Review: Jillys Rockworld in Manchester

JILLYS - MANCHESTER

Location – Jillys, Oxford Road Manchester
Times – 9pm – 7am
Door Tax - £5.50
Website- www.jillys.co.uk

Every city has a Jilly’s – London has Slimelight, Leeds has Cockpit, Hull has Spiders... the list goes on.  I have visited many of these venues over the years, but for one reason or another had never gotten around to Jilly’s.

On a Friday night is the infamous all-nighter, from 9pm right through to 7am! Laid out over 4 rooms, with a capacity of over 1200, each catering to various alternative music tastes – goth, metal, rock, cyber, 80’s, emo – something to suit everyone – even a dance hour in the main room!!

If you are looking for glitz and glam, then Jilly’s really isn’t for you, with various parts of the building being held up with scaffold and repair works going on, although this wasn’t bothering the regulars in any way.  It has the same dingy feel when it comes to décor as most rock clubs, with a need for a lick of paint and the floor needing a bit of a scrub.

Opening from 9pm until 7am, Jilly’s has one over on most of the alternative nights in the north, which can only manage until 3am, meaning you really can party all night until the sun comes up, and for a reasonable door fee of £5.50, which is fantastic for an all night event, which normally would be a minimum of £10.00.  The drinks were also relatively reasonable, so it didn’t turn out to be an expensive night.

Having said this, Jilly’s has a much friendlier atmosphere and sense of community than any night I have been to in a long time – it was clear most of the crowd were regulars.  I find most rock clubs have this same atmosphere -  I used to frequent Bradford Rios week in week out for years, and so therefore felt right at home at Jilly’s with its same laid back atmosphere and its mixed friendly crowd, the type of atmosphere you can only get in a rock club.  The crowd really were a mix of young and old, which was a pleasant surprise as I was expecting it to be 90% barely legal scene kids, as I have found in some of the other rock clubs I go to of late.

You can tell that Jilly’s means a lot to its regulars, and is very much an important part of the alternative community to the alternative scene in Manchester. With much of the alt community dying out in the North, with the close of Bradford Rios, Bassment in Leeds, the corn exchange and the rumoured close of Affleck’s Palace, I can only hope that Jilly’s thrives for years to come, and help keep the community alive.