MPF2024: A dispatch
Manchester Punk Festival was two weeks ago now, so please forgive my lack of timeliness, and my self-indulgence here. I wanted to try something a little more impressionistic for myself; hot takes will resume soon.
Every kind of punk was there. Casuals, DIYers, emos that grew up and grew out, emos that never did. Hardcore fans with their battle jackets and men in tiny little beanies. Crusts —so many crusts, often popping out of crowds and riding a sea of hands all the way the stage—and even the odd skin in a polo shirt and braces. There were goths and new-wavers and metalheads. And in amongst them, me, along for the ride.
I’ll not wax lyrical about how I got into punk and when; let’s just say it’s been part of my life for a long time, and a part that was just for me. Try as I might, most of my friends don’t share my penchant for ten-pound, four-band lineups and certainly weren’t piling onto the train to New Cross three weekends out of four to squeeze them in during school. Punk shows are something I’m used to being alone at but rarely do I feel lonely at them. And this fest was a good example of why: a DIY gig is, de facto, a community event. These are bands you’ve not seen before, maybe not even heard before, except for perhaps the headliner, but they’ve picked each other. They might be friends or just fans of one another; they might share members. This quality suffuses the show. Most performers, I imagine, enjoy performing to some degree, but there are few happinesses as infectious as a lineup full of mates playing music for each other.
MPF is that but scaled up. On day one I see four bands, two of whom I know, and two of whom I don’t, but I leave a fan of all four. That venue’s headliners for the night, Martha, find that they’ve burned through their setlist in three-quarters of the time: I’m at the barrier to see the smiles on their faces as they apologise to the crowd, explaining they’ll just have to play more songs. (The crowd, of course, is thrilled to hear it.) They shout out the bands before them - Johnny Foreigner knocked me sideways but the room went even wilder for Cheekface, ‘America’s local band’ - tell us who to see the rest of the weekend, and take their bows in front of a Palestinian flag, borrowed from another band playing the festival. The next day I see Supermilk at YES, and their frontman, who was recently diagnosed with ME, instructs the audience that if he falls, they have to fall down too. At the end of the set, he tells us that he’s told that joke at several shows but this is the first time he’s thought the audience actually might hit the decks in solidarity.
These are just snatches of moments but the whole weekend was like that: chill, kind, loud. On the Sunday, I resolved to check off every remaining music venue at the fest, so I have an inkling that it was the same everywhere, regardless of whether the music being played was brash skate punk or lofi solo artists. I’m not one for making friends at gigs, but I’ll have a quick chat now and again - one woman in a bar queue, on finding out I draw my coloured eyebrows on, asked me repeatedly, ‘And you do that every morning?’ - and this goes easier for me than anywhere else because everyone here loves music, and they love punk. It’s a social safety net that I’m glad to have. Between shows I read sci-fi in bars, usually nursing a pint; I sample the best of Manchester’s falafel, gyros, pizza, and have brunch with my sister, who’s lent me her bedroom for the weekend. One of the singers in CHEWIE sums it up best: ‘it’s amazing to see so many people like us, and all just being themselves.’ Later he adds, ‘and shout out to security, these crowdsurfers are getting put down like Ming vases.’
One of the last acts I saw at the festival was Perkie, who I first saw play in a skate shop in London nearly a decade ago. (The actual last band I saw was a supergroup formed exclusively to play a Madonna cover set. As it turns out punks love Madonna, and they were one of the most raucous acts I saw.) The front four or five rows all sat down to listen, and towards the end of the set she played an oldie, ‘Run’, which has a bridge that goes ‘get in the van / get in the car / pack your bags cos we’re going anywhere, as long as it’s far’. Spontaneously, a huge chunk of the crowd bawls the lines with her. It’s hard to know how many of the crowd were in bands themselves, but there was something about the sentiment, a rawness salved, that we all felt very intensely. If you can’t quit your job and start a band you might at least get the Megabus to Manchester.
You can listen to a playlist of my personal highlights from the fest here.