Various Artists - Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus (1978) (10'') (@256)

I've just finished reading John Robb's "The North Will Rise Again - Manchester Music City 1976-1996". After a short introduction which deals with the local music scene during the 60's and 70's, I was sunk into its pages which run two decades full of music, idealism and arrogance, mouldy venues and big stadiums, (not always) packed clubs, drugs and guns and a suicide through quotes of nearly all important music figures of the city.













The Electric Circus
So, given the opportunity, rather than compiling just another mancunian compilation, I preferred to upload this one. Electric Circus was a live venue in Manchester which hosted many of the city's groups during the early days of punk. But it wasn't only that. As we read on the record's liner notes "Out of four or five dates throughout the country, the Anarchy tour visited the Circus twice", while the Clash's White Riot tour passed also from there. Consequently, someone could argue that the Circus was one of the cornerstone places where the then new music inspired local young musicians to create whatever enjoyable has been unleashed from inside the city's borders. The record's live performances were recorded on October, 2, 1977, during the venue's last days before it was closed down; with the exception of Steel Pulse, all the other groups (and ehm... poets) were from Manchester.

Tracklisting:
A1-Fall - Stepping Out
A2-John Cooper Clarke - (You Never See A Nipple In The) Daily Express
A3-Joy Division - At A Later Date
A4-Drones - Persecution Complex
B1-Steel Pulse - Makka Splaff
B2-John Cooper Clarke - I Married A Monster From Outer Space
B3-Fall - Last Orders
B4-Buzzcocks - Time's Up

Check also here for some very interesting Electric Circus artefacts.

download link: here

P.S. For those interested, I'm preparing an upload about Band On The Wall (another historic venue of my beloved Manchester) to celebrate its reopening in September, while there is also an older post about the Hacienda.