Chaos

In response to a post two weeks ago about Fac 15, a poster for the joint Factory and Zoo festival held in a field in near Leigh in 1979, the line up of which included the great and the good of the north west post- punk era (Echo and The Bunnymen, Joy Division, The Teardrop Explodes, ACR, Orchestral Manoeuvres) and some of the lesser known (Lori and The Chameleons, X- O- Dus, The Distractions, Elti- Fits and Crawling Chaos), Ernie from 27 Leggies asked about the last two and their current status in the 'Where Are They Now?' file. I promised a post on Crawling Chaos. 

When New Order played their first after the death of Ian Curtis, an unannounced gig at The Beach Club at Oozits in Shudehill on 29th July 1980, Bernard Sumner, very uncomfortable with the role of frontman and singer, introduced the new band (billed as the No Names after Belgian factory act The Names pulled out) with something along the lines of, 'hello, we're New Order, our mates couldn't make it, we're the last surviving members of Crawling Chaos'. Which was a slightly bizarre announcement under the circumstances but things were tense. Crawling chaos was possibly for Bernard a description of the band and their world following Ian's suicide and their early attempts to carry on, to play live with temperamental equipment and a new set of songs. But Crawling Chaos was also a band who'd released a single on Factory. 

Crawling Chaos were from Tyneside- Ashington in Northumberland to be exact (also the birthplace and childhood home of world cup winners the Charlton brothers, and Manchester United's Bobby Charlton, another Ashington boy who ended up in Manchester). They formed in 1977, the pairing of Doomage Khult and Strangely Perfect (maybe not their real names) meeting at school and were named in homage to HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. Punk inspired, avant garde, free flowing jams became post- punky new wave. Gigs were often improvised affairs. At some point, after a gig at a hotel in Whitley Bay, a contact was pursued via Tyne Tees TV and word got to Tony Wilson at Granada. Wilson offered to put them on at the Leigh Festival and demo tapes were sent to the fledgling Factory label. Apparently Martin Hannett hated them immediately. As did some of the other Factory movers and shakers. 

In 2005 Wilson was interviewed by James Nice (an interview now at Electronic Sound), including being asked about his relationship with Joy Division manager Rob Gretton. Wilson said-

“There were times when it did come to fisticuffs. In the early days, for example, there was a band called Crawling Chaos, who were from Newcastle and they were crusties before crusties existed. They used to take the piss out of Joy Division going, ‘Oh, Joy Division, you think you’re fucking great, don’t you?’. So I would try to book Crawling Chaos for every Joy Division gig I possibly could and there was one night at the Russell Club when suddenly, there it was, it was Joy Division and Crawling Chaos supporting. And Rob came up to me in the upstairs bit, where we served curried goat and peas, and went, ‘Very funny that, Tone’. And I went, ‘I thought you’d like it Rob’. At which, Rob nutted me and, as I went down, he kneed me in the balls. So the fact that there was occasional violence was relevant.

They seem to have divided opinions, described at Discogs by a user as 'the boys you loved to hate' and a band who could never make their mind up about what they wanted. In 1980 Factory released a Crawling Chaos single, Fac 17. 

Sex Machine

A synth intro which suggests something very Factory is about to follow but doesn't-  trebly guitars kick in, there's a snarly, punkish vocal, and a dense, compressed sound. The topic of the lyrics seems to be sexually transmitted infections as opposed to sexual prowess. 

The booklet that accompanies the 2008 Factory Records: Communications 1979- 92 box set describes Crawling Chaos as 'pranksters' and 'heavy modern' and includes an unflattering, contemporary review of the band's performance at Leigh. They went on to release an album in 1981, Homunculous Equinox, on Foetus Products and then in 1982 an album on Factory Benelux called The Gas Chair. Three more albums followed in the 80s, the last a self released c90 cassette called Cunt. It seems that for a while the band also ran a club night in Newcastle. By the time they released Sex Machine the members included Martin Rees, Jeff Crowe, David Halton, Garry Clennell and Eddie Fenn and others have come and gone over the years, including initially Dave Cook & Steve Smith (but both had left by the time the Factory single came out).

The answer to the question 'Where are they now? is a little unclear. In 2012 an album called Spookhouse came out, the last ever Crawling Chaos recordings dating from 1987. However, there is a website here which is a treasure trove of posts, myths, opinions, quotes, reviews, photographs and more. I can recommend the Myths tab for more information, a page last updated in July 2023 under the heading 'Crawling Chaos History: Myths passing as Truth, revealed'. Judging by the replies to the comments the website seems to be run by Strangely Perfect. So, as far as I can tell, that's where they are now. 

Twenty One

Eliza, our daughter, is twenty one today. We had the party last weekend at a venue in Altrincham because today she is at the Gottwood festival in Anglesey. Coincidentally Sean Johnston is playing Gottwood, doing A Love From Outer Space, the travelling cosmic disco he and Andrew Weatherall started in 2010. I've told Eliza she must attend ALFOS as part of her birthday celebrations, a cross generational handing on of the torch or something. A couple of her friends asked what ALFOS is. '110 BPM chuggy cosmic disco', I told them, which they seemed to find quite amusing in a 'what's the old man on about?' kind of way. 

A few weeks ago Eliza told me I had to do a speech at her twenty first. I gave it some thought and then, capitalising on her love of Mancunian poetry I decided to do it based on Mike Garry's St Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson. Eliza loves Mancunian poetry, Mike Garry's poem and also Tony Walsh's This Is The Place. Despite Eliza's concerns that my poem would be 'cringe' I wrote and read it out anyway, an A- to Z of Eliza set to Mike Garry's structure, cadence and style. Apologies to Mike.

It finished, as Mike's does, with 'Talk to me of all these things and there's one thing that's for certain/ That I'll see the face and I'll hear the voice of Eliza Ramona Turner'. Not a dry eye in the house. Including mine. 

St. Anthony: An Ode To Tony Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

When she was born a nurse looked at her in her cot as travelled in a lift up to the next floor in Wythenshawe hospital. Eliza was wide awake and looking round. The nurse said to us, 'that is the most alert baby I have ever seen'. And that's kind of how she's been ever since. 

Happy birthday Eliza. You've been through more than any twenty one should have to in recent years and have come through it with your love of life intact. Enjoy Gottwood, enjoy ALFOS. Sean, if she turns up wrecked and harangues you endlessly, please accept my apologies. I don't know where she gets it from. 

Imaginary Albums

Over at The Vinyl Villain you can find a long running series of Imaginary Compilation Albums where JC and various readers have put together compilations for a range of artists and musicians from The Smiths (ICA 001) to Steve Albini (the most recent, ICA 366). This is not a post or series to tread on those toes- this is imaginary albums that should have happened but didn't or that only exist in the mind, music that should have/ could have been made but which remains unwritten, unrecorded and inexistent. 

I've spoken to Mark from Rude Audio/ The Flightpath Estate previously about the imaginary album we wanted to happen. In 1991 Jah Wobble and The Invaders Of The Heart recorded Rising Over Bedlam, an album taking Wobble's huge love for dub and fusing it with what was then called World Music. Sinead O'Connor and Natacha Atlas both appeared on vocals and on Bomba and Visions Of You Wobble produced some of his best solo songs. In 1992 a 12" of Visions Of You appeared. The A Side was the version from the album. The flipside, The AW Side, had three remixes by Andrew Weatherall, remixes that ran into each other, adding up to nearly thirty minutes of music- Andrew took the song and looped it, twisted it, dubbed it, reshaped it, the bass and FX bubbling on forever, Sinead's voice dropping in and out. The AW remixes,  Pick 'n' Mix 1, Pick 'n Mix 2 and The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix, are a brilliant piece of work in their own right, the remix as an artform. 

Weatherall's remixes of Visions Of You were also the first time that what would become The Sabres Of Paradise would work together. Andrew had met Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns in a club and said they should work together. Jagz and Gary nodded and smiled and said, 'of course, of course', not expecting it to happen. Andrew phoned them shortly after and the three of them went to work on Visions Of You. 

Visions of You (The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny Mix)

In the imaginary album of my mind the remixes led to talks about an album, and in the aftermath of the albums Andrew produced for Primal Scream and One Dove, he, Jagz and Gary went into a studio somewhere in London (Orinoco was popular at the time) with Jah Wobble and Sinead O'Connor and they went onto write, record and produce a full length album- Andrew Weatherall's production, Jah Wobble's bass and Sinead O'Connor's voice all fleshed out over four sides of vinyl, a widescreen, post- acid house, 1992/ 1993 dub and electronics masterpiece to go with Morning Dove White. 

I have a second imaginary Andrew Weatherall album that coulda/ shoulda happened. In December 1993, in the bumper end of year Christmas edition of the NME, Mark E Smith was one person given a series of questions, including being asked to nominate their Jerk Of The Year. MES gave the response 'Andy Weatherall' (he also replied to Woman of the Year with 'lead singer from James' and said what he wanted from 1994 was 'death to all French people' so curmudgeonly Mark was definitely having one of those days). But to nominate Andrew Weatherall, out of everyone who could have annoyed MES, as Jerk Of The Year seemed odd. 

It turns out Andrew had been lined up to produce a Fall album. Like all right minded folk, Andrew was a huge fan of Prestwich's finest post- punk group and in 1993 had accepted the challenge. Mark and the then line up had been playing with dance music rhythms and the album that ended up being '93's The Infotainment Scam included The Fall covering Lost In Music among the customary swaggering Fall brilliance and mayhem. If Andrew had stayed on the job, he would have been the producer of The Infotainment Scam. The thought of a 1993 Andrew Weatherall produced Fall album is mind boggling- by '93 Sabres were off the ground and the techno sound of Andrew's Sabres Of Paradise club and label had shifted him away from the Balearic remixes of the previous years and the genre bending sounds of Screamadelica.  

In reality Andrew arrived at the studio, took a look at the amount of boozing that was going on (as Brix Smith has said in an interview) and walked away. Other Weatherall insiders have said similar. We can only imagine what a Weatherall produced Fall album would have sounded like but the thought of some of the Sabresonic- era sounds and rhythms with Mark E. Smith's voice plus those ramshackle, distorted Craig Scanlon guitars cut up and looped is mouthwatering. 

A Past Gone Mad

The experience may have led Mark to call Andrew Jerk Of The Year. It clearly didn't put Andrew off The Fall- they appeared in mixes and sets thereafter, not least on Sci- Fi- Lo- Fi, a 2007 compilation Andrew put together for Soma which had Big New Prinz on it (From 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj). In 1988 The Fall played the song on Tony Wilson's The Other Side Of Midnight- a proper glam racket. 

There may be more imaginary albums to follow, some may even be non- Andrew Weatherall related. Although there is the story of the Sabres Of Paradise album with guest vocalists that never happened that I'll probably come back to. 

Saturday Live

More gold from the vaults of Tony Wilson's late 80s Granada TV programme The Other Side Of Midnight. This episode went out on 6th November 1988, Manchester at the centre of a culture storm based around Fac 51, the Hacienda. For this episode the hardcore Hacienda crowd have decamped a short distance south to Victoria Baths on Hathersage Road. In the first section Tony Wilson presents (in a rubber wetsuit) an item about waterproof cameras and rubber wear, occasionally and knowingly dropping in the word acid. The very tall Manchester face and clothes shop owner Richard Creme models some rubberwear. Wilson promotes North: The Sound Of The Dance Underground, a compilation album put together by Mike Pickering, that sounds like November 1988 as much as anything else does. 

Then we cut to the real business, A Guy Called Gerald playing live, the mighty Voodoo Ray bouncing round the Victorian baths, assisted by Graham Massey of 808 State. In the pool, as the bass drum kicks, clubbers frolic on inflatables. After another awkward interview Gerald returns and then part two starts at 12.52, dancing, smoke machines, whistles and cavernous bass. Pete Waterman is interviewed poolside, discussing clubs, music and acid house, and then we go back to the dancers and some water aerobics, Wilson gamely trying to pull everything together. You're left with the slightly frustrating sense that the real party is elsewhere, off camera or happened once the cameras were turned off. DJ Graeme Park shows up by the pool, answering questions about the music and attempts to ban it and then we cut back to the dancers. A snapshot of a time and place, the podium dancers throwing their arms around and showing once again that in the late 80s the crowd are the real stars. 

This is one of the tracks from North: The Sound Of The Dance Underground, House Fantaz- ee by D C B (a Mike Pickering alias). The big hitters on the album were/ are Voodoo Ray, T- Coy's Carino and Annette's Dream 17, three tracks that still have the power to move today but the rest of the album still has plenty to commend it, thirty five years on, late '88 bottled. 

House Fantaz- ee 

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. 

Basking

Stockport sits six miles south of Manchester (and only a ten minute train ride from Piccadilly). It is a town that has until recently stubbornly refused attempts at regeneration and gentrification- and in some ways that has been part of its charm. Over the last few of years the market hall and Underbank area have undergone a change, with shops and bars opening, a food hall, an upturn in fortunes attracting a different, newer crowd. Opposite the railway station a new plaza area has been created with a bar, Bask, opening a year ago. Bask runs all sorts of events as well as serving food and drink among them acoustic nights, late nights at the weekend with DJs and a regular Wednesday night slot called Express Yourself. On Wednesday this week, 31st May, it had Manchester poet Mike Garry performing. There was a full line up of support, starting with Matt Jacques, a singer songwriter with acoustic guitar telling tales of bandit country (North Reddish, a short bus ride away), his intention to haunt his wife if he dies first and a cover of Don't Think Twice, It's Alright. There were three poets (and sadly I don't know their names but all were were excellent): a young woman with personal poetry about her body and autism; a young man with laugh out loud funny poems about getting the number 50 bus from East Didsbury to Salford and middle aged men who say nothing's happened in Manchester since Factory, that the old days were better and that Beetham Tower is too tall; and a male poet with poetry filled with righteous anger, about politics, givng up watching the news for reasons of self- preservation, life, near death and the NHS. There was a stand up comic whose main theme was being a worrier and the things to worry about and lastly the excellent Test Card Girl, a one woman act, keys and vocals playing synth/ folk. The event was hosted by David Scott, a Manchester radio and Twitter who has recently published an alternative history of Manchester since the 90s titled Mancunians (which I'm half way through and enjoying a lot- he is ten years or so younger than me so sees the city and its culture in a different way which is always a good thing to expose yourself to. The range of contributors to the book is varied and interesting too).

Mike Garry is Manchester's foremost wordsmith, a performance poet and librarian who always puts on a good show, who can veer skillfully from funny to hard hitting to emotive and back again. His best known works are Gorton Girls Know All The Words To Songs By Chaka Khan and (mainly) his tribute to Tony Wilson, St Anthony- An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson. Mike gives us ninety minutes tonight and in a small venue like this shows he's capable of bringing the house down. There's no need to ask people to be quiet while he's on- everyone is silent while he speaks and sings. At times, between poems, to keep the flow and the mood going Mike finishes a poem and asks/ instructs us not to clap, as he moves straight into his next work, giving a sense that it's all part of a bigger piece, a life's work. He opens by approaching the mic and singing, lines about it being a very cold sea and a very deep sea. He then segues into a poem about immigration, migrants and their children crossing the Channel and the lack of humanity that's seen in the tone of the debate about these people, undertaking huge risks. He talks about football, and his love/ hate relationship with the BBC (and the money they offered him to write something for the Beeb's coverage of today's all Manchester cup final- at first he wanted to refuse it, as a United fan unable to write about City. The money he tells us soon changed his mind- he reads a poem about the sky being blood red but then switches it so it's sky blue). He reads and performs a mixture of old poems and new ones, some so new the only place they exist is on his phone. He can fire off words at a million miles an hour and stop suddenly, delivering heavy truths and slices of life. Mike jokes with us that he's become obsessed with death and that his poems are mainly now about death- and they may be so, but really they are about life, and loss (which becomes part of life as you age), and they are celebrations of life and lives. 

When Mike kicks into St. Anthony I find myself, seated near the back, mouthing the words to myself as he says them. It's a poem that often moves me when I listen to the recorded version and it doesn't fail to do so tonight. His next poem floors me and Lou, a poem called Son, written for his son who now lives in New Zealand, with lines about him being so far away, wanting to see him and wanting to hug him. Given our situation with Isaac's death eighteen months ago almost to the day, it has a predictable effect on us both, both in tears as Mike speaks. He stretches the evening out, pushing the time limit and giving us more, the audience of a hundred or so lapping up every word. At the finale, he gathers his things from the stage- books, phone, coat- packs into his bag and puts his jacket on, all the while still reciting his lines and then with no little drama delivers the last line and walking off the stage and exiting into the toilet laving the room briefly silent and then in applause.

I've seen Mike four times in recent years, once at the old Granada Studio building for the launch of the St. Anthony single in 2015, once at a free, open air event in Altrincham a few years ago, attended by a few dozen people and most recently supporting John Cooper Clarke at the Bridgewater Hall in 2022. The performance at Bask this week outdid them all- spellbinding stuff from a master of his craft. 

St. Anthony- An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson

Fifty Minutes Of ACR

In 1987 a friend made me a compilation tape which included two songs by Mancunian band A Certain Ratio- Shack Up and Do The Du. I've been listening to ACR ever since. They released their latest album, 1982, last Friday and it's fair to say the group have been re- energised in recent years, the result partly of a deal with Mute to re- issue all their albums. I'd been thinking of an ACR Sunday mix for some time and just as I ended up doing a pair of One Dove mixes a while back, I think I may need to come back to ACR for a second go. The mix here contains none of the punk- funk sound of their releases on Factory, the nervous, minimal, scratchy, demob suits and army shorts songs that made their reputation. Instead I've gone for a mix of dancefloor oriented songs spanning three decades.  The core trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson have regrouped several times since 1979, not least following the deaths of Rob Gretton in 1999 and singer Denise Johnson in 2020, but they're still creating and producing new music and are getting stronger and stronger. If they're playing near you, go and see them. ACR are a good night out guaranteed. 

Fifty Minutes Of ACR

• Dirty Boy
• Music Control
• Mello
• Be What You Wanna Be
• Night People
• Wedge (ACR Rework)
• Emperor Machine
• Taxi Guy
• Won't Stop Loving You (Bernard Sumner Remix)

Dirty Boy came out in 2018 ahead of the group's acr:set compilation, with vocals from Barry Adamson and the sampled voice of one- time mentor, manager and label boss Tony Wilson.

Music Control was a collaboration between ACR's alter ego Sir Horatio and Chris Massey, DJ, producer and promoter from Stretford, a squelchy collision of punk- funk, acid house and mutant disco.

Mello came out in 1992 on Rob Gretton's new label Rob's Records, a slice of loved up Mancunian house.  

Be What You Wanna Be is from 1990's acr: mcr, a renewal of the group's sound and fortunes. They left Factory for A&M but 1989's Good Together failed to shift many copies  (a shame as it's an album with much going for it). acr: mcr is wall to wall brilliance, from Spirit Dance to Good Together to Tribecca, rhythms and pianos inspired by the records playing in the Hacienda. Personnel changes at A&M saw them leave not long after for Rob's Records. I saw them at Manchester Academy in autumn 1991, a gig packed to the rafters and with a crowd up for it from the moment ACR appeared on stage. A few songs in my then girlfriend decided this was the ideal opportunity to have an argument and walk out of the venue.  

Night People was on one of three EPs ACR released in 2021, thirteen tracks, with no filler, following the comeback album Loco, on Mute, from the year before. Night People was on the third of the three, ACR: EPR, and has a swampy Bowie/ Iggy in Berlin groove. 

Wedge is by Number, Ali Friend and Rich Thair's spin off from Red Snapper, a 2020 punk funk trip. The two bands swapped remixes, this being ACR's remix of Number. Number's Binary album came out in April 2020 and probably got a little overlooked with everything else that was going on in spring 2020.

Emperor Machine was a collaboration between ACR and Emperor Machine (Andy Meacham, who found fame first time around in Bizarre Inc). The self- titled track was on EPC in 2021 and is supercharged mutant disco/ punk funk. 

Taxi Guy is the closing song on 2020's Loco album, an album that showed they were right back on it and fired up. Jazzy, samba grooves and a mass drumming finale. Their vie gigs over the last decade have sometimes finished with the group ending up leaving the stage and walking into the audience, drumming and blowing whistles, as happened at Gorilla in early 2020.

Won't Stop Loving You is a remix of a song from acr: mcr by Bernard Sumner from 1990. Sumner stripped the song back to Jez and Denise's vocals, whipcrack 808 drums and house piano. Something of a desert island disc for me. 

Not All Roses

I'm interrupting the regular Saturday Theme series this week for an account of an event I went to on Thursday night, an event which started only two hours after the announcement of the death of the Queen (which had some strange parallels that occurred to me as I walked home). Dave Haslam- DJ, writer, journalist, man abut town- has been writing a series of mini- books over the last few years, published by Confingo, an independent publishing house based in West Didsbury. The books fit in your pocket and are a quick read, more an essay than a full length book and in Dave's words 'tell stories that haven't been told'. All You Need Is Dynamite deals with a terrorist cell based in Moss Side in 1971 linked to the Angry Brigade. Another deals with Sylvia Plath and the few weeks she spent in Paris in 1956. We Are The Youth tells the story of Keith Haring's adventures in New York's nightclub world and Searching For Love deals the truths and rumours concerning the six month period Courtney Love spent in Liverpool in the early 80s. His latest book is called Not All Roses, the life and times of Stephen Cresser aka Cressa, the man who was the fifth Stone Rose, an ever present in their live performances and photo shoots in the 1989- 90 period, where the band went from being local heroes to a phenomenon. Dave has arranged a run of A Conversation With Cressa events, one being up the road from me in Stretford at head, a bar in a former bank on the Chester Road facing side of Stretford Arndale. 

Cressa has quite the story to tell and over a series of interviews and conversations Dave pulled it together. Cressa grew up in Firswood, a mile north of Stretford and became a member of the Happy Mondays road crew, a Hacienda face, the man who danced on stage with The Roses and operated John Squire's FX pedals. In the mid 90s he tried to get his own group- Bad Man Wagon- off the ground and failed trying (Dave said in his intro this was almost what the book was about, the band that didn't make it whose story is as interesting as the ones that did). More recently Cressa became homeless and addicted to heroin, begging on the streets of the city centre and this is where the public conversation begins, Cressa speaking openly, honestly and passionately about the situation he got himself into. Cressa is a livewire, Dave asking questions, being the butt of the jokes at times, steering Cressa back towards the story and keeping the freewheeling conversation on track. 

Cressa talks of his first musical experiences, albums by The Stranglers, and the time in the 80s when he first encounters and becomes friends with the people who would several years later become magazine front cover stories. On scooter club runs he meets Ian Brown and John Squire and they become firm friends. At the Hacienda, at a time when a crowd of two hundred people was considered a good turn out, he meets members of Happy Mondays and starts to go with them when they play gigs outside the city, the man in the back of the van who eventually gets paid to carry amps and instruments into and out of gig venues. He speaks warmly about Derek, Shaun and Paul Ryder's dad, the man who was the band's one man road crew. He talks about John Squire giving Cressa the job of operating his guitar pedals, a job that seems unnecessary in many ways as most guitarists operate their pedals themselves with their feet- he thanks John for doing this and says that when it came to it there was no choice between staying with the Mondays and joining the Roses, it was The Stone Roses every time. Cressa introduces them to some of the musical influences that would hone their sound, 60s psychedelia, Jimi Hendrix, The Nazz, The Rain Parade. The three way friendship between Ian, John and Cressa comes across as the glue that held the group together in the late 80s. He then talks about how after the gig at Glasgow Green, 9th June 1990, that was it- the band stopped functioning. No more gigs, no more records for five years and Cressa suddenly out of the set up. 

As well as the heavier serious stuff- heroin addiction, homelessness, generation defining guitar bands and the way that they blew it after having it all- Cressa, emotions always close to the surface, is also witty, sparky and warm, still able to talk affectionately about the good times. He appears with The Stone Roses on Tony Wilson's late night, north west only music programme The Other Side Of Midnight, the band's first TV appearance with the group in their cocky prime playing Waterfall, their dreamiest moment. Cressa by this point is wearing flares, a sartorial pioneer of the bell bottomed jeans in Manchester. In the clip the rest of the group are cool as you like, looking like a 60s/ late 80s street gang, but definitely not wearing flares. Cressa is dancing behind John's amp, doing the loose limbed rolling shoulders shuffle, his wide legged trousers hidden from view. Six months later, as Cressa grins ruefully at Head, they were all wearing them, Ian in famously 22" bell bottomed jeans. 

There was an interview in the NME around that time, when The Roses were making their seemingly effortless ascent. In '89 they often came across as a political band, talking about lemons as protection against CS gas as sued by riot police, the Paris riots of Mai '68, anti- monarchical and anti- establishment. They placed great store in being against the monarchy. In the interview they talked about the ravens at the Tower Of London and the myth that if the ravens leave the tower, England would fall. Ian (or John) mentions wanting to be at the Tower, shooting the ravens. The interview then goes onto the subject of trousers and their width- in the 80s flares were a big deal, they had been so unfashionable for so long that wearing them was a statement. 'Flares', one of them says in the interview, 'are as important as England falling actually'. 

Their debut album came out in early May 1989 and they toured extensively to support it, Cressa there every night, part of the gang, the man who gave them a strong part of their look, dancing away behind John Squire. When you flipped the record over, side two opened with this.

Elizabeth My Dear

And here we are, several decades later. 

Scooters, flares, homelessness, heroin, cough medicine, the Festival of The Tenth Summer, albums by The Stranglers, the Hacienda, Bez, Joe Strummer... you can find it all in the book here priced only eight pounds. 

Another former Stone Rose present at Head was Andy Couzens, another man who suddenly and unexpectedly found himself an- ex Stone Rose. Andy took his guitar and went off to form The High. I had a brief chat with him, told him how much I liked his records and said I saw The High play at Liverpool Poly in 1990, a gig he said he remembered. Talking to Dave afterwards we both mentioned the Newcastle gig on the same tour where singer John Matthews was taken ill and Cressa, by this point touring with The High, was persuaded to go onstage and fill in on vocals. The gig ended in what the NME described as a riot. They never quite got the sales to match their still wonderful sounding 1990 debut album, Somewhere Soon, a record with three shimmering guitar pop singles in Box Set Go, Up And Down and Take Your Time. This song, chiming guitars and reverb soaked vocals, is one of the period's lost gems. 

Take Your Time

To The Centre Of The City

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.

Shadowplay

Ascent

I took this picture in Manchester walking down Oldham Street back in August. A month from today it will be Boxing Day and the whole Christmas thing will be done and dusted bar the leftovers. The longest day will have passed and we'll be heading towards the new year. 

As Tony Wilson/ Steve Coogan says in 24 Hour Party People, “It's my belief that history is a wheel. 'Inconstancy is my very essence,' says the wheel. Rise up on my spokes if you like but don't complain when you're cast back down into the depths. Good time pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it's also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away.” (thanks to Guarin Tees for reminding me of this quote recently on social media). A lot of people are going through a lot at the moment and it's tough sometimes to keep going and remember that all this will pass. Which it will, sooner or later. 

Today's music comes from Brian Eno, no stranger to literature and clever quotes himself. Here he was with long term collaborators his brother Roger and Daniel Lanois and the soundtrack to the 1989 documentary For All Mankind. It's as good a way to start Friday morning as any. 

An Ending (Ascent)

Take Some Time Out

How I missed this song off my Durutti Column mix in September I don't know. In November 1983 Vini recorded an album in Brussels called Short Stories For Pauline, which should have been Durutti Column's fourth album. It was shelved when manger/ friend/ label boss Tony Wilson suggested the song Duet should be expanded into an entire album in its own right, which became Without Mercy. Short Stories For Pauline then laid unreleased until 2012 when Factory Benelux put it out for the first time, a lovely edition that calls Wilson's judgement into question (not for the first time either). Some of the songs had appeared in other places including this one, which turned up on a 1990 archive compilation called Lips That Would Kiss. 

Take Some Time Out

Take Some Time Out has Vini singing, something Wilson also was very much against, but Vini's vocal here is wonderfully understated and perfectly matches the beautifully restrained, chiming/ echoing guitar and Alan Lefebvre's drums- a little piece of magic conjured up in Belgium at the tail end of 1983. 

Monday's Long Song

Tony Wilson, later on Anthony H. Wilson, died on this day in 2007. His gravestone in Southern Cemetery, Chorlton- cum- Hardy, as pictured above, reads-

Broadcaster
Cultural Catalyst

1950- 2007

It was designed by Peter Saville and Ben Kelly (of course) and stands out among the ones around it, all in black, in the same way Wilson did when he was alive. In the film 24 Hour Party People Wilson, played by Steve Coogan, says he suffers from 'an excess of civic pride' and there's no doubt Tony was utterly committed to improving Manchester and Salford, to changing things- a record label founded on revolutionary lines with equally revolutionary design principles, a nightclub, a long line of bands and artists who made art first and commerce second. All these things changed the city partly because he saw no reason to 'fuck off down to London', but to do it here, and partly because (eventually) the nightclub brought people to the city (as revellers, as students, as workers), who stayed and helped the city grow. The nightclub inspired the building of bars and flats and the regeneration of warehouses, new places for people, that have a look, a design aesthetic, a knowing modernism. And so on. Not all these things are solely due to Tony Wilson but they are at least partly due to him.

There's been a tendency since he died to lionise him. While he was alive, especially in the 80s and early 90s, he was sometimes a divisive figure. That twat off the telly. Smug. Too clever for his own good. By all accounts he was capable of falling out with people, his friends, easily and without warning. Tony I'm sure would be amused by the ascension to sainthood he has achieved after death and I think he'd love it as well. 'When you have to choose between the truth and the legend, print the legend', he is supposed to have said. This quote comes from 24 Hour Party People as well. The legend becomes the truth. So it goes.

In 2015 this stunning record was released, Mike Garry's poem about Tony, a figure he knew from growing up, from seeing him on the TV and from his works, set to music by Joe Duddell, based on New Order's Your Silent Face, and then remixed by Andrew Weatherall. It remains one of the best records of the last decade, a nine minute tribute, moving and uplifting and elegiac.

St. Anthony: An Ode To Anthony H. Wilson (Andrew Weatherall Remix)

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)

Dirty Boy

A Certain Ratio have been having a new lease of life since singing to Mute with new singles, old songs excavated from the vaults, re-issues, box sets and gigs. Last year's single Dirty Boy, featuring guest voices from the living (Barry Adamson) and the dead (Tony Wilson) has been remixed by Chris Massey, a Manchester based DJ, producer and promoter. The remix is if anything better than the original version, Jez Kerr's bass in the foreground and a thudding house beat putting ACR back at the heart of the dancefloor. The video is a time shifting delight, intercutting footage of Manchester and it's people from the last forty years, the Hacienda of the late 80s, dancers at a 70s discotheque, ravers at an outdoor festival, Jez and the band live on stage in '89 and recently, the Mancunian Way then and now, our orange buses and a 60s motorcyclist speeding through the city centre- the old and the new.

Dirty Boys

A Certain Ratio are putting out a compilation album in October which by the looks of it mirrors their current live set, opening with Do The Du, Wild Party and Flight and then moving through their back catalogue taking in Mickey Way, 27 Forever, Won't Stop Loving You, Good Together and finishing with the samba drum fest of Si Firmir O Grido. Attached to the end of the compilation are two new songs, the first of which was posted online yesterday (the 11th anniversary of Tony Wilson's death, presumably not coincidentally). The song is called Dirty Boys and has the voice of Wilson on it along with vocals from Barry Adamson. It sounds like a reinvigorated ACR still have plenty to contribute.

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.

586

This is a New Order rarity which a friend posted on social media recently which I had forgotten about- I don't have a decent quality rip so there's just the video...



In 1982 Tony Wilson asked New Order for twenty minutes of 'pap' to be played at the opening night of the Hacienda (May 21st 1982). Bernard and Stephen went away and got stuck into the drum machine and synths and came up with this which became known as Prime 5 8 6 (or Video 5 8 6). It is twenty minutes of pulsing rhythm and synthesizers, significant mainly because parts of it later became the version of 5 8 6 on Power, Corruption And Lies, Ultraviolence (off the same album) and Blue Monday (you don't need me to tell you anything about Blue Monday). The band gave it to Touch Magazine who put it out in two parts on cassette in 1982 and then on cd in 1997.

In the picture, a stunning shot of Gillian Gilbert on stage in Brussels, April 1982.

86 Palatine Road

A flat in this house on Palatine Road was once the home of one Alan Erasmus. In 1978 he co-founded Factory records along with Tony Wilson and Rob Gretton. Martin Hannett and Peter Saville soon joined. The label operated out of this flat throughout the 1980s, a short distance from where I grew up. The tales of Factory Records and its bands are the stuff of legend- no contracts, fifty-fifty split between label and bands, the artists own the music, the Hacienda must be built, Ian Curtis, So It Goes, Granada TV, Joy Division, New Order, the numbering system, A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column, Section 25, Stockholm Monsters, The Distractions, Crispy Ambulance, 52nd Street, Quando Quango, The Wake, James, The Railway Children, The Royal Family And The Poor, Miaow, Happy Mondays, the Factory egg timer, die-cut sleeves, tracing paper sleeves, no band photos on the sleeves,... In 1990 Factory moved out of 86 Palatine Road and into Factory 251 in town. 

Yesterday a blue plaque was awarded to 86 Palatine Road in recognition of Factory's cultural, civic and artistic importance. Shaun Ryder unveiled the plaque. Of course given that he demanded the destruction of the Hacienda to  prevent it becoming a museum piece Tony Wilson may not have approved of this recognition of a piece of Manchester's musical history. But if buildings are going to be awarded blue plaques for the part they played, then this is as deserving as any.

There are so many songs that illustrate Factory's brilliance in the 80s. On this song Otis, from Durutti Column's 1989 album (named after its creator Vini Reilly), Otis Redding's voice is sampled along with vocals credited to Vini's friend Pol. Reilly's guitar playing is fluid and lighter than air, echo on the arpeggios underpinning and enveloping the spectral Otis vocal- 'another sleepless night for me'. And then 'come back, come back'.

Otis