Peter Hook & The Light play one off Star & Garter show

Peter Hook & The Light play one off Star & Garter show

PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT TO PLAY HEADSTOCK MENTAL HEALTH FUNDRAISER AT MANCHESTER STAR & GARTER – THE HOME OF THE IAN CURTIS MURAL

  • The intimate event will include a Q&A with Peter Hook plus a Joy Division set with his band
  • The Star & Garter is home to the stunning mural of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis
  • Tickets to the exclusive event will be allocated via a ticket ballot on ticketing site Skiddle
  • Proceeds from ticket sales will support Shout, the mental health text support charity

Music & Mental Wellbeing Festival, Headstock, has announced that Peter Hook & The Light will play a one-off mental health fundraising event on Friday 12 April 2024 at Manchester Star & Garter, one of the city’s best loved independent live music venues.

pic: Mark L Hill

Peter Hook & The Light: An Evening of Music & Conversation will see the legendary Joy Division and New Order bassist take part in a hosted Q&A to discuss his time with Joy Division as well as his close friendship with Ian Curtis. Later in the evening, Peter will be joined on stage by his band to play a Joy Division set for just 200 lucky fans.

Proceeds from this special Headstock event will go to support mental health charity Shout. The gig will also take place in memory of Ian Curtis who tragically lost his life to suicide in May 1980.

Arguably one of the most influential and pioneering bands of all time, Joy Division was a post-punk rock band formed in Salford in 1976 by Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner, with Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris joining shortly after.

This year (2023) Joy Division received an inaugural nomination into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside iconic, globally renowned artists and bands such as Kate Bush, Iron Maiden, George Michael and Rage Against The Machine.

Peter Hook & The Light have announced a special one-off event at the intimate (200 capacity) Star & Garter in Manchester on Friday 12 April 2024 to raise funds for the mental health charity Shout.

The evening will see a hosted Q&A session with the legendary Joy Division and New Order bassist and a full live set of Joy Division songs with his band. Given the limited capacity of the venue, tickets will be allocated via a ballot launched on Skiddle.

Peter Hook says: “I have campaigned for a long time for Ian and Joy Division to be commemorated anyway and anywhere possible. From the statue in Macclesfield – still ongoing – to the mural in Macclesfield, to the mural in Manchester and the upcoming one in Stockport. I will only rest when every town in Great Britain has something.

“I am immensely proud of Ian and our work as Joy Division, and to celebrate it in this way is such a pleasure. I am hoping to bring Ian’s best man at his wedding and childhood friend Kevin Briggs to join me, so fans can get a real insight into this wonderful man and artist. To play at such an iconic venue as the Star & Garter just seals the deal perfectly.”

Given the limited capacity of the venue (200) tickets will be allocated via a ballot to be launched on Skiddle from Monday 4 December 2023 at https://skiddle.com/e/37141791 and will remain open until Friday 2 February 2024. Each successful ballot entrant will be allocated two tickets to the event.

Pricing for the ticket ballot as follows:

  • 1 x ballot entry = £10
  • 3 x ballot entries = £15
  • 10 x ballot entries = £20

Money raised via the ticket ballot will go to support Shout’s free and confidential 24/7 text messaging support service for anyone who is struggling to cope.

Atheer Al-Salim, founder of Headstock, said: “We are so grateful to Peter Hook and his band who are giving up their time and talent to help us raise much needed funds to support our charity partner Shout and their life-saving text support service. The evening promises to be a poignant moment for Manchester, and an event of huge musical and cultural significance for the city.”

Victoria Hornby, CEO of Shout, said: “We’re incredibly grateful to Peter Hook & The Light and Headstock for putting on this very special event which will raise vital funds for us to keep the Shout text messaging support service running 24/7. Our volunteers take up to 2,000 conversations with children, young people and adults in urgent need of mental health support every day, and every £10 raised funds a conversation that could save a life.”

The Grade II listed Star & Garter is home to the recently reinstated mural of Peter Hook’s former Joy Division bandmate Ian Curtis, which was unveiled ahead of World Suicide Prevention Day in September 2023. The event at the Star & Garter – which has also hosted bands such as Courteeners, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes and Bring Me The Horizon – is taking place seven months after the stunning mural of Ian Curtis was completed by renowned Manchester street artist Akse.

The mural is based on a photograph of Ian Curtis taken by Belgian photographer Phillipe Carly and depicts the Joy Division front man shortly before the release of the band’s second album, Closer, and on the eve of their first North American tour.

ABOUT HEADSTOCK: Headstock is a Manchester-based social enterprise that works to create music-led solutions to raise money and awareness for mental health charities. Through the power of music and shared experiences, their goal is to create change by changing the conversation around mental health. Headstock launched in October 2019 and was initially set up as a direct response to the disproportionate level of mental health issues across greater Manchester and the North West.

ABOUT SHOUT 85258: Shout is the UK’s first and only free and confidential 24/7 text messaging support service for anyone who is struggling to cope. Shout launched publicly in May 2019 and has since had more than 1.7 million conversations with people who are anxious, stressed, depressed, suicidal or overwhelmed and who need in-the-moment support. As a digital service, Shout became increasingly critical during Covid-19, being one of the few mental health support services able to operate as normal at that time.

The Venus Fly Trap – Mars (Glass Modern)

The Venus Fly Trap – Mars (Glass Modern)

Get your corpse paint on paint your nails and hope that that’s a fog filling up the room and not your house on fire.

I’m reliably informed that The Venus Fly Trap which has had a new lease of life from the late ’80s were born from ATTRITION, ISAWS, RELIGIOUS OVERDOSE, WHERES LISSE? & TEMPEST.  Hatched in the mid-’80s it wasn’t for a few years that this album was originally released mixing electronic with a dark Goth mood sort of Depeche Mode with guitars or the Sisters with that snappy Alesis drum machine snare sound.  Songs like ‘(I Get) Flowers’ are total ’80s Goth and its a sound that hasn’t really dated that well.  There are some decent melodies here like the aforementioned tune and I like the riff but was never a bit fan of that Soft Cell snare.

They try to create the mood with ‘Morphine’ but having that low-fi guitar fuzz that sounds like its barely in tune is a throwback to bands like Joy Division.  I wouldn’t mind betting vocalist Alex was a fan of Ian Curtis and the way the band would construct their songs. The time really shows through on this reissue although I do like that bass line on ‘Ruby Red’ coming across as Dave Vanian fronting the Sisters its a good tune and the arrangement is great regardless of what decade it is.

Is that a Roland Jupiter I hear tweaking and whirling away on ‘Desolation Railway’ what a fantastic lyric and title. I guess what comes around goes around and it would seem about time fo ran 80’s synth / Goth crossover reunion where the Mode meets Eldrich meets pop meets the modern age kinda thing – how glorious would that be?  With today’s technical advances in sound, this record would sound absolutely huge and songs like this would fill cathedrals.

 

‘Catalyst’ is like a dark Goth ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ from the mind of Nick Cave.  It’s not that I dislike it at all because I don’t and there are some good songs on offer but the cliches of the time that haven’t stood the test of time and they weigh heavily. Maybe played loudly I’d like ‘How The Mighty’ because I love The Mission and like the Mish, ‘Violins & Violence’ is trying new things and that’s cool and we all like the Kennedy mystery and this is better than Saxons ‘Dallas 1 PM’ for covering that topic.

 

Maybe this would have been better left and be one of those albums you stumble across and hail as a long lost treasure or maybe I wide of the mark and it’s just me.  Yeah, that’ll be it.  It’s just me.

 

Bandcamp

Author: Dom Daley