The constant hype of this city some of us call home is frankly getting beyond reproach. I mean, to be truthful, hyperbole is just the blind leading the blind. Today (Saturday) , for the first time in weeks, I went into Manchester to check out what records/CDs/books, etc I could pick up - having not had a chance to do this for bloody ages. True, I call in at all my usual favourite haunts, chat to my mates behind the counter, the usual sort of thing. But one nagging thought has been coursing through my mind for ages. Ever since that bloody bomb back in 1996, this city has been, shall we say..."undergoing change". Like every other fecking city in Britain presumably. But for some reason, Manchester's regeneration attempts have - second to London of course - been getting some serious press attention worldwide. The only other city in Britain undergoing a comparable (perhaps even more so) transformation in recent years is, of all places, Birmingham (Sarah Middle will confirm this as I'm sure she will testify to her own city centre likewise being a building site on a similarly enormous scale - I understand the hideous Bull Ring has now gone - to be followed by the blasted Inner Ring Road - am I correct?).
Well, press or no press, it seems the hype has well and truly concealed the reality. No surprise there then. What I'm getting at is - if you care to take a walk through city centre Manchester, you may well see all the cranes and scaffolding erupting from every corner. In fact if you arrive by train (by far the best, most sado-masochistically humiliating way to enter the city - comparable to being squeezed through Satan's Slimy Sweaty Arse-ring.) that's the first sight that will greet you anyway. But all this scaffolding cannot hide the fact that this city is changing - but for the worse. What we're getting by the hundred are soulless office buildings, leisure and shopping complexes, shite yuppie cafe bars and theme pubs and designer sandwich bars and useless themed "Civic Projects" that really mean fuck all to the majority of Mancunians. This frenetic rash of rebuilding is only the latest in an insidious attempt to gentrify a lot of otherwise industrially bleak/neglected parts of the city centre. Step a mile outside the city centre in any direction you can care to wander and see the sheer reality hit you like a brick wall - and if you're very lucky, leave with your shoes still on your feet ! Even more of an insult is how architecturally retarded and plain uninspiringly bland most of these new structures are. The Bridgewater Hall, the new Marks and Spencers, The Manchester Evening News (formerly Nynex) Arena, Deansgate Locks, Great Bridgewater Square......EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM is constructed to an identical style - same green tinted glass, rustic grey steel, beige concrete, slab-bricks..... its as if they left their inspiration back at the drawing office. (I harbour this view seeing as I nearly ended up studying for an BA Architecture degree instead of a Graphic design one which is what I ended up doing). Boring! The only vaguely exciting structure is the new Urbis Centre - behind the former Corn Exchange (now Triangle) building. but it too looks like a cop-out, as if it was initially planned much bigger but had to settle for being a little GREEN-TINTED (see what I said?) glass stump shaped like a curved ship's hull. Most bizarre.
Anyway, enough on the buildings - my point is that they may be rebuilding the city, but ....WHO IS IT FOR?? Not the majority of Mancunians, that's for sure - The Corn Exchange's loss was probably the biggest travesty for many of us - now in its place we have the most soulless depressing designer outlet known to mankind - complete with horrid hordes of teenage wank gathering round outside every weekend in their tedious nu-metal/skater garb, all ritualistically skateboarding up and down the ramps and water features. I know loads of friends who to this day have not made much back from the loss they sustained from the bomb which damaged the Corn Exchange - some have given up because the city's rents are astronomical. Others have managed to eke out a feeble existence elsewhere - small backs streets off the main thoroughfares, if not Northern Quarter/ Oldham Street itself. (the most bohemian quarter still existing..) But on the whole, the picture is not rosy.
For too long the mass corporate outlets have flourished, and the money never reaches those who need it in order to survive. The shocking thing is that, in Manchester, we have had our own north/south divide for years. Now the disturbing development is that there are now areas of the city centre in which this undesirable problem has manifested itself. Thanks to these fucking trendy developers and their multi-million pound projects [like, who seriously can afford to buy a £2 million penthouse overlooking the River Irwell - itself not exactly the Danube!- unless they're friends with a Railtrack fat cat, or a Man United footballer?] aimed at the nouveau-riche, and in so doing, destroying what old character is left of some parts of the city. Do we really need any more designer cafes and fast food outlets? Do we really need more 38-screen multiplex cinemas? Do we really need more extortionately-furnished designer clothing outlets in a city already bursting to the brim with them? It's all very well, isn't it? But when you consider that a good 60 percent of the city's population of 449,000 are not exactly multi millionaires on a Premier-league footballers daily salary,and thus do not have such a disposable income, then the reality starts to bite.
Manchester was placed firmly on the world map back in 1989/1990, with the over-hyped Madchester thingy, but in some ways it's been trying to live off that legacy ever since, rather than shake it off and move on. It may well have seen better bands and music emerging in the ten years since, but they've hardly been THAT groundshaking (guitar bands - how inventive can you get if you're a traditional guitar band [e.g. Oasis/Starsailor]? Know what I mean?) - clubwise, it probably died a death when the Hacienda, Boardwalk, and Sankeys Soap shut down (remember, Cream was born here before moving to Liverpool). A lot of the clubs here aren't really much cop anymore to be truthful. Leeds, Sheffield and the 'Pool appear to have overtaken it. The reopening of Sankeys recently passed without much hype or fanfare. Planet K is too big and soulless to be as convincing a venue. And the sound is shite too. Only Night and Day and the Roadhouse carry a guarantee that you will have a cheap-ish night out and get to see a few intriguingly low-budget/lo-fi bands into the bargain. The Music Box - home to The Electric Chair, probably Manchester's sole remaining club night success story, is empty four nights a week. Our band used to rehearse there - and it's a bloody depressing place when it's empty. And Manchester's a fucking violent and intimidating place at weekends too, I'm sorry to say. Can't even walk through the city at night between midnight and three in the morning without sensing the unease of an imminent ambush from some pissed up wankers who can't hold their drink down. The shithole they're still calling Piccadilly Gardens (even though it's a quagmire undergoing resurrection into more green-tinted glass office buildings no doubt), and Market Street have the overwhelming stench of shit and vomit any time of the day. Even the pigeons here are aggressive (divebombing you when you're trying to eat your fucking chips, and shit on yer head if you refuse to throw them any scraps).
Manchester may have given us as many great bands as its great rival Liverpool over the years [come to think of it, each city seems to take it in turns to hog the limelight - 60's : Liverpool (Beatles, Merseybeat , LFC), 70's : Manchester (punk- The Fall, Buzzcocks, So It Goes, Joy Div, MUFC), 80's Liverpool (LFC, Frankie, Wah!, OMD, Bunnymen), 90's Manchester (you know the rest....)]. And it may have been a great city to have a night out in or even live, but now try telling that to all the poor misguided students who descend here year in year out in the hope of capturing some of the much-lauded "nirvana" and all they get now are cranes, mud, scaffolding, late trains, muggings, rapes, shootings, ugly people, scallies, pigeon shit, puke and piss, and abusive bag ladies armed with coshes. So, my verdict - Manchester, bit of a shithole, sadly. Don't believe the hype.
And please, do not thank me;)
