It takes a few visits to get the layout of Manchester into your head. Relying on a satnav app teaches very little. I find just following orders contributes little to learning.
What I did twig on Thursday evening was that to meet with my host for the next three days, Seán, my walk from the music venue I had dug up, to the music venue he was patronising, was a left, then a short left-right chicane, before a two kilometre walk towards the University of Manchester.
With that clear in my head, I need not worry about getting lost on my way to find him and his two sons, who are both increasingly hard to tell apart as they age. I do know identical twins with more distinguishing characteristics.
The three lads were going to a ska-punk quadruple-act show at Manchester’s third largest regular music venue, which is not my cup of tea in any way. My preference was for a long-established music dive bar, Aatma, up a set of stairs behind The Peer Hat. I had heard of neither until I had Googled for live music in Manchester on 5th March, 2026.
As there was a bar upstairs, I cannot in all fairness offer any comment on The Peer Hat, other than don’t go in expecting glitz. The bar staff were really nice, the customers were dressed in an anti-fashion fashion, touching on goth.
A feature of any dive bar, whether in Memphis, Birmingham AL, Norwich, Munich or Manchester, is that visiting performers mark their visit with a sticker, or some graffiti. Aatma proves no different.
The place has been operating quite happily as a venue for local musicians for over a decade. The guy on the door is very laid back, having time for everyone. The bar man and sound engineer are similarly chilled. It’s gloomy, tatty, but welcoming enough. I feel comfortable in here.
It gradually gathers an audience of the various bands’ friends and family and a few music-curious wanderers, like me. My ticket was £5 in advance, would have been £6 on the door.
I’ll post a review of the gig on the music blog you can reach via my blog menu. Suffice to say, out of four bands, I only stayed to hear three play their full set. Of those three, I can heartily recommend the five-piece rock pop-band, The Monamees. The name has a schoolboy-French origin, which becomes apparent when said aloud.
The band has come about following the 2025 Oasis Reformation Summer, but the Monamees draw on The Beatles pop sounds of 1963/64 as opposed to the psychedelic influenced sounds preferred by Noel and Liam Gallagher. The Monamees are a lot more fun than Oasis and already have a fine batch of catchy self-penned tunes, which they deliver with panache, including well-honed harmonies and some George, Paul, John and Ringo ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaaahs’.
When I decided to head on to meet Seán et al, it was raining heavily, but by the time I reached the Academy, by the university, it had stopped. The rain was evaporating into a mist as I walked in the company of groups of bedraggled students heading home.
As I waited for my host, I fell into conversation with Natalie, who was waiting for her son to come from the gig. Half an hour passed pleasantly in light, casual conversation. Football, music and Manchester covered much of it, with mention of Rochdale, her birthplace and my destination, once Sean appeared just after Eleven o’clock.
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CLP 05/03/2026
Journey of Words 
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