Manchester Pride Festival has just announced its day-by-day lineup of artists and events for 2023.
In case you missed it, the UK’s leading LGBTQ+ charity event revealed its highly-anticipated 2023 lineup back in March, and it’s set to be the iconic Festival’s most inclusive roster of local and international queer talent to date.
Undoubtedly back with a bang this summer, and co-created in collaboration with Manchester’s diverse queer communities, Festival organisers say this year’s lineup champions “representation, inclusivity, and community celebration” over the four-day extravaganza.
The legendary Gay Village Party is back, and will light up with performances across three stages – The Village Stage, MancUnity Stage – which is in partnership with Gaydio – and the Alan Turing Stage.
Drag sensation Pabllo Vittar is headlining this year’s Gay Village Party, as is singer-songwriter and Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard, and a mystery headliner still yet to be announced.
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Aside from those headline performances, the four-day August bank holiday weekend Festival also includes a whole host of other special events including Queer Asian Takeover headlined by Gok Wan, Trans Filth & Joy headlined by drag artist BIMINI, Black Pride MCR headlined by Raven Mandella, and the Queer Women’s Takeover headlined by Monki.
Here’s a quick run-down of the official Manchester Pride Festival stage splits for 2023.
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Friday 25 August
Village Stage – Headlined by BIMINI, with additional performances from Tito Bone, Midgitte Bardot, Cyro, The BollyWitch, An0maly, Finley Odin, Darnell, Denon, Xzan, and DJ Jess Rose.
MancUnity Stage, in partnership with Gaydio – You can expect an evening of “dancing, partying, showing off and feeling good” with Fat Pride, featuring The Niallist, Ivy Profemme, The Fat Britney, Joe Spencer, Miss Lei-Lei, Sam Buttery, and Joanna Cuddle.
Alan Turing Stage – hosted by Donna Trump, with La Discothèque Orchestra, Queeriosity Cabaret, Pecs Drag Kings, The Enby Show featuring Cyro, Flick, and Carrot.
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Saturday 26 August
Village Stage – Headlined by Pabllo Vittar, with additional performances from Jodie Harsh, Black Peppa, Monopoly Phonic, Tom Aspaul, Violet Blonde, and Jsky – and a special multi-platinum selling headliner soon to be announced.
MancUnity Stage presents Black Pride MCR, all brought together by Darren Pritchard with headliner Raven Mandella, as well as Swagga, Kele Le Roc, DJ Stacy Bee, DJ NKay, DJ KL, Queens in Kicks, Goodie Magnum, and Dymond.
Alan Turing Stage welcomes the Queer Asian Takeover hosted by Lucky Roy Singh, with headliner DJ Gok Wan, alongside Gracie T, Reeta Loi, The Bitten Peach, Bollyqueer, House of Spice, Club Zindagi and more.
Sunday 27 August
Village Stage – Headlined by Danny Beard and Friends, alongside Jake Shears, Natasha Bedingfield, Lisa Scott-Lee, Cheddar Gorgeous, Barb, Kelly Llorenna (N-Trance), Jonbers Blonde, Bailey J Mills, Lady Bushra, Banksie, The BollyWitch, Lill, and Ginny Lemon’s Dog Show.
MancUnity Stage presents the Queer Women’s Takeover with Monki, Kim Lana, Blasha and Allatt (Meat Free + Frixxxion), Mix-Stress and Friends, SWAGGA featuring DJ Stacy Bee, Queens in Kicks, Freequency3, Club Clam, What She Said, Vanilla, and Fat Camp.
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Alan Turing Stage – Cutie-POC Cabaret hosted by Rikki Beadle-Blair, Angie Brown, The Cocoa-Butter Club, NoirTones, and Ghetto Fabulous, as well as Your Manchester hosted by Belinda Scandal.
Monday 28 August
Village Stage – Closing the festival with the Misty Chance and Friends, and Disabled Queer Joy Cabaret.
MancUnity Stage – THE RUNWAY by Banksie, and Firehouse with Dakota Schiffer.
Alan Turing Stage ends the event with Disney Classics performed by The Untold Orchestra.
Day-by-day stage splits for the 2023 Festival have been announced today / Credit: Manchester Pride
Closing the four-day Festival is the Candlelit Vigil with George House Trust, which is a moment of reflection in Sackville Gardens.
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As the home of Alan Turing, The National Transgender Memorial, and the Beacon of Hope, the gardens are set to be transformed into a sea of flickering candles to remember and honour those lost to, and stand in solidarity with, those who are living with HIV.
It also provides the space to reflect on and remember those who have been persecuted in the LGBTQ+ community, both here in the UK and around the world.
Find out more about Manchester Pride Festival 2023 and grab tickets here.
Featured Image – Manchester Pride
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Speaking with Maggie Rogers before her spellbinding stripped-back set at Gorilla
Danny Jones
Every now and again we’re fortunate enough to get the opportunity not only to see a big name but to experience them in a smaller, more intimate setting for those special one-offs that people go on to talk about for years to come — that’s how we got to see Maggie Rogers at Gorillaon Monday.
Better still, we were incredibly lucky to be offered time to speak with the American singer-songwriter just a couple of hours prior to her all-acoustic set at Gorilla and just before she and her band set off to tour her new album, Don’t Forget Me, which drops next month.
Manchester being the first of these up close and personal pre-album launch shows here in the UK, of which she listed just four, it’s always an honour to be picked for the start or the end of an album cycle but it was immediately clear she had a lot of love for our city.
Arriving in 0161 on Sunday just in time for the Paddy’s Day chaos and to watch the FA Cup final between Man United and Liverpool in a local pub, our conversation started with simply: “That game!”
We’re loving these intimate gigs at Gorilla — give us more.There are some very passionate Maggie Rogers here.Credit: Piran Aston (via Gorilla)/The Manc
The interview
After meeting and greeting the line of people already queuing up for the 500-cap Gorilla show, we walked backstage for what ended up being a laid-back chat about live music, relaxing into herself as an artist and an album process that was recorded in a whirlwind five days.
Touching on the upcoming third album and that beautiful title track, Maggie said, “It feels like coming home. In a lot of ways, it’s like a return to a lot of the style of songwriting and production and arrangement that really got me into music in this place when I was like 16/17.
“It just feels really relaxed and my friends keep saying that it sounds like the version of me that they know. I think, after doing this for quite a while, I’m finally relaxing into it.
“I think it’s always been authentic but I think music sort of takes some of the most sensitive and intense people and puts them in really high-intensity situations… It’s not even that I wasn’t being authentic before, I think it’s just that my guard was a little bit up yeah. I was a little scared — I still am, you know, but I think that’s normal.”
Describing how it felt her last LP Surrender had the punchiest and most contemporary rock approach of her music to date, we then moved on to where her style is at currently and the difference between the studio listening experience and live performance.
“I mean, my undergrad was in production engineering but that record was really designed to be played live, especially in a time like the pandemic, where all I was thinking about was coming back to touring and really missing it.
“I got really into British rock and, at least during the Surrender era, I was like fully like in Oasis mode, but you guys are responsible for some of the best music and pop culture.”
Chuffed that she dropped in the Burnage boys so early in the conversation, she went on to say that although she was “discovered in a moment of experimentation” — that old Pharrell meme (yes, that is her if you’ve never put two and two together), her “songwriting has always been the same at the centre.”
“What I love about making albums is the world-building part of it, and I’ve just gotten to build different worlds. I always think about where the albums are designed to be listened to and Heard It in a Past Life was really designed for headphones, Surrender was really designed for stage and this is really designed for a car — like a Sunday afternoon drive”.
As she puts it, the debut was lots of synths, the sophomore was “drums and distortion” and the star of Don’t Forget Me is the acoustic guitar. “There’s definitely different forms of energy”, she said, adding: “but this is more on the stripped side and the whole record was kind of designed as a live album. Almost everything was a first take and this record was made in five days”. Some achievement in its own right.
Credit: Maggie Rogers
Having the most fun on stage
After touching on that internet moment from back in 2016, we then talked about how seeing her for the first time at Victoria Warehouse back in November 2022 (which she described as “so sick” and one of her favourite venues here in Manchester) was the real ‘wow’ moment for us and realising just important it is to see her live. Maggie puts a lot of it down to the band.
“I think that on stage what I love is that it’s different every night. I’ve worked really hard to be excellent at something that I really love and I get to play with some of the best musicians around and my band is just so f***ing talented.”
“It’s sort of like I hope the audience is having a good time too but also if they’re not I’m just having a really good time anyway.” She definitely was too; jumping ahead a little bit, one of our favourite moments from the gig was when she stopped between songs to laugh and say, “I just love playing music”.
She said similar about the creative process this time around too. Although there’s a lengthy newsletter post describing how the album came to be on her Instagram, she summed up it by saying, “Creativity, often comes from some of the most essential and sometimes childish or playful senses.
“Like, it’s called playing music and I think keeping that like sense of playfulness alive is so inherent to keeping my creativity alive, and in the studio making this record I was just having so much fun and was just feeling really playful, so we sort of made a record by not trying to make a record.”
Again, you could see that “contagious joy” she talked about written on her face and everyone else’s.
She was having the most fun and, believe us, so was everyone who managed to get a ticket for Maggie Rogers’ sell-out Gorilla show.
The show
Moving on to the show itself, Maggie said she was most looking forward to playing the likes of ‘Drunk’ which they’ve been doing live for a while now, as well as a track she called “devastating” with just the keys and a guitar entitled, ‘The Kill’ — and she wasn’t lying.
She set up the song by promising “It’s such a jam” with a full band but the stripped-back version fittingly killed us off in the crowd and the same could be said for a lot of the versions we heard on the night. From ‘Begging for Rain’ to an almost ethereal take on ‘Alaska’, you really get to appreciate just how incredible her voice is in this kind of scenario.
Bigging up British and Manchester crowds in particular because we “know culture and [we] care”, insisting, “It’s crazy how important those two things are”, her audience certainly lived up to the billing. She said there’s no “half-assing” it with us and she was right. We were emotional and so was she.
The set naturally closed with ‘Don’t Forget Me and a few teary faces (we didn’t dare film that moment as we wanted to be present) but nothing summed up the night better than when the Manc Maggie fans pretty much turned Gorilla into a congregation for ‘That’s Where I Am’, perfectly harmonising and clapping like a gospel choir.
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We’re already looking back on the show and thinking of it as going down as one of those ‘I was there’ moments and we think we speak for everyone when they say they won’t forget the time they saw Maggie Rogers at Gorilla with nothing more than a guitar and her piano player — also incredible, by the way.
Don’t Forget Me releases on Friday, 12 April and we already can’t wait to hear not only how the rest of it sounds but how the tracks we heard sound fully-fledged.
‘That’s Where I Am’ – Maggie Rogers, live at Gorilla (Credit: The Manc Audio)
Featured Images — The Manc Group/Press Image (supplied)
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Night & Day Cafe issues statement after battle to save iconic venue comes to an end
Daisy Jackson
One of Manchester’s most iconic music venues has issued a statement after their lengthy court battle came to an end today.
After three years, the court has ruled that Night & Day Cafe in the Northern Quarter will be allowed to continue operating as a gig venue and nightclub.
The iconic venue was served a Noise Abatement Notice (NAN) by Manchester City Council way back in 2021 after a new resident in the area filed multiple noise complaints.
The initial incident sparked a huge outcry from famous faces in the music industry as well as locals who love the venue – though Manchester City Council has maintained that at no point did it seek to close the venue.
The council also said that the NAN was issued ‘as a last resort’ after months of negotiating and compromising with Night & Day.
Night & Day Cafe have now issued a lengthy statement after Manchester Magistrates Court ruled in their favour, meaning the venue will be allowed to remain open under new conditions, including a maximum volume level at weekends.
While saying they were ‘delighted’ that the Noise Abatement Notice has been amended in the venue’s favour, Night & Day Cafe added that they were ‘disappointed’ that they would have to adjust their club nights.
They said that they would have to tweak their late-night offering ‘to suit an occupier of what is a defective apartment’, adding that the apartment (which was built after the venue) was approved planning despite the proximity to an established music venue.
Night & Day also thanked all those who have shown their support over the last three years.
Their full statement reads: “We are delighted that the Noise Abatement Notice has been amended in favour of N&D with the judge agreeing to noise levels that we offered to Manchester City Council (MCC) in June 2023 as part of the joint testing and negotiations.
“This means we can continue with the club nights that N&D and other live music venues are so dependent on. DJ club nights contribute to developing the raw, amazing talent and emerging live music scene that grace our stage, Manchester and beyond.
“Although N&D has won, we’re disappointed with today’s judgement as the venue will have to adjust our club nights to suit an occupier of what is a defective apartment.
“MCC Planning approved the apartment back in 2000 in full knowledge that there would be serious potential for noise problems in this flat and before any resident moved in.
“Today’s decision has huge implications for other Manchester night time industries and operators.
“We want to really thank all of our supporters in Manchester and beyond and every single person that has stood up and shouted for us. Without your incredible support we couldn’t have done this.”
A spokesperson for Manchester City Council said: “We are glad that this case has reached a conclusion, although it is regrettable that despite many attempts it could not have been amicably resolved prior to Night & Day bringing this court case.
“The Council has never sought to close Night & Day and very much want it to remain open and continue to play an active role in Manchester’s music scene.
“Over many months numerous meetings have taken place where we have sought to reach an amicable resolution with the venue, through negotiation and offering compromise, to agree acceptable sound levels which would allow us to uphold our legal duties and the venue to continue to thrive.
“It is as a last resort and extremely rare for us to issue a noise abatement notice. Manchester’s music venues overwhelmingly live in harmony with their neighbours and while complaints and issues are not uncommon, they are almost always resolved through dialogue.
“We welcome the judge’s ruling that Night & Day should use a noise limiter. The use of a limiter was a solution we proposed – and the judgement makes clear that our officers acted correctly in investigating the noise complaints in line with the Council’s legal responsibilities.
“We hope that we can all move forward from this unfortunate episode and we wish to work constructively with the venue.
“Music is a key ingredient of what makes Manchester special. The Council not only recognises this but has for many decades supported and encouraged grassroots venues and emerging musical talent. We continue to do so.
“In response to the pressures facing grassroots music venues across the country and here in the city, the Council commissioned a major independent review into the support Manchester’s grassroots music venues need, and how the council and partners can support venues. Its findings will be launched in May and will set out a way to champion Manchester’s independent music scene for the years ahead.
“The Council regularly support music ventures across the city, from grassroots to major venues, and emerging musicians through initiatives like Manchester Music City, Brighter Sounds and the Manchester Music Education Hub. The Council also funds and supports Beyond The Music, a new annual conference and festival which brings music industry leaders together to address challenges within the sector.
“We are committed to helping Manchester’s music scene to continue to flourish for many years to come.”