Like many cities that used to be fashionable because of their music, 21st Century Manchester has suffered recently from that post-golden-years malaise, when the bands coming out of the city have been...well�not great. But what do you do if you�re playing your first gig in a place where the Stone Roses, New Order and The Smiths all played theirs? If the only band on the pub jukebox is Joy Division, if all the clubs are running Madchester Nights! (and they still are�usually with Bez DJing), if half the students are dressed like Shaun Ryder (and equally as wasted most of the time)? How do you find your own way? When I was growing up in Manchester, �Definitely Maybe� was the only album in the world, and that meant all the new band gigs I went to were pastiches of Oasis � no one seemed to be able to use the history of the city in a positive way, or create anything new, or with any heart � which was what all those dead bands that hang over Manchester like a ghost are revered for anyway. The music scene carried on like that for a few more painful years.

It wasn�t until I left Manchester that the first Elbow album came out � I was living in Scotland by then � but I remember hearing their single �Any Day Now� and knowing this was great music that could only have come from one place � the best thing from there in a decade or more. Elbow have the sparseness, space and darkness of Joy Division, the Manc-accented bleakness of New Order, the confidence and lyrical smartness of The Smiths, but also a bit of movement, a bit of groove � as well as a sweet-voiced grump of the first class to break hearts, which always helps. My favourite Elbow song is �Station Approach�, the first track on their newest album �Leaders of the Free World�. It opens with the moody grumble of a man returning to his home city, feeling something unique to it � no matter whether he likes the bloody place or not: �The streets are full of Goths and Greeks / I haven�t seen my Mum for weeks / But coming home I feel like I / Designed these buildings I walk by�. Elbow specialise in hypnotic, harmonised repetitions of lines that sound simple but seem to mean many things at once: �I never know what I want but I know when I�m low that I / Need to be in the town where they know what I�m like and don�t mind�. As a refrain at the end of the song, it sounds happy and sad, bound and freed at the same time. It�ll give the next generation something to be afraid of � or inspired by.

Rodge Glass was born in 1978 and is originally from Cheshire, where most of his large, many-tentacled family still live. He is the product of an Orthodox Jewish Primary School, an 11+ All Boys Grammar School, a Co-Ed Private School, a Monk-sponsored Catholic College, a Jerusalem classroom, Kibbutz Yahel in the Israeli desert, Strathclyde University and finally Glasgow University. After 12 torturous months in a small quasi-semi off the Engish M62, Rodge has now escaped back to Glasgow. He is writing his second novel and a biography of the Scottish writer and artist, Alasdair Gray, and against his better judgement re-entering the education system to do a PhD. Rodge's debut novel, NO FIREWORKS will be released by Faber and Faber in July 2005: he has also written for The Herald in Scotland, Big Issue Scotland, Big Issue in the North and City Life magazine in Manchester. To read a selection of Rodge�s writing on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.