Electric Circus

During the 70's, along with Dave Clark and Chris Dixon, I was involved with Grass Eye magazine and the Manchester music scene.

We got into promoting gigs and concerts to bolster the funds of the magazine - as at one point we were two grand in debt (getting on for £26,000 in 2012 money!)

We started off with pub gigs and graduated to regular weekly nights at The Magic Village and Mr. Smiths, where we ran the original Electric Circus (the late-seventies one just lifted the name!) I've attached an ad from the May 23-June 6 1970 edition of Time Out (North West)

Some of the 'artistes' we had the pleasure of working with:

Alan Bown
Anton Farmer
Barclay James Harvest
Battered Ornaments
Bill Creem Band
Blind Eye
Charge
Climax Blues Band
Curved Air
Danta
Dhyani
Edgar Broughton Band
Formerly Fat Harry
Gracious
Graham Bond
Gravytrain
Greasy Bear
Grizelds
Groundhogs
Innocent Child
Jan Dukes de Grey
John Cooper-Clarke
Junior's Eyes
Ken Campbell Roadshow
Mott the Hoople
Nazareth
New Religion
Purple Gang
Ron Geesin
Roy Harper
Skin Alley
Skins
Sleep
Spider Mike King
Stack Waddy
Steamhammer
Strawberry Blues
Tea & Symphony
Thin Lizzy
Trader Horne
Van der Graaf Generator
Wildmouth
Wishbone Ash

Keith Jones
1/6/12

I remember seeing May Blitz at the Electric Circus. We also used the place for the end of term gig for Mather College. We booked Vinegar Joe.

Harry Spooner - 27/10/12

When I was at Field Park College we bought a job lot of poster blanks that had the Electric Circus singer image on (as per membership card). We had the printer chop the text off. Job lot as the printer was unpaid, so happy to get rid of them.

We had them reprinted advertising disco nights (sorry!)

Paul Mlynarz - 27/10/12 

Bands I remember seeing at the Electric Circus were Van der Graaf Generator, Tea and Symphony, the Groundhogs and Blodwin Pig amongst others. The light shows were either very old, black and white cartoons or coloured oily moving blobs which were quite mesmerising.

Sue Platt