There was an interview with Vini Reilly in The Guardian last week, a sombre and melancholic appreciation of the man and his talent. Vini talks about his traumatic past and how future Durutti Column drummer, manger and Manchester legend Bruce Mitchell saved him. Factory records, its home on 86 Palatine Road not far from where Vini lived then and now, had several people in its orbit that could be described as geniuses- Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett and Peter Saville all have a claim to the word. Vini is in that group too, his guitar playing and approach to music different from everyone else operating in the same spheres. Vini's view is if you go to Spain you can find flamenco guitarists playing in small bars 'in Cordoba and those guys will make me look stupid'. He casually dismisses his own song Otis as 'just messing about'.
We are free to disagree with Vini of course, and to praise him and his music.
In 1983 Anne Clark recruited Vini to play on her record, an album called Changing Places. The first side was recorded with David Harrow, Anne's poetry and voice on top of David's New Wave electronica. Vini played on the five songs on side B. Apparently he got the train from Piccadilly to Euston with his guitar, went straight to Denmark Street studios, played guitar for the five songs- beautiful, fragile, haunting, lighter- than- air guitar- and then got the train back to Manchester. A day's work for Vini but as this song has it, the echoes remain forever.
In 1991 Factory held a festival in Heaton Park to commemorate Martin Hannett. The Sunday line up was very Factory oriented. It was a warm and sunny day, everyone in a good mood. There were people coming over and through the fence, security unable or unwilling to stop them. Duruttti Column played mid- afternoon. They played Fado, a song that wouldn't be released in studio form until 1994's Sex And Death album. The music Vini, Bruce and keyboard player Kier Stewart conjured up that afternoon was a genuine form of magic.
In 1981 Durutti Column released their second album LC, the first with drummer Bruce Mitchell on board and a record packed with seminal Vini Reilly songs, The Missing Boy, Sketch For Dawn I and II, Jacqueline among them. It had come out less than a year after the Factory Quartet compilation, a double album containing three Vini gems in the shape of For Belgian Friends, For Mimi and Self- portrait. When you're hot you're hot. The addition of Bruce had shaped the sound further, a real drummer and sympathetic player who became a life long friend for Vini (and co- manager with Tony Wilson).
Factory were sometimes in the habit of handing recordings to other labels to release. Joy Division's Atmosphere/ Dead Souls single first saw the light of day on French label Sordide Sentimentale, at Ian Curtis' insistence. Several Durutti Column recordings around this time came out on Le Disques De Crepuescule. Around the same time a Durutti Column single was given to Sordide Sentimentale to release, Danny backed with Enigma, two further moments of Reilly genius. I don't use the word genius lightly but it seems that Factory was blessed in the late 70s and early 80s with several people who can genuinely lay claim to that word and who coalesced around the label- Vini for one, Martin Hannett another, Peter Saville perhaps and Ian Curtis too.
In December 1981 a Durutti Column song titled One Christmas For Your Thoughts turned up on an album called Chantons Noel- Ghosts Of Christmas Past, a compilation which included offerings by Aztec Camera, The Names, Paul Haig, Cabaret Voltaire, ex- ACR singer Simon Topping, Thick Pigeon and Michael Nyman. Vini's song, at least two electric guitars with electronic drums backing him, is a bit of a minor/ lost classic with some gorgeous runs down the fretboard and repeating melodies and phrases that ebb and flow during the song's course.
I've been listening to Durutti Column and the music of Vini Reilly since the late 1980s and I still regularly find new things to enjoy in Vini's back catalogue, songs and tracks that I've missed or not heard properly before. Vini was so prolific that he often gave music to labels other than Factory, just to get it out there. A friend recently lent me the Sporadic Recordings CDs, three limited edition discs of recordings that came out at various points between 1989 and 2007, and there's a wealth of songs on the discs, some of which I knew (some were released as extras when his Factory albums were repackaged and re- released, some I've stumbled across on Youtube or gone looking for via interviews). I thoght some of these, together with some other possibly lesser known Durutti Column songs, would make a good thirty minute mix for my Sunday series.
There's a strong sense of place in Vini's songs and their titles. He often names songs for or about places. This mix kicks off with a Sporadic recording track, one of my favourite DC songs, recorded on a very rainy day in June 1989, Vini taping the sound of West Didsbury rainfall and playing along with it. Royal Infirmary is from 1986's Circuses And Bread album, a minimal, haunting piece for piano and guitar. Dry was the title track of a 1991 album that came out on Materiali Sonori, an Italian label, and is named after the bar Factory opened on Oldham Street, Manchester. The drum machine and synth backing to Vini's guitar playing is superb- it's followed by a version of the same song, this time named after Dry's address (released on the Sporadic Recordings). Dry had it's own Factory number- Dry201. When it opened there wasn't much else like it in Manchester and it was in a then very unfashionable and semi- run down part of town (today's Northern Quarter).
Take Some Time was recorded for Factory but shelved until 2012 when it was on the Short Stories For Pauline album, a lost/ found treasure trove of Durutti Column songs. Bordeaux is on 1983's Another Setting (Fact 74). People's Pleasure Park is from the Sporadic Recordings- the original version came out on 1989's Vini Reilly album, Bruce Mitchell's drumming particularly on point. [Canadian Customs] closes The Sporadic Recordings Disc 2 (from 2007) and is a couple of minutes of Vini playing guitar followed by some audio of the group going through customs on their way from Canada to the US. When challenged by the border guard about what kind of music they play Vini shoots back, 'avant garde jazz classical'.
On Monday I got to the Museum Of Science And Industry to see an exhibition which has been open since the start of June and which I finally got to on its final day- Use Hearing Protection, a version of the Factory records story. Manchester has been drowning in its own nostalgia for many years now but this exhibition was excellent all the same and really skewered the period when Factory first started, those early years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Looking at the flickering film footage playing with OMD's Electricity on the banks of tv screens at the entrance to the exhibition was like looking at another world and also the city I remember as a kid- derelict buildings, the Arndale Centre, dirty orange buses. There was an introduction to the main players- Wilson, Hannett, Saville, Gretton, Erasmus, Granada TV, Situationism- and the teardrop guitar Ian Curtis plays in the Love Will Tear Us Apart video.
There were many posters from the time, many loaned by Rob Gretton's family and Tony Wilson's family. These ones stand out, designed by writer Jon Savage, advertising gigs by Durutti Column at the Lesser Free Trade Hall and a Joy Division gig with support from A Certain Ratio and Section 25 (which would set you back £1.25).
The central room was an exhibition of all the items that make up Fac 1-to Fac 50 in the Factory catalogue- not just singles and albums (though they were all there with sleeve proofs and sketches) but the posters (Fac 1, Fac 15, Fac 26), the menstrual egg timer (Fac 8), the film scripts, the Factory notepaper (Fac 7), the badges (Fac 21) and much more. The major releases, Unknown Pleasures, Closer, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Still and Movement, were accompanied by extras- film clips and interviews and pieces of Martin Hannett's studio equipment. There was an appreciation of the somewhat unsung role women played in the early years of Factory- Ann Quigley, Lesley Gilbert, Linder, New Order's Gillian Gilbert and Lindsay Reade.
In the room next door (see picture at the top of this post) there was a wall of floor to ceiling screens with nine different live performances projected, starting with Joy Division and ending with New Order. In between this start and end point were some lesser known Factory acts such as The Names and Section 25 and the totally bewitching clip of The Durutti Column playing Sketch For Dawn in a park in Finland in 1981 (later released as part of a Factory video, Fact 56).
The next room had photographs of Manchester during the period, to put some historical and social context around what was going on at Palatine Road, The Russell Club and The Hacienda. Photos of the Hulme Crescents, the multi- racial crowd enjoying themselves at a Rock Against Racism concert in Alexandra Park, grainy shots of footbridges and people, children playing on bombsites, a post- industrial city on the verge of something even if no- one can really see it at the time. On the way out you could walk through a mock up of the edge of the Hacienda's dancefloor- the future it suggests, the way out, Manchester's rebirth as a modern city begins here.
There are so many single releases in the first 50 Fac numbers that are from the fringes of the culture, pieces of minor brilliance that Factory's team saw something special in and put out in beautifully designed sleeves that set out to make a statement (and for Gretton, Wilson and Saville to subvert as well). ACR's All Night Party. OMD's Electricity. ESG's You're No Good. X-O- Dus' English Black Boys. The Distractions' Time Goes By So Slow. Section 25's Girls Don't Count. Crispy Ambulances' Unsightly And Serene. Stockholm Monsters' Fairy Tales. And this one, a long time favourite of mine, a one off single by a group of teenagers from Blackpool called Tunnelvision. They'd split up by the time a second single was suggested, leaving one sole 7" single as their legacy- a doomy, sombre, rough- edged slice of post- punk beauty called Watching The Hydroplanes.
This song is one of the hidden gems in Vini Reilly's back catalogue. You could argue that the entire Durutti Column back catalogue is one hidden gem after another but this one really is more hidden than most. It only appeared as far as I know on a limited edition, numbered CD called The Sporadic Recordings in December 1989 and then as a double CD called Return Of The Sporadic Recordings- both CDs now go for upwards of £20 or £30 second hand (which isn't much for vinyl but is a lot for a compact disc in the current market place). Most of the sellers are abroad as well so postage adds another £10 to the price- the only copy currently on Discogs from a UK seller is priced at £35.99, a lot of money for a CD. If ever a song needed reissuing as a 7" single, it's this one.
Sketch For A Manchester Summer 1989 is just shy of three minutes, with what sounds like either a very FX treated guitar part or a keyboard or synth picking out a melody and then Vini recording the rain as it falls outside his back door, a typical Manchester summer's day. The rain and the bubbling electronic melody play accompany each other for a minute and then the rain stops leaving just the lead part and then Vini's guitar comes in and takes us through to the end, Vini picking and plucking with Roland space echo and chorus pedal adding the trademark tone. At times it seems to echo the first song on the first Durutti Column album, Sketch For Summer on Return Of The Durutti Column, but it's also a piece completely of its own. The final upwards guitar note rings out and then you pull the Youtube progress bar back to the start and play it again.
How I missed this song off my Durutti Column mix in September I don't know. In November 1983 Vini recorded an album in Brussels called Short Stories For Pauline, which should have been Durutti Column's fourth album. It was shelved when manger/ friend/ label boss Tony Wilson suggested the song Duet should be expanded into an entire album in its own right, which became Without Mercy. Short Stories For Pauline then laid unreleased until 2012 when Factory Benelux put it out for the first time, a lovely edition that calls Wilson's judgement into question (not for the first time either). Some of the songs had appeared in other places including this one, which turned up on a 1990 archive compilation called Lips That Would Kiss.
Take Some Time Out has Vini singing, something Wilson also was very much against, but Vini's vocal here is wonderfully understated and perfectly matches the beautifully restrained, chiming/ echoing guitar and Alan Lefebvre's drums- a little piece of magic conjured up in Belgium at the tail end of 1983.
A month ago I put together an hour long mix of Durutti Column songs, fifteen of what Vini Reilly refers to as his 'silly tunes' (on the other hand when stopped at customs at some point in the past and asked by the border official what sort of music he plays he replied 'nu- classical modern jazz' so he can dress it up as well as dress it down). The songs on the first mix were all from the 1980s, from his first flourish with Martin Hannett and his work with drummer and Mancunian legend Bruce Mitchell up to the point where the sound was expanded with keyboards and viola. It's here if you missed it.
The second part has taken me a while to put together and starts where the 80s finished. As that decade ended Tony Wilson, Vini's biggest champion, manager and friend, bought him a car bootful of equipment- samplers and sequencers- and told him to get stuck in. This led to some electronic sounding albums and songs, the 1989 album titled Vini Reilly and especially Obey The Time from the following year. Into the 90s Vini expanded the sound again, survived the collapse of Factory, released albums on Wilson's short- lived Factory Too and then several other labels into the 21st century. His 2010 album Paean To Wilson was recorded as a tribute to Tony and an attempt to pull together a lot of what Wilson loved about them onto one album. In 2011 Vini suffered a stroke which left him very ill and with severe financial problems for some time. Recovery from a stroke is a long road and although Vini now seems much better his guitar playing is still recovering. This second mix, Sketch For Vini 2 isn't supposed to be a definitive summary of Durutti Column from 1990 to 2010, just some songs from that period placed together. It starts with Wilson's looped voice (the opening track on Paean To Wilson) and then dives into the samplers and sequencers of the early 90s (including the remix done by Together, a remix that wasn't finished but Wilson put it out anyway in the aftermath of Jon Donaghy's tragically early death in 1990) and then onto the the mid 90s and beyond. Vini's guitar playing was often more direct and heavier in this period, less of the nuanced, semi- ambient, Roland Space Echo sound of the 80s. He worked with vocalists including Poppy Roberts and Caoilfhionn Rose and always seemed to be looking to do something new and take his music somewhere else, even when the attention of the press and the audience of the Factory years had largely gone elsewhere. There's loads to enjoy in his post- Factory years, you just have to start digging. Sketch For Vini 2 is on Mixcloud here.
In his own words...
'In the end, I don't know if it's good music or bad music or indifferent music. I have no idea. I don't really care too much, it's done with and over with. People would say, why do you release it anyway, if you don't really rate it? The answer is, whatever music it is, bad, good, indifferent, stupid, boring, whatever, – it's truthful. At the time, it's the truth, and it's honest. There's no attempt to portray an image or a career or anything. It's what it is. And truth can be painful. It's about losses close to me, and about my own depression, but it's cathartic. But you have to be truthful. If you're not true in what you do, if you're creative, then you should forget it. All I've ever tried to do is be truthful.'
I've been playing a lot of Durutti Column recently. Their second album, 1981's LC, has been on a lot, as has 2010's Paean To Wilson, the 1984 12" single Without Mercy (two long form musical pieces recorded at Tony Wilson's suggestion with students from the Royal Northern College Of Music), the recent re- release 7" single Free From All The Chaos dropped through the letterbox not long ag and I keep returning to 1989's Vini Reilly album.
In an attempt to pull some of this together into one place I've put together an hour of Durutti Column songs in the mix below, this selection all from the 1980s, and called it Sketch For Vini 1. It's not meant to be definitive or a Best Of The Durutti Column, just some of my favourites stitched together, starting with some of Vini's early work with Martin Hannett, then him being joined by Manchester legend Bruce Mitchell and the expanded line up in the mid-80s with viola player John Metcafe and Pol singing. Some of these songs are ones I've been listening to for the best part of three decades now and still don't get tired of- Sketch For Summer, Otis, For Belgian Friends, Bordeaux Sequence, Jacqueline, Sketch For Dawn 1. There's something unique and very affecting about Vini's endlessly inventive guitar playing, his tone and sound, his use of echo, delay and chorus, and despite what Tony Wilson said about it, his voice too. I'm going to follow it with Sketch For Vini 2 at some point, going into the 90s and beyond. The Mixcloud player won't embed- ongoing problems with the new Blogger- but you can find it and listen here. Hopefully it'll hit the spot for a bright autumn day in September.
More Durutti Column, a band who have been soundtracking my life for the last few weeks. This song comes from LC, Vini's follow up to the debut Durutti Column album, The Return Of The Durutti Column. LC was recorded at home onto a TEAC four track and one of the sounds of the album is tape hiss- not that it spoils it, it's just there. LC opens with the stunning Sketch For Dawn 1 and near the end comes The Missing Boy, Vini's tribute to Ian Curtis. In July 1981 Durutti Column played at a festival in Kaivopuisto Park, Helsinki, along with ACR and Kevin Hewick. Fifteen thousand Finns had the pleasure of watching Vini and Bruce Mitchell. This clip of them playing The Missing Boy is mesmerising, Bruce watching Vini playing while keeping the rhythm. At one point Bruce has an expression on his face which suggests he can't quite believe what they are creating (the part from roughly four minutes forty onward is especially good).
Never Known is a highlight of LC, a few minutes of Vini's delicate guitar playing and a reverb- laced drum machine. There's also Jacqueline, a song written for and named after the wife of Bruce Mitchell.
LC stands for Lotta Continua, the struggle continues.
In 1991 Durutti Column played at Cities In The Park, a festival in Heaton Park, north Manchester, in memory of the recently deceased Martin Hannett. Sunday's line up featured a slew of Factory acts- ACR, Revenge, Cath Carroll, The Wendys, Electronic, Happy Mondays- plus De La Soul and 808 State. The weather was good and everyone had a good time. Durutti Column played in the middle of the afternoon, their subtle minimal melodies drifting out over the park. Cities In The Park was filmed and later released on video- my VHS copy is long gone but I bought it when it came out and rushed home to play it, hoping to spot myself and my friends in it somewhere, even if only fleetingly. No such luck. A friend on social media is in it, bobbing about in the crowd, in fact he appears in the crowd during the Durutti Column clip, dancing away at two minutes forty five behind the man standing still with a frown on his face. The Youtube clip won't embed but Durutti Column playing Fado is here. The song starts with some of Vini's trademark guitar finger picking, fed through an echo space unit, and his singing. It builds over several minutes, Bruce coming in at two minutes and then joined by some haunting (sampled) backing vocals, and by the time Vini is strumming the main riff over and over the song is completely entrancing. By the time Fado came out on an album, 1994's Sex And Death, Factory had collapsed. Tony Wilson tried to relaunch the bankrupt record company as Factory Too (ironically a subsidiary of London Records, a final kick in the teeth). Factory Too was a vehicle for Durutti Column albums as much as anything else (anything else being albums by Space Monkeys and Hopper) and continued until 1998.
I found this video clip a few days ago, Durutti Column playing in Manchester Cathedral in 1985. The song is Bordeaux Sequence, a beautiful Vini Reilly song, one of his best and the performance as you'll see is stunning. The footage, filmed onto video tape, is astonishing too, the close ups of parts of the cathedral, it's stained glass and statues, and the expanded mid- 80s Durutti Column, a stick thin Vini in white shirt playing guitar, viola player John Metcalfe (whose contribution is immense), vocals by Vini's then partner Pol and the ever wonderful Bruce Mitchell on drums. Words can't really do justice to the clip- one of my friends on social media said that 'parts of (the video) had me holding my breath' and I know exactly what he means. He also said that the film clip looks like it could have been made decades ago or yesterday which is also true.
The song started life on 1983's Another Setting album, recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, with Vini singing in his fragile, whispery voice and sparse drums from Bruce. By 1985 it had been fleshed out as seen above, with viola, keys and Pol singing instead of Vini. When he came to re- record the song it was with Stephen Street in the producer's chair and the album was 1987's The Guitar And Other Machines (the other machines of the title were samplers, sequencers and drum machines), renamed as Bordeaux Sequence. In 1988 Durutti Column played at the WOMAD festival in St Austell, Cornwall. Former ACR and Swing Out Sister's Andy Connell played keyboards but they performed without Pol. Vini sings the song instead. It's another breathtaking live take on the song (originally released on a four song single in 1989).
Sketch For Summer is the opening song on 1980's The Return Of the Durutti Column album, a three minute introduction to the work of Vini Reilly, a song combining simplicity and beautiful, languid guitar playing.
In 1980 Durutti Column suddenly became a solo project when the rest of the band dissolved overnight, about to record an album. They had appeared from the remnants of a local punk band called Fast Breeder and contributed two songs to Factory's first release, A Factory Sample. When Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus arranged for their debut album to be produced by Martin Hannett, three members walked out leaving guitarist Vini on his own. Not believing that a one man group would be allowed to record nevermind release an album Vini had to be coaxed by Hannett into getting out of bed but over a few days Vini played guitar and Hannett played echo unit, delay and drum machine. Vini told Hannett that he didn't want the 'distorted, horrible guitar sound' and Martin went on to get sounds out of Vini that no one else was doing. Hannett then pulled three days worth of guitar playing into shape and a nine track lp was created that Vini didn't beleive would appear even when Wilson gave him a white label copy of it.
This being Factory in 1980 and Wilson being Vini's manager the entire early Durutti Column is covered in Situationist jokes and references. The group's name was a reference to an anarchist unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War. The album's title, The Return Of The Durutti Column, was taken from a 1967 Situationist poster. The initial run of the album came in a sleeve covered in sandpaper, another Situationist joke, borrowed from Guy Debord, an album that would over time destroy the rest of your record collection. All of this is very Factory, very knowing and part of the legend but listening to Sketch For Summer is the whole deal in itself, a song that fades in with Hannett's birdsong, created on one of his delay boxes, and then a drum machine smothered in echo and tape hiss before Vini's guitar playing arrives. Melodies played through some chorus and echo FX pedals, and little runs of notes, lyrical without words, the repeated refrain around two minutes thirty and then the run out with the drum machine and the birds is just perfect.
We should have been in Belgium this week, a few days in Antwerp and Brussels for my fiftieth, frites and beer, cafes on squares, some browsing of record shops and some sightseeing. We'll have to see if we can get there for my fifty- first. In 1980 Vini Reilly wrote this beautiful, shimmering, fluid piece of abstract guitar music. Produced by Hannett and with ACR's Donald Johnson on drums
This cover version by Dream Lovers came out back in 2017, an even more blissed out, laid back version than Vini's original.
Belgium also says Belgian new Beat, proto- house music built on juddering drum machines, wonky basslines and vocal samples. Most of this music is the best part of thirty to thirty five years old. Selecting one track from random out of a forty three song compilation called The Best Of Belgian New Beat Vol. 1 brings up this by Chayell from 1989, a moody synth monster with a voice intoning 'with a girl like me'.
Vini Reilly's music as The Durutti Column is among the most special of all that makes up my record/CD/mp3 collection and there's always more to discover, both in albums I already own and in the parts of his vast back catalogue that I haven't uncovered yet. In January 1980 Factory released the first Durutti Column album- The Return Of The Durutti Column- a record made up of guitar parts Vini recorded, with bass and drums on some provided by Pete Crooks and Toby Toman, and then knocked into shape by Martin Hannett. Hannett played around with several new toys not least his AMS digital delay unit. The opening song on the record fades in with birdsong (in fact sounds created by Hannett using echo and delay) and as an intro to Durutti Column Sketch For Summer is all anyone needs- a beautiful, simple, almost mystical piece of music.
The first 2000 copies of The Return Of The Durutti Column came with a free 7" flexi- disc containing two tracks Hannett worked on, bending Vini's guitar and his own experimental noises into new shapes. The second track on the flexi single is this one, all drones and delay at the start, bent strings and flutter and ambient noise with Vini's guitar eventually coming out of the murk. The Second Aspect of The Same Thing
Rikki Turner, former Paris Angel, ex-New Southern Elektrik and The Hurt, is a restless soul who just keeps moving- when one project ends another begins. His latest group is San Pedro Collective, named after the town in California that was home to Rikki's favourite writer Charles Bukowski (and also home to Bagging Area favourites Minutemen). San Pedro are preparing for a release in July, an e.p. called The Demon Sessions, which will include this song (appearing here in a brief snippet and remixed by The Winachi Tribe).
The Things You See is a collaboration between Rikki and Suddi Raval, with a thundering acid house bassline, plenty of late night, dancefloor vibes and a sultry vocal from Millie MacBean. Also involved are Simon Wolstencroft (ex- Fall drummer), Antnee Egerton of The Winachi Tribe and Manc poet Karl Hildebrandt. The e.p. will feature the original mix of The Things You See and two further songs, San Pedro and A View From The Drowning Pool- the latter is a moody, electronic beast, bleeps and sirens over an 808 and Rikki's street poetics, spoken word vocal.
Suddi Raval was one half of Together who made two records I hold dear. The first was 1990 rave anthem Hardcore Uproar, piano house, a Star Wars sample and the crowd sounds from a rave in a warehouse at the Sett End in Blackburn.
The second was an unfinished remix Together did of Durutti Column's Contra-Indications. In 1990 Vini Reilly was experimenting with samplers and drum machines and his Obey The Time album chimed perfectly with the times. Together's remix was unfinished due to the tragic death of Suddi's partner in Together, Jon Donaghy, in a road accident in Ibiza. I've been coming back to The Together Mix for almost thirty years now and always get chills when I play it. Despite being unfinished Tony Wilson declared it magnificent and released it as a single anyway.
Rikki's former bands have all released songs that I've raved about here. In 2016 The Hurt released Berlin, a moody Scott Walker via Bowie, collar turned up against the falling Manchester rain.
Paris Angels were from Guide Bridge, near Ashton under Lyne, east of Manchester. Their first single is a legendary slice of 1990 Manchester, a marriage of acid house bass, jangly guitar lines and rattling machine drum with Rikki and Jane Gill's dual vocals. I once bumped into Jane at the Boardwalk- literally- and she told me to fuck off. Which was probably fair enough- I wasn't looking where I was going.
Perfume came out on indie label Sheer Joy and was widely played and praised. They followed it with two 12" singles- Scope and I Understand- before signing to Virgin (who re-released Perfume) and then put out an album called Sundew. Virgin was sold to EMI and a cull saw various bands removed from the label, Paris Angels among them (and PiL too). Which shows what major record labels know.
After watching the footage of the Durutti Column playing in Finland in 1981 that I posted last week I went back to a couple of their albums. I'd read an interview with Stephen Street somewhere where he mentioned producing Durutti's 1989 album (titled Vini Reilly) and I'd read a review of the triple CD re-issue of 1990's Obey the Time album so there was a lot of Vini/Durutti in the ether. Plus I had another recently taken shot of the River Irwell taken from the same bridge but looking north to go with the one I'd used with the Finland post.
Stephen Street producing Vini Reilly was a consequence of him producing and co-writing much of Morrissey's Viva Hate and then getting Vini to play guitar over much of it. Vini had a strop part way through the recording and claimed to have written all/most of Viva Hate which he apologised to Street for (but Morrissey uncharacteristically got the hump- if I remember correctly he removed Vini's name completely from the re-issued versions of Viva Hate). But anyway, I'm not here to discuss Morrissey. Vini Reilly (the album) has one of Durutti Column's most beautiful moments, one of Factory's greatest releases, the song Otis, where Vini's guitar and and his friend Pol's voice combine with an Otis Redding sample to create an absolute masterpiece. Nothing else quite reaches those heights and the album takes in an array of styles from opera to Spanish guitar.
The following year's release Obey The Time is a much more complete album, Vini recording with the Hacienda/acid house/Madchester explosion going on all around him and inspired by house music and inspired to use samplers and keyboards. In experimenting with the new technologies and sounds Vini was obeying the time. Usual drummer and Durutti partner Bruce Mitchell only appears on song on Obey The Time. The single that came with the album, where Together (of Hardcore Uproar fame) remixed Contra-Indications as the Together Mix is another DC peak but the one that caught my ears listneing to Obey The Time this time was the second song in, this one...
Opening with a Hacienda inspired bassline, some washes of synth and a little guitar flourish Vini takes us on a five minute after hours trip. Two songs later Home provides another for the DC top ten and Spanish Reggae is up there too (despite its admittedly unpromising title). With several highlights the album works well from start to finish, sounding more complete and followed through than '89's predecessor. Hotel Of The Lake 1990 was given its title by co-manager, friend and record label boss Tony Wilson who was on holiday in a cottage by Lake Como that summer and Vini came to him short of song titles. All of which, let's be honest, is perfect Sunday morning stuff.
I came across this recently, twenty-two minutes of footage of Durutti Column playing live in Helsinki, Finland in July 1981. Tony Wilson claimed that Vini Reilly was a genius, his guitar playing specifically. There isn't much in this clip to contradict that point of view. Also noteworthy is Bruce Mitchell's drumming and his sheer joy at playing.
Tracklist- Sketch For Dawn; Conduct; Party; Sketch For Summer; Stains; The Missing Boy.
The gig in Kaivopuisto Park was a Factory themed day out in the Finnish capital. Also on the bill were Kevin Hewick and ACR. In August 1982 a VHS compilation titled A Factory Video was put out in a rather beautiful fliptop box including Durutti Column's performance of The Missing Boy (Vini's tribute to Ian Curtis).
In 1987 Tony Wilson decided that Durutti Column needed modernising so he bought Vini Reilly a load of new electronic instruments and machinery- sequencers, drum machines and so on. Vini sat up all night trying to work out how to use them. The result was The Guitar And Other Machines, just recently re-issued in expanded form by Factory Benelux. I treated myself to it. The original album was one of the first DC records I bought and this expanded edition adds a lot to my now fairly worn vinyl copy. Vini's guitar playing and Bruce Mitchell's drums still dominate but set against the new sounds of 87. Occasionally it sounds a little dated, a bit too bright, or the sequencers judder a little, but mainly it sounds like Vini revitalised and energised, in touch with the then present. Like a lot of DC albums, there are great moments and a couple of so-so songs but the overall effect of the whole album from start to finish is the thing. At the heart of it is Bordeaux Sequence, a total joy, with some gorgeous cello halfway through and Vini's wife Pol on vocals. The drum machine pads away while Vini's fingers work their magic.
The new box has 3 cds- the original album expanded with 3 bonus songs Vini recorded with Jez Kerr and Simon Topping of A Certain Ratio. One of them, 28 Oldham Street, pays tribute to the building that would become Dry Bar in 1989 (recently closed down). Another, LFO Mod, is a cracking piece of experimental guitar and drum machine. Disc 2 rounds up related releases including the wonderful Italian only e.p. Greetings 3, some 'sporadic recordings' from that time, the follow up to 28 Oldham Street (30 Oldham Street) and a cover of White Rabbit. Disc 3 is almost worth the price of admission alone, a recording of Durutti Column live at The Bottom Line in New York in October 86 and two songs from their appearance at WOMAD in 1988. You can buy it here.
I've completely avoided Christmas songs up to now this year- they/it's been really annoying me- but I finished work yesterday and don't have to go back until Monday 8th January. And that is very good indeed.
So, Saturday before Christmas and everything that entails. Last minute shopping. Return trips to the supermarket for that one item they didn't have or you'd forgotten. Queuing to get in the supermarket carpark (although you knew you should have walked you thought it'd be ok). Writing cards for people who live nearby who you'd decided you wouldn't post to this year but then one from them dropped through the letterbox.
Forget all of that and spend a few minutes with Vini Reilly and an achingly beautiful piece of music from The Durutti Column.
One Christmas... is a close cousin of the magnificent For Belgian Friends. It was recorded in 1981 but not released until 1985, coming out on Les Disques du Crepuscule, a Belgian label based in Brussels that put out records by Factory acts (along with its subsidiary Factory Benelux).
A flat in this house on Palatine Road was once the home of one Alan Erasmus. In 1978 he co-founded Factory records along with Tony Wilson and Rob Gretton. Martin Hannett and Peter Saville soon joined. The label operated out of this flat throughout the 1980s, a short distance from where I grew up. The tales of Factory Records and its bands are the stuff of legend- no contracts, fifty-fifty split between label and bands, the artists own the music, the Hacienda must be built, Ian Curtis, So It Goes, Granada TV, Joy Division, New Order, the numbering system, A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column, Section 25, Stockholm Monsters, The Distractions, Crispy Ambulance, 52nd Street, Quando Quango, The Wake, James, The Railway Children, The Royal Family And The Poor, Miaow, Happy Mondays, the Factory egg timer, die-cut sleeves, tracing paper sleeves, no band photos on the sleeves,... In 1990 Factory moved out of 86 Palatine Road and into Factory 251 in town.
Yesterday a blue plaque was awarded to 86 Palatine Road in recognition of Factory's cultural, civic and artistic importance. Shaun Ryder unveiled the plaque. Of course given that he demanded the destruction of the Hacienda to prevent it becoming a museum piece Tony Wilson may not have approved of this recognition of a piece of Manchester's musical history. But if buildings are going to be awarded blue plaques for the part they played, then this is as deserving as any.
There are so many songs that illustrate Factory's brilliance in the 80s. On this song Otis, from Durutti Column's 1989 album (named after its creator Vini Reilly), Otis Redding's voice is sampled along with vocals credited to Vini's friend Pol. Reilly's guitar playing is fluid and lighter than air, echo on the arpeggios underpinning and enveloping the spectral Otis vocal- 'another sleepless night for me'. And then 'come back, come back'.
Right then, New Year's Eve, an over-rated excuse for an enforced piss up if ever there was one. But staying in watching Jools, waiting for the clock to run down, is no good either.
Like many of you (us, the whinging, metropolitan, liberal elite out to deny the democratic voice of the British people) I won't be too unhappy to see the back of 2016, a downer of a year in many ways. 2017 promises more of the same (in the shape of Trump if nothing else). All we can do is continue to rage against the dying of the light with good music, people we like and trust and a hope that things may get better. To celebrate seeing the back of the year here's some tunes....
Durutti Column first, the combined talents of Vini Reilly and Martin Hannett, and a song to see the winter out- it's getting a bit brighter every day and has been since December 21st. That's something to cheer about.
Some more guitars, this time the squealing, distorted and overloaded kind courtesy of James Williamson and Mr James Osterberg's Stooges. The start of this song is phenomenal, like the engineer pressed the record button a fraction too late but the band went for it anyway.
Now some proper four-on-the-floor house music from Chicago in 1987. It contains a spoken word section that has some of the best kiss off threats to the other girl ever recorded (see below)
Spoken word section from You Used To Hold Me... Now honey let me tell you something about my man. You know he's a good looking sweet lil' thing. That man knows how to satisfy a woman You know what I'm talking about? Girlfriend let me tell you, He bought me this fur coat A brand new car and this 24 carat gold diamond ring Ain't it pretty? Girfriend you know how it is, When you got a good man, You start doin' things like wearing those high heel shoes And the lace pocket with the garter belt, And putting on that sweet smellin' seductive perfume. Hm hmm But you know what? I'm gonna have to put some lame brain in check honey Cause she got her locks on my man. But baby I ain't givin up on this here good thing not for nobody. Cause what that dorky chick got wouldn't satisfy a cheese stick let alone my baby She better take her big long haired butt and move on 'cause he's mine all mine
