Manchester hijinks
I’ve just returned from a terribly pleasant weekend in Manchester. It’s a city that’s tantalisingly close, yet is just far away enough from me to be inconvenient to visit. A pal of mine, Ste, is a resident and like me is a recent graduate from the University of Hull. He (or perhaps more accurately; his unbelievably accommodating parents) were kind enough to put me up all weekend (or should that be ‘put up with’?). Aside from visiting Ste, the reason for visits to Manchester usually revolve around one thing: seeing bands.
The band in question this time were biro-artists extraordinaire, ‘Marmaduke Jinks‘. They were friends of Stes, but I’d heard very little of them. Still, they turned out to be one of the most delightful bands I’ve seen for quite a while. I always feel somewhat uncomfortable trying to describe bands by comparison and I know I really shouldn’t do it, but hard cheese. I’m going to; It was all rather Belle & Sebastian meets the Divine Comedy… oh, y’know what? I think I had someone else in mind but I’ve completely forgotten. Sod it. There we go, another clumsy comparison. Regardless, they were pretty damn competent musicians and their songs were genuinely funny. Well, I giggled anyway. I wouldn’t completely rule out some real success, they certainly deserve it (doubly so since we ended up at the bassists house, drinking his beer). Being a fiercely anti-Murdoch sort of chap, I’m not planning of making a habit of this, but here is a link to their MySpace page on which you can listen to some of their songs. Do so. Perhaps whilst sipping some red wine and nibbling on a bit of camembert. That’s a serving suggestion by the way.
The rest of the weekend involved meeting some of the lovely, friendly, but perhaps the slightest bit crazy, folk of Bury. I’ve been a bit nomadic recently (Gloucestershire, Derby, Nottingham), where next? I feel the mighty H calling again….