Dundee’s biggest concert venue is lining up some big names ahead of this autumn’s hoped-for return of indoor shows.
The exact timeframe on live music’s comeback may remain uncertain, but that hasn’t stopped Leisure and Culture Dundee from making moves to ensure the Caird Hall will have a raft of attractive gigs to pull in fans when the time is right.
Welsh post-punk veterans Manic Street Preachers are the latest outfit to announce a date at the historic City Square venue, where they are due to call on September 29.
Other gigs pencilled in for the Caird Hall include ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett on September 28 and former Beautiful South pair Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott (October 10).
Manics on tour
The Gwent-raised Manics — singer / guitarist James Dean Bradfield, bassist Nicky Wire and drummer Sean Moore — are set to release their 14th studio album The Ultra Vivid Lament on September 3 and will kick off a major UK tour in Newcastle on September 26 before playing the first of three planned Scottish shows at Edinburgh’s Usher Hall two nights later.
It’ll be the band’s first appearance in Dundee since September 1998 when they also played at the Caird Hall as part of the promotions for their massive selling fifth LP This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.
Nicky Wire told the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio UK that the trio has drawn on diverse influences on the new record — their first since 2018’s Resistance Is Futile.
“James wrote a lot of the album on the piano,” he said. “We were really listening to a lot of our old records from the Seventies. There’s a big Abba influence (and) lyrics influenced by The Jam’s Going Underground — that kind of onslaught of information and culture wars and just trying to navigate your way through it as you hit 50.”
Nicky still watches Countdown
Manics lyricist Wire, 52, told Evans he still regularly watches TV quiz Countdown to keep his brain sharp.
“I think when you’re young you want to save the world and you hit 50 and you just want to save yourself from yourself, ” he added. “Literally the short term memory just disappears overnight.”
The three-piece originally formed back in 1986 and after releasing their debut album Generation Terrorists in 1992 they went on to achieve stadium-sized success following the disappearance of the band’s lyrical genius and second guitarist Richey Edwards in 1995.
Together since age 5
Wire, aka Nicholas Jones, added: “It’s pretty unhealthy to think I was in the same class as James at the age of five. We’ve got a certain telepathy now and we do kind of communicate through the buzz of just getting it together and a song turning out and getting those goosebumps.
“Hearing your record on the radio, to us, just transports us to being 20 again and it still gives us a little spine-tingling moment when we feel we’ve communicated to people in a different way.”
Talking about the Manics’ tour and the prospect of a return to the live arena following the pandemic shutdown, he declared: “Fingers crossed it’s all going to happen, from Dundee to Brighton and lots in between. If there’s any safety issue then that’s just the way it is. We obey the law.”
Meanwhile, Steve Hackett will play the 1977 Genesis live album Seconds Out when he visits the Caird Hall the night before the Manics.
He played in the Surrey band alongside Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks and Phil Collins on the tours that followed the departure of their original frontman Peter Gabriel in 1975.
Heaton and Abbott will perform highlights from their extensive back catalogue in October, including songs from their most recent album Manchester Calling, which went to number one last year.
Meanwhile accoustic songsmith Amy Rayner is launching a new series of outdoor Perthshire gigs tomorrow.
Horsecross Arts, the company behind Perth Concert Hall and Perth Theatre, is taking a mobile stage across the county over the summer to showcase some of Courier Country’s most promising upcoming talents.
Amy is first up at St Madoes’ Madoch Centre tomorrow at 11am and 2pm, before folk outfit Rallion play at Birnam on June 5, then it’s Make Geography History at Kinross Market Park (June 26) and singer-songwriter Calum Campbell at Kettins (July 10).
