19th July 2012
A slight return.
You may have noticed we took a very small break on Monday 16th, the badger had to sneak in the baggage compartment of the coach that took Common and Port Street Beer House off to the lakes for the day.
The badger is normally left behind on such ventures, but on this occasion he made it, you can catch up with his adventures via twitter #commondayout. We also invited one of our staff to make some witty comments on what we got up to! Hope you didn’t miss us too much!
In this weeks newsletter we have exciting news about our new exhibition by Nicholas Saunders, the last chance to buy a piece of Mystical Egg and we visited our bros at Fred Aldous to sneak a few pics in their lovely vintage photo booth!
Work it out.
W. Badger
Last chance for the church
Good Egg / Bad Egg
With great sadness we have to bid farewell to our current exhibition ‘Church Of The Mystic Egg’! You have just a couple of weeks to purchase yourselves a fantastic tie dyed t-shirt, a limited edition screen print or even an amazing hand made book!
ALL the items can be viewed here. We hope you can find some pennies to purchase a lovely piece of the egg. The exhibition will be coming down on Monday 23rd July, so you only have five days to come and have a look if you haven’t seen it already!
We are super proud of Steve Hockett and SAVWO for putting on one of our best exhibitions to date, the ‘egg hacking incident’ on our Common website proved to confuse quite a few of you, we even had David Shrigley pay us a visit on the launch night, we were stoked! Remember the Church of The Mystic Egg will still work in it’s magical ways once the walls have been cleared.
New exhibition
Pop and Roll by Nicholas Saunders
Nicholas Saunders is a freelance artist, screen printer and illustrator based in Manchester, creating a huge range of printed ephemera. Over the past two years he has exhibited work in San Francisco, Berlin, London, Macedonia and Manchester.
Pop and Roll sees Nick’s fascination with the world of pop music come to light in his technicolor exhibition of ‘forgotten pop concert posters’, ‘classic lyrics’ and a general homage to all things pop! Join us in celebration as we gaze at the delights of popular culture and wriggle in all its glory.
Come along to Common for the exhibition launch at 6pm on Thursday August 2nd 2012, a total indulgence in all things to do with popular culture including a series of screen printed pop posters, shiny things, scum bag paparazzi, tribute acts and not forgetting ‘Cher Modem’ for instant access to all things pop online.
Launch night : Thursday 2nd August at 6pm / exhibition runs until late January 2013.
Staff Day Out
Words by Becky Rothwell
So this Monday, Common closed it’s doors as the staff set off on a little excursion to the district of lakes. Everyone met bright and early, coffees were drank, cigs were smoked, and we all got on to our ‘executive travel’ coach, and set off for an adventure.
Literally seconds after our coach had pulled up at Bowness, a jolly chap invited himself on board, proclaiming he was the captain (of a small wooden kiosk), gave us all tons of vouchers for free cups of tea and telling us “THE DAY IS YOUR OWN!” What a guy. After this lovely greeting, we headed off onto our mini boat trip, where we sipped Cava whilst cruising the lake on our sassily titled vessel ‘Miss Cumbria III’. On our little sail around the lake, we came across some lovely sights of fancy houses, other boats, and scenery Bob Ross would probably be really good at painting. All accompanied by the voice of possibly the most unenthusiastic tour guide ever.
Back on dry land, we settled down in the driest place we could find and had ourselves a little picnic competition, featuring a hell of a lot of pastry and a giant custard cream. Pretty dope. After we’d all eaten as much as we possibly could and drank loads of booze, clearly the best idea was for us all to walk up a massive steep hill in the rain. More bottles of Cava at the top, plus an awesome view were pretty good compensation for everyone being covered in mud and realising how unfit they were. The descent featured nearly all of us falling on our arses in the mud, Laura very hilariously hitting Iwan in the face with a branch of a tree, then us getting very lost and walking for miles around on narrow roads and nearly getting hit by cars. The Wayne’s world shouts of “car!’ and “game on!” were funny every time.
When we finally found our way back to the coach, we all sat down for a quick brew, (courtesy of the captain) then popped over to Hawkshead Brewery where we were treated to lots of nice pints and a tour of the brewery itself. Highlights included a hilarious innuendo in the presentation video, how nice the lady who showed us round was and a super damson & vanilla porter. After this, we decided to continue consuming beverages, so nipped round the corner to the Eagle & Child, a nice little pub with all sorts of delightful crap on the walls. (In particular a big wooden shark with lights on it, Common needs one of those). Upon our entrance in the pub it was a tiny bit reminiscent of the scene in ‘An American Werewolf’ in London, but everyone was very pleasant and we all happily sat and got drunker.
As the sun finally came out and the rain stopped, the less drunk of the group rounded up the drunker of the group, and we all got back onto our coach and headed for home to round things off with a few more drinks. Probably about 90% of the people on the coach fell asleep on the way back like big boozy children, whilst the others sat and gambled all their money away on a high stakes card game in a little corner. Arriving back at Common, everyone woke up, the cards were put away, and more beer was deemed necessary!
Fred Aldous
Photo Booth
You may have seen our lovely ‘mugshots’ across the world wide web, our good friends at Fred Aldous have an amazing vintage photo booth, they allowed us to take a few shots, which you can view here.
The photo booth was made in Surrey by ‘Photo-me International’ in 1966. It was shipped to Canada in 1967 for EXPO 67 World Fair in Montreal. Between the late 60′s and early 90′s it travelled around various woolworth department stores in canada.
In 1994 it went in to storage until last year when it was refurbished and shipped back to the Manchester to start a new phase of it’s life servicing the great and good of the Northern Quarter. It’s £3 for four poses, it is one of three original Black & White photochemical booths in the UK. For more info check Fred Aldous’s blog, it contains a lovely video about the inner workings of the photo booth.
THIS WEEK AT COMMON
Thursday 19th // Stop Making Sense
9pm until 2am – free
Friday 20th // Freitags with ESqueezy
9pm until 2am – free before 10pm / £2 after
Saturday 21st // Friends In Common with Neil Atkins
9pm until 2am – free before 10pm / £2 after
NEXT WEEK AT COMMON
Thursday 26th // Stop Making Sense
9pm until 2am – free
Friday 27th // Freitags with Will Tramp!
9pm until 2am – free before 10pm / £2 after
Saturday 28th // Friends In Common with John Stammers
9pm until 2am – free before 10pm / £2 after
REMEMBER to use your ‘shiny orange members card’ to get 10% off selected food and drink all day every day (t&c apply) – lost your card? drop us an email with your name and address – thanks
Meanwhile
Elsewhere In Manchester
Now until Tuesday 21st August – Liz Lock: Hard Drive exhibition at Cornerhouse
Saturday 21st // Hot Sketch with Base Ventura, Butchers and Naked (on drugs) at NXNW Fest 2012 / The Salutation – 4pm
Tuesday 24th // Blink 182 at Manchester Arena – 8pm
Friday 27th // PLANK! “Animalism Launch Party” + Hookworms at Soup Kitchen – 8pm
Saturday 28th // Hoya:Hoya Secret Series at Roadhouse – 11pm