In the 1980s Factory Records was the best record label in the world. Based on Palatine Road, a stone's throw from where I grew up, managed as a Marxist art project, bankrolled by New Order and home to a bunch of sullen, wilful experimental artists who famously signed no contracts and owned all their music, it put out record after record, almost none of which were hits. Today's mix is a small selection of the magnificence that came out of Factory in the mid- 80s (deliberately leaving out New Order), a period where the combined talents clustered around the table at 86 Palatine Road produced such life affirming and ground breaking music.
Yashar (John Robie Remix) by Cabaret Voltaire is Fac 82. Cabaret Voltaire released just this single 12" for Factory.
Genius by Quando Quango is Fact 137. Quando Quango were formed in Rotterdam by Mike Pickering with Hillegonda Rietveld and Reinier Rietveld with former ACR singer Simon Topping joining on percussion.
All At Once by Stockholm Monsters is Fac 107. Stockholm Monsters are the best band to come out of Burnage.
Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix) by Section 25 is Fac 108, released in 1984, and still sounds like the future. It was produced by Donald Johnson of ACR and Bernard Sumner of New Order as Be Music.
Reach For Love by Marcel King is FBN 43, released in 1985, and should have been number one in every country in the world. Also produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson.
Mickey Way (The Candy Bar) by A Certain Ratio is Fac 168 from 1986. It was also on the album Force, ACR's last album for Factory (Fact 166).
For Belgian Friends is by Durutti Column and first appeared on A Factory Quartet, Fact 24, in 1980 and then on Valuable Passages, a Durutti Column compilation from 1986 Fac 164. Donald Johnson plays drums. Vini Reilly is one of the true geniuses to be found on Palatine Road during the period. He still lives nearby.
Last Saturday's Saturday Live slot had Happy Mondays in seriously fine form on Tony Wilson's legendary Granada TV music programme The Other Side Of Midnight. Wilson had a certain amount of sway by the late 80s but his bosses were still pushing his music programmes to the late night slots, out of harm's way. The Other Side Of Midnight ran from June 1988 through to July 1989. The end of series party, broadcast on 23rd July 1989, was filmed at the Quay Street studios, Wilson introducing the show and the set transformed into a full blown 061 rave. Wilson tries to flog a OSM t- shirt and then we're into T- Coy, the Mancunian/ Latin house trio of Mike Pickering, Simon Topping (ex- ACR) and Ritchie Close, and their superb Carino. As was often the case at the time, the crowd are the stars as much as those on stage, the shots of the dancers bringing 1989 right back.
T- Coy are followed by A Guy Called Gerald and and the British house record that beats all others, Voodoo Ray. Then we have the Mondays, Shaun slurring instructions in broadest Salfordian, 'turn it up, I said I like that, turn it up'. Later on they play Wrote For Luck, the corwd full of hair being grown out, whistles being blown and limbs waving. This all took place on an afternoon at the bottom end of Castlefield.
It would be utterly remiss of me, irresponsible even, to do a long running series of bands playing live (on stage and on TV) without including what is possibly the finest television appearance of any group ever.
In 1988 Tony Wilson's late night series The Other Side Of Midnight had a performance by Happy Mondays, at that point a group most definitely on the way up. Bummed, their second album and released in autumn '88, is a record unlike any other, a delirious Ecstatic stew with funk rhythms, off kilter guitar chords, big rubbery basslines, a dense Martin Hannett sound and Shaun Ryder's unique approach to lyric writing, snatches of nursery rhymes, Mondays in jokes, Salford street slang, lines stolen from films and all kinds of improvised weirdness. On The Other Side Of Midnight Tony, their record label boss and biggest cheerleader, introduces them proclaiming his 'profound devotion to the cause', and in a bright white Granada TV studio, they lurch into Performance, looking like they just wandered in off the street and started playing.
The music is not entirely indie, not entirely dance, something different- scratchy, strange, out of key. Shaun in big glasses and neatly centred- parted hair, shakes his maracas and spins his lines. Bez, the lightning rod, the talisman, the puppet with no strings, dances in a world completely of his own. During the instrumental break Shaun and Bez twist around each other, Bez circling, Shaun conducting. It's something else. As the performance finishes, Mark Day's chicken scratch guitar and PD's organ wheezes its last, Shaun gives a sly side eye grin to the camera. He knows what's going on. He knows what they're on. Everyone else will catch up next year.
I saw them live around this time at Liverpool University, 3rd March 1989, a life changing gig in many ways. It certainly changed my perceptions of what a gig could be like, not just a bunch of people staring at four men on stage and clapping after each song while the front few rows bumped into each other. The whole room danced. Shaun spent the gig seated on the drum riser, never even standing up, a victim of the night before possibly. Not that it mattered. His voice was loud enough and the focal point visually, through the clouds of dry ice, was Bez.
After that I saw them quite often between 1989 and 1991, always good but never quite like they were that night. In March 1990, by that point several steps up the fame ladder, they played a big gig at GMex in Manchester. The setlist included some of their older songs (Tart Tart, Kuff Dam, 24 Hour Party People), some of Bummed (Lazyitis, Do It Better, Performance), some from the breakthrough Madchester Rave On EP (Clap Your Hands, Rave On, Halleujah) and some from the forthcoming and with Pills 'n' Thrills And Bellyaches (the crossover hit Step On and God's Cop). By this point they'd expanded to include Rowetta on backing vocals and on Lazyitis Karl Denver is borugh on stage to join Shaun on vox. They finished as they always should, with the riotous peak Mondays' song Wrote For Luck.
The gig was filmed and broadcast on Granada and later available commercially on VHS. There were many occasions on returning from a night out the tape got pushed into the video player and we spent a hour marvelling at Happy Mondays in full flight.
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.
I got an offer from my brother who had a spare ticket for ESG at Band On The Wall on Saturday night- a sold out gig in a small venue by New York dance/ funk- punk legends. That's not something to say no to. The sun shone on Saturday, town was busy with shoppers, drinkers, fans coming and going to and from Old Trafford and the general buzz of the first nice day of the spring. Unfortunately having a drink at Night And Day meant we arrived at Band On The Wall at 8.45pm only to be told the group had been on stage since 8.30 so we missed the first few songs but walking in it was clear that ESG were delivering the goods to a very enthusiastic crowd.
ESG's history with Manchester dates back over four decades, to 1981 when Tony Wilson saw the Scroggins sisters and friend Tito Libran playing at Hurrah in Manhattan. Three days later they were recording with Martin Hannett, a three track single released on Factory in June 1981 (FAC 34 catalogue fans). You're No Good had three songs on it, the title track, Moody and UFO, the last one recorded quickly because Hannett saw there were three minutes of master tape left unused and two minutes fifty four seconds of that tape went on to become one of the most sampled songs in hip hop history, its sirens, beats and descending guitar line recognisable in hundreds of records. ESG supported A Certain Ratio in 1980 when ACR played in New York (at least two Ratios, Martin and Jez, are present in the audience tonight) and Hannett was producing ACR's To Each... at the same time as the three ESG songs that came out on the Factory single. ESG played the opening night of the Hacienda. Accordingly they're welcomed here tonight like long lost relatives, honorary Mancunians.
Renee Scroggins is centre stage, seated, rapping and singing in her unmistakeable Bronx twang, a spit and snarl where necessary- 'I got sampled so often I decided I was gonna sample myself', she tells us by way of introduction to one of her songs tonight. Around her is that skeletal but funky, New York, mutant No Wave dance/ punk funk sound, all bass, drums and percussion, with the basslines clear and crisp and sounding huge through Band On The Wall's sound system. Stage right Nicholas Nicholas plays congas, cowbell, shakers, tambourine and woodblock, frequently breaking away from the percussion to dance around and across the stage, arms raised and with a big grin. Moody, from FAC 34, is played mid- set and the years are rolled away as the bass pumps and the rhythms clatter.
It's as much a celebration as a gig, ESG clearly enjoying themselves and the crowd completely onside. There's very little in the way of treble or melody, it's all about the bass and drums, music stripped down to a minimalist sound, a gleeful kinetic groove. Towards the end an audience member is helped up onto the stage to dance. She brings her friend up and they co- ordinate spontaneously, switching places on stage. At the end, as Renee is helped off stage, the bass and drums continue, Mike Giordano rolling round the kit and bassist Nicole exhorting us to join in the chant of 'ESG, ESG'.
A Certain Ratio played Manchester's New Century Hall on Saturday night, a homecoming gig three nights into a UK tour and an evening with lots of familiar faces in the crowd, a real gathering of the fans in a room that holds 1300 people. Not too long ago they were playing much smaller venues in the city and to smaller crowds- the deal with Mute, subsequent re- issueing of their back catalogue and the run of album and EP releases over the last few years has brought a real ACR renaissance. They are very much a band who don't want to repeat themselves, don't want to just play the old songs and who want to continue to move forward and break new ground.
ACR take the stage at nine and play a seventeen song spanning over four decades, kicking off with Winter Hill, from 1981, a tense, urgent instrumental built around a clattering rhythm and a load of oscillating drones. It's followed by the title track from their recent album 1982, a piece of retro- futuristic dark funk, Jez singing of the year in question, on record all synths and robotic backing vocals, live on stage all dark disco- funk. Martin Moscrop and Don Johnson swap instruments throughout the night, between drums and guitar.
New singer Ellen Beth Abdi, stepping into a gap left by the huge presence of the late Denise Johnson, bounds on stage for the third song, Get A Grip (from 2020's Loco). What she lacks in years she more than makes up for in voice and energy, her vocals on both the new songs and old ones absolutely spot on. After a wild romp through Emperor Machine they hit the back catalogue with Lucinda from Sextet, a record from the early 80s, discordant otherworldly dance/ post- punk and follow this with one of the night's highlights, an immense and tense version of Flight, the 1980 single that laid so many of the foundations of their sound, Martin Hannett's dark and dense 1980 production filled out by this new six piece ACR. Current single Samo returns us to the present via the past, a Eno- Byrne indebted drum intro and Jez's spoken vocals building up to a joyous disco/ punk- funk/ rap tribute to Jean- Michel Basquiat's art and the New York crossover scenes of the early 80s. Do The Du is dropped in, early ACR's thrilling, stepped mechanical funk, a song which has been with me since first hearing it in 1987, when it was on a compilation tape my friend Darren made for me (who is here tonight, standing next to me, decades later).
Jez Kerr had a bad year last year, a bout of serious illness and time out of the band- 'I was on sabbatical' he quips at one point. To help with this ACR have recruited a new bass player, the youthful Viv Griffin more than filling in for Jez so he can concentrate on singing, cowbell and whistles with the odd bit of bass. On one song, there are three members of ACR playing bass- Jez, Viv and Martin Moscrop. 'That's the problem with this band', Jez says, 'too many bass players'.
Berlin from Loco is another highlight, pulsing bass, keyboards and soaring twin vocals from Jez and Ellen, with it's memorable chorus line 'You never, ever leave/ Your head alone'. Then they give us Mickey Way from 1986's Force, jazz- funk from the middle of the 80s sounding very much reborn with ascending trumpet and flute lines. The home straight brings the crowd pleasers- there are few ACR songs I'd want to hear more live than the next ones. First, the 1989 dance pop of The Big E (with the house piano chords pointing to Bernard Sumner's much loved remix, Won't Stop Loving You, a song dedicated to Denise- earlier Jez dedicated a song to Mark Stewart who died the day before, whose group The Pop Group were an enormous influence of early ACR). Then Good Together, one of my favourite ACR songs, with an acid house 303 squiggle, some borrowed Beach Boys lyrics and full on Hacienda rhythms, again sounding not retro but modernised. The final song is Shack Up, the scratchy, punk- funk cover that has been played in ACR sets since 1980. Declining to go off stage and back for the encore, they stay where they are- 'it's too far', Jez tells us- Knife Slits Water's weird, danceable, skeletal funk, pumped up sound and funked up basslines filling the hall, a song with post- punk's ominous instruction to dance despite it all, now sounding celebratory rather than full of early 80s dread.
The usual ACR set closer is Si Fermir O Grido, the samba grooves from Force where everyone on stage grabs a cowbell, shaker, whistle and drums, a Latin Manchester, and they don't let us down tonight. Martin and Don swap places at the drum stool mid song, Don slapping the bass, everyone else powering their way to the finale. This photo, one of three taken by Jez as the finish has me in far left of the shot, hands above my head applauding.
Afterwards the band play a DJ set in the bar below New Century Hall where I bump into friends from Newcastle, previously only known via social media. We eventually leave via the foyer with a rather nice poster and a t- shirt, and after a while the realisation we have yet again managed to miss the last tram home, all the while Do The Du's stuttering funk rhythms playing in my head.
The New Order re- issue machine is in full flow, the third of a series of album boxed sets having just been released, this one tackling 1985's masterpiece Lowlife. I haven't bought any of them, the cost of living crisis, my recent reduction in income and what looks a little like poor value for money coming together to put me off. The three boxes- so far 1981's Movement, 1983's Power, Corruption And Lies and now Lowlife- cost over £100 each and come with what does indeed look like a beautiful hardback book, a remastered album, some extra tracks/ demos and some DVDs of live performances (of which more later). The 12" singles associated with the time period of each album are being re- issued separately, at £20 each. The extras/ demos confirm my belief that New Order don't have a great deal of unreleased material sitting in the vaults. It seems that what they wrote they worked up in full and released and many of the extras such as the full seventeen minute version of Elegia saw the light of day previously in the 2002 Retro boxed set. Other non- Factory songs like Skullcrusher and Let's Go (from soundtracks) have been fairly widely available too. Some people I know have bought the album boxed sets, and fair enough, but not for me at the price they're offered at right now.
Grumble over. In 1985 New Order were doing something no one else was, their marriage of unreliable synths and drum machines with live guitars and drums, marrying dance and rock, was/ is unique. The Cure went on to borrow their bass lines and shiny c1987 sound, but largely they really were out on their own, making pop music/ art for a record label who allowed them the freedom to do what they liked, when they liked, with a groundbreaking visual designer. Bernard's vocals, untutored and unbothered, with Hooky's frequently soaring, gorgeous basslines and the rhythmic punch Stephen brought, the choppy, distorted guitars, Gillian's one fingered keyboard playing, the frog chorus and synth drums- all of this made them outstanding in a field of one. Their live performances were notoriously shonky, drunken and short affairs, with equipment breaking down and Mancunian truculence as standard. These for me are the draws of the boxed sets, mid 80s gigs in full on an archaic and outdated format, Ye Olde Digital Versatile Disc.
In December 1985 New Order played Rotterdam, an eventful couple of days away I would imagine with Rotterdam's reputation for edginess and New Order's for partying. There was a gig in Belgium and they'd been in Japan earlier that year (a gig released on video as Pumped Full of Drugs, catalogue number FAC 177- medical ones funnily enough, they all had flu) and played the Hacienda too, promoting Lowlife in all it's shiny, state of the art glory. Lowlife, catalogue number FAC 100, is perfect mid- 80s New Order, from the opening crash of the snare and country and western / Vietnam lyrics of Love Vigilantes to the gargantuan dance- pop of The Perfect Kiss (in edited form), Sunrise and Elegia's glorious synthscapes, Sub- cultures towering dance music with masturbation lyrics and the thumping ending of Face Up, with its corny lyrics, yelps and everything. Even the two songs that are most clearly the 'album tracks', Sooner Than You Think and This Time Of Night, are miles ahead of their contemporaries. If New Order had contemporaries in 1985. The footage of the Rotterdam gig is superb, and some of it is on Youtube thankfully, though not the whole gig as one document- hopefully sooner or later someone will upload this. As it is here are a few highlights of Bernard, Peter, Stephen and Gillian in 1985.
As It Is When It Was at The Hacienda, filmed for the Whistle Test, Hooky's Love Will Tear Us Apart teasing bassline at the fore and Barney crooning, 'well I always thought we'd get along like a house on fire' and Velvet Underground chicken scratch guitars. The shot from the balcony at three minutes, the crowd tightly packed and swaying like the Stretford End behind Ron Atkinson's mid 80s team.
Sunrise, also from the Hacienda, with a birthday shout out for Gary, nineteen today.
Over at the Rotterdam Arena now, The Perfect Kiss introduced by Hooky, nine minutes of widescreen, dance- pop brilliance, under bright white lights with Morris and Gilbert prodding synths while Barney and Peter bring the guitars. Bernard's guitar solo as Hooky bashes the synth drums and then the drop out at around five minutes is a blast. Cue the frogs.
Opinion I'd like to present as fact- Bernard was a better vocalist when he wasn't able to sing and play at the same time.
To Japan now and the Koseinenkin Hall, and Sub- culture. There are times when I think Sub- culture may be their best song, their finest moment. 'In the end you will submit/ It's got to hurt you a little bit'.
Love Vigilantes in Tokyo, Barney's melodica making its wheezy appearance. Not a euphemism.
Back to Rotterdam now. The setlist for Rotterdam is stunning- As It Was When It Was/ Everything's Gone Green/ Sub- culture/ Ceremony/ Let's Go/ This Time Of Night/ The Village/ The Perfect Kiss/ Age Of Consent/ Sunrise. Amazingly they played an encore too, not something they were much up for at the time and not something they tended to do without leaving the machines playing Blue Monday. At Rotterdam Arena the encore was Temptation and Face Up.
Face Up is absurdly good and so typically New Order, everything great about them piled into six minutes of exhilaration. Here Barney fumbles the words occasionally, the sound is distorted, the bass pulverising, the synths overloaded, the drums crashing and crunchy, a white knuckle ride a week before Christmas 1985. 'Oh how I cannot bear the thought of you/ We were young and we were pure/ And life was just an open door' Bernard sings, lines I assume that must be about Ian and Joy Division, as the song tears towards its conclusion leaving Hooky, shirtless, not wanting to leave the stage.
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.
This is Isaac's name on the Covid memorial in London, and his heart too, recently renovated by a friend. It was his funeral a year ago today. The recent anniversaries of his birthday and a week later the first anniversary of his death weighed very heavily on us for weeks before and there was quite a hangover after too. The anniversary of the funeral hasn't had the same effect.
The day of the funeral itself, a year ago,was awful- the waiting for the hearse, the drive to the crematorium, the wait I had to stand up and read out the eulogy I'd written, the walk to the grave... all of it. It's not something I'd ever wish to live through again.
The wake afterwards was a blur. I spoke to some people and barely to others. We found ourselves asking each other, 'was so- and- so at the wake? Did I speak to them?', for days and weeks afterwards. The number of people who attended either or both events was testament to Isaac and the effect he had on people. The friend who wrote the epitaph on his heart at the Covid memorial got it exactly right.
These are the five songs we played at the funeral, sequenced into one mix in the order that they were played. They've all changed for me since that day, the songs and their meanings shifting in ways big and small. I guess that was inevitable.
The Sabres Of Paradise: Smokeblech II (Beatless Mix)
Back in 1998 a friend, Neil, bought Isaac a copy of North Country Boy on 7" when he was born and it's a song I've associated with him ever since. Isaac was after all a north country boy. When we walked into the chapel as the drums and slide guitar kicked in I did briefly shudder and think to myself, 'Oh shit, what have we done, I'll never get through this song'. Some of the lines have an extra resonance now. You can probably work out which ones. In September this year I saw The Charlatans play it as part of their hits set at New Century Hall in Manchester. Quite a moment.
Vini Reilly's music has been part of my life since about 1987 and I wanted some of it played at the funeral. There was a section in the service where a slideshow of photos of Isaac played and Sketch For Summer was the accompanying music, Vini's wonderful guitar and Martin Hannett's production and synths filling the room. Originally I wanted to use Otis but the sampled vocal, 'another sleepless night for me' was too much.
You & Me Song was Eliza's choice and I can't hear the song now without crying. She has a print of the lyrics on her wall in her room. It's her song, and his, forever.
Race For The Prize tells of two scientists competing to find an un- named cure, with the pay off line, 'they're just human/ with wives and children'. The strings swoop and swell and it careers to its ending. It's a glorious song, emotional and inspiring. Back at the turn of the millennium my brother- in- law Harvey used to film everything. When we went on family holidays or met up he'd shoot loads of camcorder footage and he'd then edit it into short films with songs over the top. There's loads of footage of Isaac, his cousin Orlan and Eliza being children. In 2002 we went to the north east for a week in August and stayed in a cottage near Alnwick. Isaac had spent the period 1999- 2001 in and out of hospital, including in 2000 a long period of time undergoing two bone marrow transplants. Isaac's transplant was cutting edge, revolutionary stuff, only the second of its kind in the world. It saved his life and gave him the next two decades with us. Two scientists racing for the prize. Harvey's film of Isaac aged three and Orland aged two running around the garden in the sun with Race For The Prize playing, a beautiful coming together of images, music and words stuck with me, and it made sense to play the song at the graveside even if the meaning was unknown to almost everyone there.
Smokebelch II- Weatherall's moment of beauty from 1993. I've lost myself a few times to that song. I will do again I'm sure.
Joy Division yesterday, New Order today. New Order in the 1980s were as good as it got, a pioneering, chaotic, independent, wilful, sullen and joyous collision of rock music and dance music, defiantly and stubbornly holding out in Manchester. Their run of singles from Ceremony to True Faith is almost perfect, and distinct from their albums from the same period (Movement to Technique, also containing multiple moments of perfection), a band who saw singles and albums as separate entities. The decision to carry on after Ian Curtis' death saw them edge forward nervously, unbalanced and unsure but embracing new technology and a new sound with a reluctant singer and temperamental equipment. The tensions in the group pulled them apart eventually but they produced some moments of absolute magic- Ceremony, In A Lonely Place, Procession, Everything's Gone Green, Dreams Never End, Temptation and Hurt, Your Silent Face, Ultraviolence, Leave Me Alone, Age Of Consent, Blue Monday, Thieves Like Us, Lonesome Tonight, almost all of Lowlife (Love Vigilantes, Elegia, This Time Of Night, Subculture, Sunrise, Face Up), The Perfect Kiss, Bizarre Love Triangle, bits of Brotherhood, True Faith, 1963, all of Technique... I once tried to pull together ten New Order songs for an ICA at The Vinyl Villain and I couldn't even cut it down to fifteen.
In March 1986 they appeared on The Tube to perform their then new single State Of The Nation. I don't think State Of The Nation would be anyone's favourite New Order single, it feels like a bit of a stopgap, lacking in flashes of brilliance that the band were capable of previously, caught between the effervescence of the Lowlife era songs and the imperious splendour of True Faith. This performance on The Tube though is magnificent and demonstrates that even when they weren't quite at the very top of their songwriting game, they were still better than almost everyone else.
Across the front, three people who don't look like they should be in the same band- Bernard in his Next jumper and bleached jeans, spikey hair with shaved sides, still unable to play guitar and sing at the same time (this is not a criticism- New Order were better when he couldn't do both simultaneously). Gillian standing completely still, big hair and bright green top, electric guitar. Hooky in pre- acid house/ pre- Viking rock god smart clobber, probably from Commes des Garcons or similar, hair slicked back, bass at the very front of their sound. Stephen half hidden at the back, hitting syn drums and real kit, banks of synths around him, head nodding away as he plays metronomically. Even on a weaker song, they are superb and you don't want to take your eyes off them.
State Of The Nation was originally called Shame Of The Nation. When the group toured Japan the promoter of one of the gigs told them that the young Japanese women who followed groups around from venue to venue were 'the shame of the nation'. This phrase became the chorus of the song but changed to 'state' because to sounded better when sung. The song was recorded in Tokyo in April 1985 which possibly explains the slightly under par nature of it, recording while on tour between gigs and burning the candle at both ends.
The B-side of the single had a different version, retitled Shame Of The Nation, recorded with producer John Robie (as two previous singles had been, Shellshock and the new version of Subculture). The main difference is the backing vocals, very much a Robie touch. This version was recorded in bursts between October '85 and April '86, in Manchester, New York and LA, which again may explain a lot. It's bright and toppy, aimed at the dancefloor but too soon to be soaking up the new looser, acid house sounds that would change dance music (and then guitar music) a couple of years later.
There was a furore in Manchester recently when this gable end mural of Ian Curtis was painted over. The mural (by artist Akse) is/ was on Port Street on the edge of the city centre near newly refurbished/ gentrified Ancoats (I took this photo back in May). It was painted over with an advert for the new album by local rapper Aitch. Immediately social media was filled with people saying this was 'sacrilege' and a travesty. Aitch responded saying the painting was done without his knowledge, he wouldn't want to 'disrespect a local hero' in this way and he'd ensure it was put right. Akse has been asked to paint the portrait in 2020 in association with a music and wellbeing festival, Headstock, and Manchester City Council and the contact details for various mental health charities are/ were on the mural.
There are hundreds of other places an advert for Aitch's album could have been painted, it seems a little odd his team decided to put it over the mural of Ian Curtis. Unless the resulting publicity was what they wanted (and got). On the other hand street art like this is by nature transitory and can't be expected to be around forever. I sometimes get a bit perturbed by the Ian Curtis death cult, something I realised writing this post I've written about before. It's been around since he died and the photographs of him from the time- all black and white, a far away look his eyes, the doomed romantic poet of post- punk frozen forever- add to it. The 2007 film Control further contributed to this view of Ian. In contrast all his former bandmates have written in their respective autobiographies about what a great laugh Ian was and how being in Joy Division was fun much of the time. Ian's epilepsy and its treatment seems to have been the trigger for much of his poor mental health, exacerbated by the domestic/ relationships situation he got into. The pressure of being in the band, performing while being ill and the feeling of letting everyone down must have played a part. Suicide though is never romantic. It leaves those left behind with more questions and than answers. The death of someone so young affects those left behind forever. I sometimes wonder about the continuing Ian Curtis industry, including murals like this (and the similar one in Macclesfield), and if they merely add to the myth or whether they help anyone suffering. I've no answer to that but I'm not always sure the Ian Curtis death cult is a healthy thing.
A few days after the mural incident I saw Joy Division on the TV, on one of Guy Garvey's From The Vaults programmes (Sky Arts, Freeview). The episode was music clips from independent TV channels in 1978. The clip in question was Joy Division's first appearance on television on Granada, introduced by Tony Wilson, playing Shadowplay live down on Quay Street. The producer's decision to overlay the band with footage of the drive into the city was a fortuitous one.
It's extraordinary stuff, four young men writing a new chapter in Manchester's musical history, setting into motion the wheels that would lead to Factory, the Hacienda, Madchester, World In Motion and whatever else you want to add to that list (the current construction boom that is changing the city so fast it's difficult to keep up, the museum- ification of that whole period too). As soon as the clip starts to play and Hooky's bassline rumbles in, inevitably thoughts of 'here are the young men/ the weight on their shoulders' or something similar roll in. The second verse of Shadowplay has the line like 'In the shadowplay acting out your own death knowing no more' and there it is again, Ian Curtis death myth, inescapable.
There was further sad news at the weekend with the announcement of the death of Paul Ryder aged fifty eight. Paul aka Horse was brother of Shaun and the bass player in Happy Mondays, and when you listen to their records you realise how much of their unearthly groove was due to his basslines. Self taught and trying to copy the basslines from Motown, Parliament and Funkadelic and house records, his basslines are the foundation on which the Mondays were able to base their chaos. I first saw them at the Mountford Hall, Liverpool University in March 1989, a gig like no other, the entire room dancing from front to back, the stage a shadowy blur with Shaun sitting on the drum riser to deliver his stream of consciousness street poetry for most of the gig, Bez appearing through the dry ice, grinning and bug eyed. Paul and guitarist Mark were left and right, shrouded in darkness churning out their weirded out funk rock grooves and noise. They finished, as they had to, with Wrote For Luck.
This performance has the band in full flight on Club X in September 1989. Club X was on Channel 4, one of the channels late 80s, late night programmes aimed at catching the youth audience.
RIP Paul Ryder.
Another long lost/ never seen before TV performance from the 1989/ 1990 period came my way a few days ago, this time loved up rave heroes The Beloved. The group are miming (unlike the Mondays) but this clip of them doing Your Love Takes Me Higher on Hit Studio International, recorded at Limehouse in London, is rather good and a perfect little time capsule.
Your Love Takes Me Higher is a superb piece of house- pop, encapsulating the optimism and wide eyed feel of the times. The Beloved duo Jon and Steve have expanded to a full band for TV appearances drafting in friends, everyone giving it everything, all long hair, long sleeved t-shirts and baggy jeans.
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'.
A few people have said that the first anniversaries are the toughest following a death- memorably a friend with experience of this wrote in a card to us 'the first everything fucks'. Today is my birthday, my 52nd, and the first in our household since Isaac died. I haven't really been looking forward to it, it feels like it will bring a lot up. Isaac loved a birthday, he always had a list of activities which had to be observed. He insisted on any of our birthdays that the Happy Birthday banner being hung up in the kitchen, that presents be placed in a pile on the kitchen table, that there must be a card with a monkey on it (always, every time) and cake and candles at tea. Having my first birthday without him feels very sad, another reminder of his absence and our loss. It's another thing we have to go through though, there's no avoiding it and I guess there will come a time when it feels less painful.
Today is also the day of two other significant birthdays shared with friends, one (Daisy) turning eighteen and the other (Sophie) turning fifty. Happy birthday to you both (although I'd be surprised if either of them read this).
52nd Street were a jazz/ funk/ r 'n' b band who signed to Factory, active around Manchester when the 70s turned into the 80s. Bassist Derek Johnson is the brother of A Certain Ratio's drummer Donald and after being seen at Band On The Wall by Rob Gretton they became a Factory act. Tony Wilson had them on Granada Reports twice, they recorded at Strawberry Studios and eventually, as major label A&M came sniffing around the group, they were managed by Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson's wife/ ex- wife and one of the unsung women at the Factory HQ on Palatine Road). In 1983 they released one of Factory's bona fide classic singles of the period, Cool As Ice (although strictly speaking it didn't come out in the UK, being released on Factory Benelux in Europe and the USA). Produced by Donald Johnson with Bernard Sumner programming the synth (and under the name Be Music, the catch all production title for any New Order productions of other groups whether it was Bernard, Stephen, Gillian or Hooky individually or collectively, often with Donald at the desk as well). Cool As Ice is uptempo, dancefloor heaven, synths bubbling away and plenty of '83 electro energy. It's easy to imagine Madonna covering it a few years later. Play it back to back with the other great Factory singles from 1983 and 1984- Marcel King's Reach For Love, Section 25's Looking From A Hilltop, Quando Quango's Love Tempo- and its clear that New Order isn't the only story being written at Palatine Road and on Whitworth Street.
Today is the occasion of post number five thousand. When I started this blog in January 2010 I thought I'd give it a year and see how it went. That deadline passed and I just kept going, and here we are today, five thousands posts in. I don't have any songs (that I can think of) about the number 5000 so instead here's some song title maths- five times a thousand. Nothing too difficult- this isn't the number round on Countdown.
The first is from the best band to come out of Burnage, Factory's Stockholm Monsters. Five O'Clock is from Alma Mater, released in 1984, the deliberate greyness of early 80s Factory beginning to be coloured in- a keyboard part and a drum machine ticking away, and some brilliantly untutored vocals.
The second is from 1992 and Pale Saints, the 4AD signed shoegazers who rode in to massive acclaim with their debut in 1990 and the Sight Of You single. Their follow up, In Ribbons, closes with this wonderfully dreamy song A Thousand Stars Burst Open.
As if we - the population of the planet Earth- haven't collectively and individually suffered enough during the last couple of years you wake up one morning in late February 2022 to discover that the megalomaniac in the Kremlin has decided to kick off a war in Europe by invading Ukraine. It seems there often comes a point where democracies get hoodwinked by dictatorships, where the application of gradual pressure and due processes is shown up to be not worth anything when a dictator decides the rules don't apply to him (and it is usually a him). Putin has taken a long cold look at Ukraine, a country he believes doesn't really exist anyway- to him it's Russian- and decided that he's got little to lose and factored in that no one will stop him. The Ukrainians may fight but there's no one in the West willing to fight (understandably) and sanctions could take years to have any effect. He just takes Ukraine because he wants it, because he wants to turn the clock back and because his ego tells him he can. There's nothing much to say really is there? What can we do? It's not like this country has improved its standing in the realm of geopolitics and international affairs in recent years. I can't imagine the combined words and threats of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss played any part in his decision to invade.
It sounds glib but we all stand with Ukraine don't we? Just words to make us feel a little better maybe there's depressingly little else any of us can do.
In 1989 The Wedding Present recorded some songs for a Peel Session in Ukrainian due to lead guitarist Peter Solowka. I bought it on cassette in 1989, it came in a lovely box. My copy has long since vanished. This photo comes from the internet but shows what a well put together package it was.
Peter formed a three piece group called The Ukrainians in 1991 to record punk and post- punk covers in a traditional Ukrainian style. He left The Wedding Present in 1992 and has been recording and touring as/ with The Ukrainians ever since. In 1991 they filmed a video in Kyiv, the first Western band to do so (this was in the days before Ukraine gained its independence from the USSR). In 2002 they released a three track EP of Sex Pistols songs in Ukrainian. This one is a hugely enjoyable romp through Pretty Vacant.
In November 1981 the fledgling New Order played a gig in New York at the Ukrainian National Home, a venue and gig titled Taras Shevchenko (Shevchenko was a poet, writer, artist, folklorist and political figure and in 1847 was convicted for promoting independence for Ukraine, writing poems in Ukrainian and ridiculing members of the Russian royal family- a worthy stance to take then and if was still alive now).
The group were taking tentative steps towards dance music, struggling with their equipment a little and incorporating the temperamental sequencers and electronic machines into their live performances. The setlist is half songs from Movement and half singles- Everything's Gone Green, Ceremony, Procession and an early version of the then unreleased Temptation. It was was released on VHS in 1983, titled Taras Shevchenko and given a Factory number (FACT 77) and later released as a DVD along with their 1998 performance at the Reading festival (a very different gig in terms of scale and scope). Despite the slightly shonky, nervous, at the edge of falling apart nature of Taras Shevchenko, it is one of my favourite New Order artefacts, well worth three quarters of an hour today. If you want to skip to Temptation, go to 35.35- anxious, out of tune, bum guitar notes and unfinished lyrics but gloriously, brilliantly alive.
There are songs that you can think you've heard enough, that despite loving them since your youth you never really need to actively pull them out and play in full. At a gig or a night out or heard in passing from a shop/ radio/ car they still hit the spot and sound like they used to but there's not much more you can get from them. Sometimes I feel like that about Blue Monday. Then Soulwax/ Too Many DJs did a remix of Blue Monday for the BBC 6 Desert Island Disco a couple of weeks ago, taking the mastertapes, some snippets from interviews, a live performance and turning it into an extended twenty minute version, the familiar sounds- Hooky's Ennio Morricone inspired bassline, the DMX drum pattern, the whooshing sounds, the choir sample (Kraftwerk), the sequencer, Bernard's vocal (from a variety of sources), the handclaps- re- ordered.
The story of Blue Monday is so familiar to New Order fans- Stephen forgetting to save the original drum pattern, the encore avoiding intention, the die- cut Peter Saville sleeve and floppy disc inspiration for that, the loss on each copy sold despite it being the best selling 12" of 1983, Kraftwerk's dropped jaws at seeing the equipment New Order managed to invent the future on- and it's all part of the history of the record. Sometimes you just need to hear the record afresh. Soulwax have managed to pull that trick off.
Here's the B-side from that original 12", their own instrumental remix of Blue Monday from 1983 and always worth a spin, giving the familiar a different slant.
In February 2002 (twenty years ago next week if you really want to feel old) Kylie Minogue played this at The Brits, the glorious, irreverent lovechild of her smash hit and New Order's.
More Factory today, partly because I've had this photo sitting unused for two months and following yesterday's post it made sense to use it. This is the door to a building on the corner of Princess Street and Charles Street in Manchester, near the legendary Lass O' Gowrie pub and just behind the old Oxford Road BBC building (now demolished). Factory bought the building in 1989 and began to undertake expensive renovations to turn it into the new Factory headquarters, moving the running of the record company from Palatine Road and various rooms above the Hacienda into prestigious new premises. At this point they'd already proved that running the most famous nightclub in the world and a bar (Dry 201) were not easy matters financially but undeterred they went ahead. The top floor was the boardroom and famously had a very expensive, Ben Kelly table for board meetings, a table suspended by wires from the ceiling. The HQ, Fac 251, opened in 1991. During a photo session with Happy Mondays, various members of the group sat on the table which promptly broke the cables and the very expensive table crashed to the floor.
This is a picture of the table (not mine I hasten to add).
In happier times before its renovation Factory covered the entire building with posters to promote Bummed, the Happy Mondays 1988 masterpiece (again, not my picture).
After Factory went bust the building was sold to pay creditors and by 1993/4 it had become Paradise Factory, a gay nightclub with DJs laying over three floors. It was in dancing here I first spoke to my future wife (but that's another story). Later on, around 2005, it became another nightclub- Factory 251 (which Peter Hook has some involvement with as backer/ promoter/ owner and Ben Kelly involved in redesigning the interior). In a neat turn of the wheel, my daughter has been clubbing here. These days it mainly plays indie and rock 'n' roll. The Trip Advisor reviews are fairly uncomplimentary about the manager and the bouncers but my daughter had a good time on the occasions she's been.
Yesterday's Factory post and music were from the early years, the 1978- 1981 period, a time which is easy to romanticise and look at with dewy eyes. Early 90s Factory is less so- they lost their way a little with their signings, refused to release dance music (which is one of the most bizarre decisions Wilson made- he could have had Ride On Time among others, million selling singles. Mike Pickering was urging them to do it. They decided not to). Some of the groups could be underwhelming (Northside, The Wendys, The Adventure Babies all had a decent single/ songs in them but they don't really stand alongside to Tunnelvision, The Distractions, ACR and Durutti Column). Cath Carroll, local face, musician and music journalist, should have been a massive star. Wilson certainly thought so. Factory released two singles by her group Miaow before she went on to make a solo album called England Made Me, an album which tied together early 90s synth pop, moody dance music and bossa nova, it's a forgotten gem.
In March 1991 Select Magazine gave away a free cassette, The Factory Tape (Fac 305c). Cath had two songs on the tape, the Brazilian rhythms, horns and whistles of Next Time (Edit) and a seriously good piece of northern dance music called Moves Like You. Both would be on England Made Me when it came out in June.
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.
As a counterpoint to my post on Wednesday about the imperilled Hotspur Press building here's a shot of ultra- modern Manchester taken on Wednesday night as I got off the tram at Deansgate. At the southern edge of the city centre four enormous skyscrapers have been built, completely dominating and changing the city's skyline and entrance to the city from the south. Apartments and lots of them. For wealthy people mainly. During the day they look like absurdly big, out of proportion towers. At night they have some kind of beauty. Maybe. Impact if not beauty. As a friend on my Facebook post said, 'Coronation Street meets Blade Runner.
I was on my way out to meet the legendary Vinyl Villain, Mr James Clark, and his friend Aldo, our first meet since 2017 when we drank in half of city centre Manchester's pubs. This was a quieter affair, sitting outside in the cold for a couple of hours- and very good it was too. The venue we were drinking in, Hatch, is a load of shipping containers clustered under the Mancunian Way with bars, food outlets and a couple of second hand clothing shops. In the central area there's a stage and as we left a DJ and a rapper, no more than twenty years old, were playing to an equally young crowd (it goes without saying we were the oldest people there by some distance). It warmed my heart on a cold night to see a small crowd bobbing up and down to a couple of unknowns, all youthful enthusiasm and the knowledge that at that moment they were the centre of that world.
Tonight I should have been going to see A Certain Ratio at Gorilla and I'm not (Covid) but I'm sure they'll be superb. I've seen ACR several times in recent years and Gorilla is the perfect venue for them. Their 2020- 21 renaissance is about to follow an album (Loco) and three EPs with a remix album (out today). As well as remixes from a cast including Lonelady, Number, Maps and The Orielles there is this one of Bouncy Bouncy by Mr Dan- uptempo, supercharged electro- funk with the sadly passed and much missed Denise Johnson in fine form on vocals.
Back in 1979 ACR crept out of the suburbs (Urmston, Wythenshawe) into the harsh light of late 70s Manchester and the embrace of Factory Records. Their first release was this, All Night Party, a 7" single with Martin Hannett at the controls that stands alongside anything else Factory released that year. Early scratchy, skeletal punk- funk noir.
