The two venues I’ve loved most in Liverpool over the years have been the Royal Court and The Lomax.
The Royal Court for 15 years from 1981 and the Lomax from about 1996 until the turn of the century.
There was just something about the atmosphere at both that made gigs in either truly special no matter who it was you were seeing.
Now both are gone – at least in terms of gig hosting – but there was a reminder of the old days at The Lomax when me and regular Tony took our places in the audience at The Ritz in Manchester for a Hell is for Heroes anniversary show, with support from A.
The picture above is of A, although you couldn’t tell by looking at it!
Hell is for Heroes formed out of Symposium who seemed to be on at The Lomax every couple of months.
I took Gill to see them once and barely had we walked through the door than the singer came rushing out on to the stage and hurled himself into the crowd right in front of us. That was enough to see her watching the rest of the show from a safer distance.
Regular Tony is also pictured on the inner sleeve artwork of one of their albums – albeit as part of a big festival crowd from which he’s certain he can pick himself out.
Equally I’m sure I saw A at The Lomax more than once at a time when every passing indie hopeful would check in.
Super Furry Animals, Silver Sun, Collapsed Lung, Joyrider, The Montrose Avenue, Flyscreen, Crazy Gods of Endless Noise and many more were watched and thoroughly enjoyed.
At the new gig, Hell is for Heroes were marking the 15th anniversary of the release of their acclaimed The Neon Handshake album – and it went down an absolute storm.
I thought it sounded of its time, but there was no denying its power in a live setting.
Personally I preferred their previous incarnation who were a huge amount of fun. Like your best mate’s band playing on the last day of summer term after GCSEs.
What they became was more like the black-clad moody sixth-former. More intense, more depth and more grown-up – but fewer laughs.
See you down the front 
Ah, A…
Or should that be A-Ha? Nope, that’s some other band.
I recently played the one song that I recall by ‘A’ named Number One and it hadn’t stood the test of time particularly well, sadly. ‘A’ also holds a chart position in another unfortunate list of mine by being one of the bands that a friend in England bought me a record by and it went missing en route by mail and never arrived.
This situation happens to me very rarely, and in this case it was their debut LP, the excellently-named ‘How Ace Are Buildings’, which came for a time with another free 12″ record inside. Look it up now on Discogs and it’s not available, but on the few occasions when it shows up you can expect to pay a pretty penny for it. You can see why it’s a minor torn in my fattening side after all of these years.
But it seems that you had an A+ time at their recent reunion, so all’s well that ends well, eh?
Did you see that A-Ha brought McCulloch out as a special guest recently at some enormo-gig in London. He did The Killing Moon which blew all their stuff away according to the review I saw
I’m one of those weird fans who would posit that Take On Me wipes the floor with The Killing Moon, so that’s me off your Christmas card list…
Absolutely not. I wouldn’t have expected anything else!
Post script: Oh, and I meant to also say that were it not for the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool my gig-going years back in England would have been so much worse off. I went to so many shows there it was ridiculous. I hear it’s a comedy venue now.