy
Better Days
Going for Gold / Suspicious Minds
Getting Better
The Heroes

Encore:
Disco Down
Chasing Rainbows

Right at the end of November, I finally got to see Deacon Blue at the Apollo (pretty much 2 years after buying the ticket!), and it was so good! I was quite a fan of theirs back in the day, and to be honest, I’m a lot more familiar with their older songs, but after this gig, I’m definitely going to check out some of their more recent stuff.

I actually got to see Ricky Ross do a small intimate gig at Ronnie Scott’s in Birmingham back in 1998 or 1999, and I remember that being pretty amazing, and 20-odd years later, he didn’t disappoint with the whole band backing him!

Musically, it was all excellent, and the visuals and light show were on point too. It was all seated, but for most of the show, everyone was standing anyway, so it was a really great atmosphere in there. I just need to make sure it’s not such a bit gap until I see them live again!

Oh, and before I forget, I also got to a comedy gig in between those two concerts! At the beginning of December I saw Mark Watson’s new show, ‘This Can’t Be It’, at The Lowry (I actually bought the ticket for this BEFORE I actually got to see his rescheduled previous show!)

I relate quite a lot to the stuff Mark writes his shows about, and this was no exception, mixing great humour with some pretty interesting thoughts. I was on the 2nd row, so had a really great view (and I also discovered the second row of the Quays Theatre has much more leg room than the other rows!)

Total respect though to Mark for doing the whole show whilst feeling quite unwell (although not Covid as he pointed out many times!). He had to sit down for part of it, and you could tell he was struggling to get through it. He was very apologetic about it, and on Twitter afterwards he said he felt like he was going to keel over all the way through the show! But it was still a good show from an audience perspective, and hopefully he doesn’t have to do another feeling the same way!

Also worth mentioning is that there’s currently a really cool installation at MediaCity, in the strip of the canal between the tram stop and the The Lowry. It’s called ‘Floating Earth‘ by artist Luke Jerram, and the 10m wide globe really looks amazing at night with all the reflections of the surroundings on the water!