The Man From Delmonte: They were the Manchester band that didn’t sound like a Manchester band, but they signalled their return to the music scene by packing out a Stretford record shop following the release of their first ever studio album.
Performing in a record shop to mark their reunion
In a throw-back to the band’s heyday in the 1980s, Nigel Young’s newly-launched Fountain Records shop on the revamped King Street was the scene of a joyful reunion as fans queued up outside to watch the band perform a live in-store set.
Nigel Young:
There were people outside who couldn’t get in the shop with their noses pressed up against the window. I was a bit concerned regarding fire safety. The place was rammed.
I asked them to do it because I love the band and they are lovely people. Their music is great.
They don’t normally do requests, but when I asked them to play me and my wife’s favourite track ‘Mathematically Speaking’ they obliged. What a day.
Fans sang along with the opener ‘Water In My Eyes’, which was a single from 1987, and other tracks from their back catalogue like ‘Will Nobody Save Louise’ and ‘Drive Drive Drive’, as well as songs from the album ‘Better Things’.
Back in the late 1980s, when the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays were rising to the top with their brand of baggy rock, The Man From Delmonte were growing a cult following with their own brand of quirky jangly pop, untypical of ‘Manc rock’.
How the band reformed
Australian-born singer Mike West said he was unfazed by the band’s ‘un-Manchester’ sound and explained how the band reformed.
Mike said:
Recently, we’ve played the Band on the Wall and the Academy 2. One of our fans, Iain Lee, reached out to us and asked each of us individually if we’d get back together.
He connected with a couple of my kids, who are in a band called The Mudd Club – great punk rock band. They found some old stuff by us. There wasn’t anything online except a couple of songs.
They knew nothing about the band – they sort of came across it. And they said ‘dad, what’s this band that you were in back in the 80s?
Mike’s children brought the band back together
Mike explained how his children grew up ‘on the road’ because after The Man From Delmonte went their separate ways in 1990, he moved to New Orleans and became a touring country musician.
I was doing that for their entire childhood. They had no idea about this indie band from 1980s Manchester. They found the Facebook fan page that had about 200 people on it and they started asking people if they had any of these records.
But they didn’t tell anyone that I was their dad, and then Iain said he’d send them these records. My son Julian then admitted who he was and Iain asked him if he thought we would get back together.
Then, Iain reached out to each member [Sheila Seal on bass, Martin Vincent, guitar and harmonica, and Howard Goody on drums] and they all agreed. So I said, ‘why not’?
We didn’t sound like a Manchester band
Mike, who now runs a recording studio in Wales after spending 27 years in the US, continued:
It’s crazy. We made all those singles in the 1980s, a compilation album of singles, and a live album, but we never made a studio album.
We didn’t sound like a Manchester band then, and we don’t now. Back in the 1980s, there were so many good local bands around, all so different from each other – great songwriters and players – but there wasn’t necessarily ‘a sound’.
There were lots of guitar bands, but they were all their own beautiful thing. Some of them got the success they deserved and everything, and some didn’t. But there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s just the way it is.
And there still are a lot of bands like that around. We run into them on a regular basis.
By Local Democracy reporter Nick Jackson.
