Shadowplayers

I bought this book just before Christmas and read it through January, a new edition of Shadowplayers: The Rise And Fall of Factory Records by James Nice, originally published in 2010. It's a really good read, an in depth and thoroughly research history of the label with a wide cast of players present, both via interviews by Nice and already existing ones. There are contributions from all four members of New Order, Martin Moscrop of ACR, Alan Erasmus, Vini Reilly, Mike Pickering, Peter Saville, Lindsay Reade, Liz Naylor, Dermo, Larry Cassidy, Gary Newby, Bez and Shaun Ryder, Leroy Richardson, Paul Mason, Paul Morley and Jon Savage who in different ways all offer insight and explanation. Those who have gone- Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Vincent Cassidy, Annik Honore- are all well represented by archive interviews. 

James Nice is a fan of Factory. In the mid- 80s he founded his own label, LTM,  inspired by his love of Factory and re- issued some out of print Factory records. More recently he began managing of the Factory adjacent labels Le Disques Du Crepuscule and Factory Benelux and has worked on re- releases records by the Durutti Column, Section 25, The Wake, Quando Quango, ACR and others. He's invested in the label and loves the art it created. Shadowplayers isn't a fan account though and in some ways is a very necessary corrective to some of the less reliable, if more entertaining accounts that have grown since the labels demise, the 24 Hour Party People film and book among others (enjoyable though both were to a certain extent). Nice's history goes some way towards puncturing some of the myths and at times questions the received versions. One of Tony Wilson's most celebrated quotes is the old, 'When forced to pick between the truth and legend, print the legend'. Nice most definitely leans towards truth over legend. 

He traces the label's origins and tells the story chronologically from 1978 to 1992, roughly in three parts: the early days and the Joy Division story; the early- to- mid 80s (a mix of groundbreaking records, sleeves and productions coupled with some questionable A&R decisions and a largely empty nightclub); and the later years, when Happy Mondays gave Factory their much longed after second big selling act and their drug consumption/ lifestyle began to influence the label  and the way it was run (and Wilson particularly), a nightclub suddenly at the epicentre of a youth culture explosion and the financial mismanagement that brought about Factory's collapse in 1992, a process that sped up when a potentially lucrative deal with London Records (oh, the irony) was scuppered by Wilson's own admission and producing of a piece of paper from 1978 that read, 'the musicians own everything, the label owns nothing'. Factory had almost literally nothing to sell and had huge debts run up by the acquisition/ development of three properties (one of which, the offices on Charles Street, would generate no income). 

It's as much about the other bands as it is about the big two Joy Division/ New Order and Happy Mondays- those records and artists that span the Factory catalogue numbering system, from the ever- present Durutti Column and A Certain Ratio to James, The Railway Children, Section 25, Stockholm Monsters, The Wake, Kalima, Cath Carroll, Crispy Ambulance, Kevin Hewick and Northside. 

Dirty Disco *

Wilson is quoted as saying that Gretton was far better at A&R than he was and Wilson's track record supports him. In the late 80s, at a crossroads in the label's history with debts and crises mounting (gang violence inside the Hacienda, drugs, police and council attention) Tony Wilson signs The Adventure Babies and The Wendys. He also spends £250, 000 on a Cath Carroll solo album- a lovely album for sure but never likely to recoup that money. The chaos that the Mondays brought to the label, the lifestyle and shift in sound, turned Factory upside down,. The Mondays were a generational band on the one hand, capable of creating incredible records- Bummed, Pills 'n' Thrills- but also one that Tony Wilson bought into so deeply that the lifestyle and promotion of it, that it threw the label off and unbalanced them. 

Delightful **

It's also a reminder of how cutting and brutal the music press could be in the 80s. Nice presents umpteen critical accounts and reviews of Factory nights, gigs and records from the contemporary press, showing how Factory rarely had across the board approval during its lifetime. Manchester's own press- City Fun et al- were often hyper- critical. The four national music papers too. From their end Factory refused to promote or plug, refused to advertise the records ('if they're good enough, people will find them', was Wilson's belief). New Order refused to talk to the press and gave one interview a year in the mid- 80s, willful sabotage of their own sales due to a mistrust of the press. Some Manchester bands avoided the label, keen not to sign for Factory. Factory was divisive as well as cool- something that has been forgotten in the time since the collapse. 

Hymn From A Village ***

The contemporary view of Tony Wilson, in Manchester and beyond, is that he built the modern city and was a universally loved figure. The book calmly outlines events and people, showing rather than telling. You gather that by 1989, Wilson's ego could run out of control, as seen on the Hacienda trip to the USA titled Wake Up America You're Dead!, where they offended a panel of American house/ techno pioneers (which included Keith Allen posing as a pharmaceutical expert), Wilson reveling in the image he was creating, portraying the Mondays as musicians and drug dealers. I say this as a fan of Tony Wilson by the way- but a more realistic portrait of him and popular views of him at the time is drawn by Nice here than in some accounts of the Factory story. 

All the stuff of the legend is there too, some of it debunked- Saville's groundbreaking and beautiful art and inability to meet deadlines, Blue Monday and the cost of its sleeves and groundbreaking sound, Strawberry Studios, Unknown Pleasures, Martin Hannett's production, drug consumption and fall out with Factory, the Russell Club, The Hacienda, Dry, the Charles Street offices with the floating Ben Kelly table, the Festival of the 10th Summer, the guns and gangs and violence that overwhelmed the club and the label in the late 80s/ early 90s, the tensions that rose in New Order that led to their split, all of this and some very necessary and important minor stories too. It's a thorough and very readable account. 

We see Factory now through the lens of coffee table books of sleeve art, exhibitions, box sets, posters, films and documentaries, merchandise and re- issues. I'm as guilty of this as anyone in my own way. I too buy the merch and re- issues, go to the exhibitions, write about the records and contribute to the Factory nostalgia industry. In contrast, while adding to the pile of Factory books James Nice gives us a richly detailed, clear eyed and largely un- nostalgic account.  

In one part towards the end of the 80s Bernard Sumner recounts how New Order were praised for doing things 'the Factory way' or 'the New Order way', deliberately choosing the more difficult, more obtuse, less commercial route. Sumner says that he and the band realised that doing things 'the Factory/ New Order way' had cost them a massive amount of money and made life difficult for them when it didn't have to be. He wanted them to become a less truculent, less arty band, more commercial and more conventional, playing the bigger gigs, for more money. At that point, I thought while reading it, 'the experiment in art by a bunch of Manchester Marxists' (to quote Wilson) started to come to an end and was eventually replaced, after 1992 when Factory finally collapsed with a bunch of creditors that included friends and family, by something less interesting but more beneficial to the musicians. 

Shadowplay ****

* Dirty Disco is a slice of mutant post- punk grind by Section 25, the Blackpool band who singed with Factory and released their debut album in 1981, produced by Martin Hannett at Pink Floyd's Britannia Row studio in London and clad in an absurdly beautiful and lavish Peter Saville sleeve. 

** In 1985 Factory released this Happy Mondays single, Delightful, produced by Mike Pickering, a song that gives a hint of what lies ahead although clearly the band are still finding out where they are going. 

*** Hymn From A Village was by James, the lead song on their James II single in 1985. James were still a four piece at the time, a unique and visionary band who left for a major label and who I don't think ever sounded better than on this song. 

**** Shadowplay is from Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, as I'm sure you know, the album that made the reputation of band, producer, sleeve designer and record label. 

V.A. Saturday

There are several Factory Records various artist compilations worth writing about in this series- the 1991 box set Palatine is the motherlode, there are several post- bankruptcy compilations, a very good compilation of Be Music productions (the name used by members of New Order for productions done outside the group, often done along with ACR's Don Johnson) and the very first Factory release, Fac 2, was a four track various artists sampler called A Factory Sample. I'll probably deal with all of them before the year is over. For today though, I offer you a Factory compilation from 1987, released on Factory US (catalogue number FACT US 17), a ten track compilation for the American listener from a time when New Order were making some serious inroads into touring the USA but just before Factory and the Hacienda went supernova. In typical Factory fashion, this Factory compilation, has no New Order on it, their biggest act missing. It is also titled Young Popular And Sexy- the least Factory sounding title on any Factory album. Wilson must have been having a laugh at someone's expense (and if it was at someone's financial expense it was probably New Order's). 

Young Popular And Sexy has ten tracks/ songs by ten Factory artists that the label must have hoped might make some headway into the US, maybe via college radio. Happy Mondays kick off side one with the chaotic, lysergic indie- funk of Kuff Dam (Mad Fuck spelt backwards) followed by the beautiful guitar playing of Vini Reilly on Durutti Column's Our Lady Of The Morning. Factory's mid- 80s line up of artists that hardly sold a record anywhere outside the Manchester postcode areas then follows- Stanton Miranda, Stockholm Monsters,  Shark Vegas (the band formed by Factory's man in Berlin Mark Reeder), The Railway Children (from Wigan, signed to Virgin and didn't really hit the heights expected of them. The drummer from The Railway Children sold my wife her first car back in the 1990s), The Wake, Kalima, and Miaow. A Certain Ratio are also present with And Then She Smiles, a pop song from 1986's Force album that should have been massive- ACR also left for a major label within a year or two, an experience that they didn't find particularly fulfilling either.

Here's some songs from it. Stockholm Monster's were from Burnage, just up the road from where I grew up. This single came out in 1987, the same year the group broke up, a swirling, dense, off kilter song with lyrics attacking politicians and those who tow the party line. 

Partyline (Partylive Mix)

Miaow was Cath Carroll's band. They signed to Factory and released two singles in '87- When It All Comes Down and Break The Code. When It All Comes Down closes Young Popular  And Sexy, sparkling indie guitar pop, and would have sounded great blaring out of mid- 80s ghetto blasters. Cath Carroll went onto release a solo album on Factory, 1991's England Made Me, a lost gem. In fact, Young Popular And Sexy is stuffed full of lost gems. 

When It All Comes Down

It's a curious compilation, a Factory curio, but one that despite being a little uneven is a good snapshot of the label, its approach and its artists, songs which should have been much more widely heard than they were. I don't know how many copies it sold in the US or whether it turned a generation of young Americans onto the wider Factory catalogue. I suspect not. 

As a bonus this is Happy Mondays performing Kuff Dam live at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in November 1989, by which time they were arguably and briefly the best live band in the country- there was definitely no- one else like them.

Saturday Live

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. 

Saturday Live

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. 

Wrote For Luck, Takes Me Higher

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.

Wrote For Luck (Dance Mix)

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. 

Your Love Takes Me Higher (Demo)

Factory Made Her

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.

Next Time (Edit)

Moves Like You

Do It Long Long

This has bubbling around on social media and some DJ mixes for a few weeks and has now been released digitally with a vinyl release to follow- Ewan Pearson's remix of Hallelujah, the lead song from the Mondays breakthrough release at the tail end of the 80s, the Madchester Rave On e.p. Across three different mixes Ewan has taken parts from the 7" version (the MacColl mix where Kirsty's husband Steve Lillywhite pushed her backing vocals forwards a bit and smoothed out some of the sheer lunacy of the Mondays' sound in '89) and some of the Club Mix (where Paul Oakenfold and Andrew Weatherall sampled some chanting monks, added some Italo piano stabs and dusted it down for dance floors) and added a snippet of Tony Wilson talking about twenty- four track recording. Shaun sounds as dangerous and off it as he did thirty years ago over the enormous re- figured bassline and Mark Day's guitar lines still sound unique. The past rebuilt for the present. Double double good.

Given that this song was produced in its original mix by Martin Hannett, sung on by Kirsty MacColl, released on Tony Wilson's record label and remixed by Andrew Weatherall it's also a tribute to four people who have gone before their time.

This five minute edit version is good, a five minute bug eyed dance but if you're going to go full Bez you're going to want the nine minute mix, available from all the usual places. There's a nine minute dub mix too.



Just so you can compare and contrast, here's the Oakenfold/ Weatherall remix from 1990, the Monday's ramshackle Little Hulton funk streamlined and intensified, hypnotically.

Hallelujah (Club Mix)

Twenty One

Today is our eldest's 21st birthday. Isaac was born on 23rd November 1998 and, as some of you will know, from that point on has had a complicated and difficult time. Diagnosed with a serious, life limiting condition at eight months, multiple operations, deafness, physical and learning disabilities, all compounded by meningitis at ten years old (a result of the refusal of his immune system to grow back following two bone marrow transplants in 2000). Along the way he has refused to stop or slow down and brought joy and laughter to almost everyone he meets- questioning them about the motorways they use, the day their bins go out, the tram or train stations they use and the supermarkets they shop at. He is now in his second year at college and loves it (his college in Salford integrate the young adults with additional needs with the mainstream students on one campus). He goes out with his adult social services group, a service that has somehow survived repeated cuts by the Tory government and council over the last ten years. Things have been on a fairly even keel in recent years but you can't ever really take things for granted with him (his immune system is still shot to pieces) so twenty one is an achievement, a marker, especially for a young man who more than once while in hospital wasn't expected to survive the night. Happy birthday Isaac.

I only twigged recently that this event was also on the 23rd November, nine years earlier. The legendary night in 1989 when Top Of The Pops was gatecrashed by Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. At the time in '89 I remember sitting in my student house, finger poised over the record button on the rented VHS machine. Happy Mondays came on first, miming Hallelujah, the lead song off the Madchester Rave On e.p. Hallelujah on the 12" is a colossal, six minute piece of grinding Mancunian funk, produced by Martin Hannett pumped full of pills the Mondays gave him, not the kind of song to make the nation's favourite chart show. The 7" featured a Steve Lillywhite mix (The MacColl Mix) slightly smoothed out with Kirsty on backing vox. It still sounds like a groovy, out of sync, unholy racket, Shaun William Ryder wanting to 'lie down beside yer, fill yer full of junk'.

Kirsty joined the band for the TV appearance, dressed down in double denim and trainers. The Mondays had been to Amsterdam before the show for some 'shopping' and were all Armani-d up. As the cameras began to roll Shaun asked the nearby cameraman 'does me knob look massive in these strides?' Bez apparently remembers nothing of the day at all.



The Stone Roses appeared shortly after having ridden into the top ten with a double A-side, Fool's Gold and What the World Is Waiting For. The forty date spring tour and debut album saw them grow and grow, bringing more  and more fans on board, hair was lengthening and trousers widening. Fool's Gold was a step on completely from the album, nine minutes fifty three seconds of liquid, ominous funk, John Squire's guitar circling round and round, helicopter noises and wah wah bedlam, Reni and Mani were locked in tight. Over the top Ian Brown whispers about greed, the hills and the Marquis de Sade.



Thirty years ago today and still sharper than the rest.

Boom

Boom! Two booms today- I can't remember exactly why either of these songs came into my head recently or if one sparked the other but I thought it seemed like a decent idea for a post.

Happy Mondays released Wrote For Luck in October 1988, a record around which an entire scene could be/was built, a riot of guitars and dance beats with Shaun Ryder's surrealist swirl of words reaching a peak. The first 12" release of Wrote For Luck with the famous Central Station sleeve had a B-side called Boom, a three minute extra that didn't make the cut for Bummed. Boom opens with heavily reverbed drums and then that queasy musical stew the Mondays created in 1988, keyboards and guitars and bass all fighting over the same ground, the instruments all over each other searching for space. Shaun delivers more wisdom from the microphone, tales of cabbies and drugs and living in a box with cardboard socks. I don't know if Martin Hannett produced Boom. He produced Bummed and this song sounds like it comes from the same place (a studio in Driffield, East Yorkshire with mixing done at Strawberry in Stockport).

Boom

In 1991 The Grid released a 12" called Boom, progressive house, pianos, synth stabs and bleeps, thunderous bass and chunky drums heading for deep space. The single came with several mixes. The one here is the 707 mix, presumably named after the drum machine which powers it. Not much to say about this slice of Richard Norris and Dave Ball music other than it is very good indeed.

Boom (707 Mix)

As a postscript- and this only occurred to me while writing this post- in the same year the two came together, Happy Mondays remixed by The Grid, two tracks from their Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches album. It was a 12" I didn't get at the time- you couldn't buy everything could you? I don't own either of the remixes on CD or mp3 either so it's Youtube only. One of The Grid remixes was of Bob's Yer Uncle, Shaun's dirty talking sex song (a song incidentally that Tony Wilson selected to be played at his funeral which must have caused a few sniggers). The other remix was of Loose Fit, a low slung, smokey vibe of a song with a snakey guitar line and Shaun muttering and growling about a loose fit being his way of life. The Gulf War features too- 'gonna buy an air force base, gonna wipe out your race'. The Grid's Loose Fix remix isn't hugely different for the first few minutes, reworking the drumbeat and stretching everything out, gradually departing at the half way mark and going off into the distance slowly and hazily.

Double Double Good

2019 is going to be a year of 30th celebrations marking three decades since various albums and singles were released that shaped popular music and culture. By 1989 things were starting to happen for Happy Mondays. Bummed, their masterpiece, came out in November 1988 and sold slowly but steadily. From it's Central Station Design cover to the nude on the inner sleeve, from Martin Hannett's echo and delay drenched production to Shaun William Ryder's stream-of-consciousness lyrics, Bummed looked and sounded like no other record (although plenty of other records would soon be released that were inspired by Bummed).

The penultimate song is Do It Better and at only two minutes twenty-nine seconds it's the shortest song on the album. Musically it is miles from late 80s indie, Mark Day playing chords that other guitarists wouldn't even consider and Paul Davis' tinny keyboard swirling around over some drums that sound like they were recorded in a different room through an open door. Over this unholy stew Shaun chants 'On one, in one, did one, do one, have one, in one, have one, come on' before letting loose with...

'Swapped the dog for a cold cold ride
It was deformed on the in but deformed on the outside
Stuck a piece of crack in a butcher's hand
Demanded he give me my cat back
Don't purchase me coz I won't work
I gave away my oil and the seeds in my boots
There was a boom in the room as the papers marched in
He built himself together then sat down'

There's a second equally surreal verse before he goes back to the 'on one' chant but this time extending it - 'have one, have two, have three... good good good good, good good good good, good good good good, double double good, double double good'. Before being called Do It Better, the song's working title was E. 

Do It Better

Do It Better was a live favourite, a monstrous, circling stomp. Thirty years ago today the group went into Maida Vale studios to record a session for John Peel, putting down versions of Do It Better, Mad Cyril and Tart Tart (broadcast a week later, 28th February 1989). For some reason, despite buying every Mondays single during this period I never bought the Peel Session and don't have an mp3 of it either. It's thirty seconds longer with Shaun's tambourine shaking away and the keyboards leading the groove. Double good.

Why Don't You Play Us A Tune Pal?

Nicolas Roeg has died aged 90. The films he made in the 1970s and 80s were the type of films you read references to and in those days where things were scarcer you hoped they'd eventually be shown late at night on BBC2 (with a VHS cassette close by). Performance is a counter-cultrue classic, Mick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and James Fox all going slowly mad in a big house in Notting Hill Gate (and when it was being made Keith Richards waiting in his car outside the set, paranoid about what Jagger and Pallenberg might be up to). The soundtrack was legendary too and this (with my surname too, which added to it for me) is a genuinely great Jagger vocal with slide guitar from Ry Cooder...

Memo From Turner (Alternate Version)

Mick Jones paid tribute to Roeg, his films and especially Performance in Big Audio Dynamite's 1985 single E=MC2, peppered with dialogue from the film and a verse about taking a trip in Powis Square with a pop star who dyed his hair, mobsters, gangland slayings and insanity Bohemian style. The opening verse is about Walkabout (1971) and the 3rd verse is about The Man Who Fell To Earth, another late night, video tape film that had the capacity to freak the viewer out.

E=MC2

The chorus took me years to fully work out and I'd sung all kinds of words along to it but I think it goes...

'Ritual ideas, relativity
Holy buildings, no people prophesy
Time slide, place to hide, nudge reality
Foresight, minds wide, magic imagery oh ho'.

Happy Mondays 1988 masterpiece Bummed was also Roeg and Performance inspired with at least 3 songs referencing the film. Mad Cyril includes dialogue from it including the line that opens the song 'We've been courteous'. The Mondays played it on Granada TV for Wilson's The Other Side Of Midnight show, a band at their peak...

You Been Running Round The Race Track

I'll stop wittering on about Italy now (although I can't promise I won't post more photographs in the future). I found this picture on the internet a few weeks ago and it seemed to good not to use- everything about it is wonderful, from the psychedelic font to the photo and the lad's expression to the strapline and the other story above the masthead.

This is one of the most Madchester songs, a celebration of complete hedonism through the lyrical lens of Shaun William Ryder and the twisted guitar funk of Happy Mondays. As Shaun puts it 'Why don't you join in with the 24 hour party people, plastic face can't smile, white out?'

24 Hour Party People

The bard of Birkenhead, Nigel Blackwell, used it as starting point for his lament for those poor souls working in the all night garage. Opening with the unforgettable lines 'I fancy I'll open a stationers, stock quaint notepads for weekend pagans, while you were out at the Rollright Stones I came and set fire to your shed' Nigel goes on to describe the tormenting of the all night garage employee, sending him round the shop looking for ever more obscure articles to buy- 2 Scotch eggs and a jar of Marmite, 10 Kit Kats and a motoring atlas, a blues cd on the Hallmark label- before finishing with a diversion into the pines.

Twenty Four Hour Garage People

Top Of The World

The Christmas edition of the NME used to be a big thing. Now the NME is given away for free by the doors in Top Shop but it was always a big deal back in the day. Double sized (88 pages!), albums and tracks of the year, alternative rock stars and indie bands in fancy dress, Shaun and Bez pissed and stoned... enough to keep you going through the long hours when there's nothing to do at a family Christmas.

In 1989 The Stone Roses were the NME's band of the year and it flew them out to Switzerland for photographs on top of a mountain. That year they had done a nationwide tour picking up converts on a daily basis, put out their debut album plus 3 singles, and played two era-defining gigs (at Blackpool in August and Ally Pally in November, plus Top Of The Pops). The two album based singles had B-sides that were as good as most of the album tracks (Made Of Stone in March had Going Down, She Bangs The Drum in July had Standing Here and Mersey Paradise). In November they put out the double A-side of Fool's Gold and What The World Is Waiting For, a game changer if ever there was one. They would never be that good again and in some ways 1990 would do for them- they stalled and lost the lightness of touch and sureness that in 1989 had put them on top of the world.

This Is The One

A year later NME's writers crowned Happy Mondays as the band that made 1990 tick. In the summer Step On made them pop stars. In November they put out Kinky Afro, produced by Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne, a move that found them with a sound perfectly suited for the times and with a lyric that is unmatched. The extended Euromix (by Oakenfold and Osborne) made its way onto various releases (the USA and Australia both got the Euromix). My mp3 version is from The Factory Tape that came with Select magazine in 1991.

Kinky Afro (Euromix)

I've not posted Low's Just Like Christmas yet this year, something I have done most Decembers at Bagging Area. It is a delight, from the rattling drums and sleigh bells to the sweetly sung words describing the band travelling from Stockholm to Oslo in the snow while on tour.

Just Like Christmas

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas, whatever you're doing and wherever you're doing it. See you in a few days for the post-Christmas lull.

I Like That, Turn It Up

Yargo have appeared in my social media timelines a couple of times recently so it's time to revisit them here. I've written about them before, a band barely known outside Manchester but who really should have been bigger. There's a dearth of decent pictures on the internet too and while searching for an image for this post I found the one above, a ticket for a 1990 gig at Manchester International 1 where they were supported by Rig (who I wrote about at the start of this year here and who had my mate Darren on guitar).

Yargo were a four piece who defied pigeonholing mixing blues, soul, funk and reggae, and a singer (Basil Clarke) with the voice of an angel. Several of them had previously been in Biting Tongues, another unsung Manchester band. This song, from the album Bodybeat, has brushed drums and jazzy guitar licks before moving into a sort of dub/film soundtrack area.

Another Moss Side Night

In 1988 they put out a single with singer Zoe Griffin called The Love Revolution (Manchester, 1988- 'ten thousand people committing no crime... we're dancing away'). Basil's voice floats over an ACR style house groove on this very nice Justin Robertson remix.

The Love Revolution (Justin Robertson's Scream Team Remix)

They received their most widespread coverage in 1989 when their song The Other Side Of Midnight was used as the theme tune to Tony Wilson's late night Granada music TV show of the same name. As well as some legendary appearances by some definitive Manchester guitar bands OSM enabled Tony to broadcast a party from Victoria Baths soundtracked by A Guy Called Gerald (starting at 6.15 with Voodoo Ray).



And from the end of the series in July 89 a stunning show from the old Granada Studios building, a live rave with Gerald again, T-Coy (Mike Pickering and ex-ACR man Simon Topping) and the Happy Mondays at their chaotic peak. But you know,  it's 1989, the crowd are the real stars.

Wilson

Tony Wilson died ten years ago today. His legacy is all over this city and (probably) in your record collections and on your hard drives. Manchester and pop culture is a poorer place without him. I've posted Mike Garry and Joe Duddell's tribute to Tony before but Mike Garry's words about him and the world he was part of are always worth hearing again.

The Worm Has Definitely Turned For You

The Madchester Rave On e.p. is best known for the musical dance riot that is Hallelujah but there were three other songs on the disc- Holy Ghost, Clap Your Hands and the one here which gave the record its name. Rave On is a swirl of keyboards and guitars mashed together by Martin Hannett, some funk slap bass, massively echo laden drums and Shaun Ryder giving it the full on stream-of-consciousness through his centre parting vibe. Various phrases bubble up- we know how to do it, you're a walking miracle, well the worm has definitely turned for you. I can't decipher it all, I may have misheard some of these (for the last twenty seven and a half years) and the usual lyric websites aren't much help and maybe that's for the best because the not knowing and the guessing is all part of the fun. I suspect they're mainly about taking drugs. No one else sounded like this then and hasn't since really.

Rave On

Cities In The Park

Just over twenty five years ago Factory Records put on a two day festival in Heaton Park, Manchester, in memory of Martin Hannett who had died earlier that year. Day One, Saturday August 3rd, included Buzzcocks, Paris Angels, Ruthless Rap Assassins, The Railway Children, OMD and The Wonderstuff. Day Two, Sunday, was almost entirely Factory acts- Happy Mondays, Electronic, ACR, Revenge, Durutti Column, The Wendys and Cath Carroll plus De La Soul, 808 State and New Fast Automatic Daffodils. There were two day camping tickets. But who would want to camp in Heaton Park?

We went on the Sunday. It was hot. I met my brother there, who came in when some of the crowd outside pushed the fence down. He had a ticket but just fancied coming in through the fence. From memory Durutti were good but a bit lost in a giant field, Revenge were a bit iffy (Hooky playing bass, singing and whacking the syndrums repeatedly, probably trying to overcompensate for the bad blood between him and Bernard Sumner, New Order's split and their relative positions on the bill), ACR were good, 808 State really moved the crowd, De La Soul were shouty. Electronic were imperious, especially when the Pet Shop Boys turned up on stage and you scanned left to right and saw key members of New Order, The Smiths and PSBs all together for one song. It's shame they played live so rarely.

The whole event was filmed and a video released which I bought but no longer have. Here's a scene setter...



And here an enthusiastic Tony Wilson interviews Johnny Marr, Rowetta, Shaun Ryder and Bez...



This Youtube uploader has labelled this as Electronic live in London  but it's definitely Heaton Park.



Happy Mondays were by 1991 a stunningly effective if very unlikely stadium band. Kinky Afro rocks. No, it doesn't, it grooves.

You Used To Speak The Truth But Now You're Clever

When I posted Boom, a Happy Mondays B-side from 1988, a couple of weeks ago I flipped the 12" over to enjoy the A-side shortly afterwards. If I could only have one Happy Mondays song it would be Wrote For Luck, their essence distilled into a gloriously fucked up but funky racket. Shaun's lyrics are his best, full of truths and wit, and Horse's guitar part is from some other place entirely. Martin Hannett's production makes perfect sense. Shaun said of working with Hannett it was the only time the producer was more out of it than the band. You could have the album version, the various mixes, the W.F.L. Oakenfold and Vince Clarke versions, any of them. In October 1988 The Bailey Brothers shot a video for the in Legends discoteque in town. It is also a work of genius- fill a city centre club with your mates, get them refreshed and roll cameras. Shaun's facial expressions tell the story in themselves. 

Midnight

I found this twenty four minute time capsule while looking for this morning's Yargo clip- a special edition of Tony Wilson's The Other Side Of Midnight TV show from the summer of 1989. Mike Pickering's T-Coy, A Guy Called Gerald and Happy Mondays playing live down at Granada Studios. A party, as Wilson says, with the emphasis on part-E. As ever, the crowd (their clothes, hairstyles and dancing) are the real stars.

Boom

I had other things planned for this week but the St Anthony single has sent me off in this direction so I'm following where it takes me. Happy Mondays second album Bummed is a unique record- it sounds like nothing else ever recorded. The follow up, their real breakthrough Pills 'n' Thrills has a more commercial sound and is more dancefloor oriented (and none the worse for it) but Bummed is something else entirely. The original Wrote For Luck single, long before the W.F.L. remixes, came out in October 1988 and had a couple of different versions of the song and also this B-side Boom, a short song that presumably just didn't make the cut for Bummed. I'm assuming it was produced by Martin Hannett. It certainly sounds like it was done at the same time. It has that swirling mess of keyboards and guitars, the loping beat and some of Shaun's stream of consciousness, straight out of Salford lyrics- 'thanks to the cabby, we love the waccy baccy, but we couldn't pay the fare, so we pinned him down, held his feet to the ground and dumped all over his hair'. Or something like that.

Boom

I've survived without a file hosting service for some time now- Mediafire has a copyright detecting thing that makes downloads almost impossible, Boxnet as we know are not playing ball. For the time being I've just signed up with Zippyshare although I don't like the way it looks very much. We'll see how we get on. To be honest, I'm not an mp3 piracy evangelist and using Soundcloud and/or Youtube hasn't seemed to affect my ability to post what I want to or the numbers of people reading- but it is nice to have a download sometimes.