Rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest oasis

Published September 19, 2025 4:09am ET



Like most fans of rock ‘n’ roll, I gravitate to works from the vicinity of Greater Manchester intuitively, involuntarily. Even as someone who’s never once set foot in Great Britain, I’ve always felt I could viscerally relate to exactly where bands from the north of England were coming from. While I might not quite relate to football clubs or bangers and mash, I do hail from America’s Rust Belt, and more specifically, the inner outskirts of a battered old industrial city that was once bustling and systemically significant to national prosperity, but that eventually ended up more or less betrayed and forsaken. Manchester and its nearby municipalities in the United Kingdom have been as mistreated and abused by posh toffs in London as my hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, has been pummeled in the United States by, as the viral hit puts it, rich men (and women) north of Richmond.

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