https://www.tnocs.com/so-much-to-answer-for-manchester-uk-bands/

What's the security like getting into depo?

Hi,

Myself and a group of filmmaking students based in Leeds are creating a short documentary based on the evolution of rave culture from the 90's to present day.

A decent amount of the documentary will be interviews with DJ's heard over footage from the described era of rave. As this isn't a funded film we cannot afford to purchase archive footage so we would really appreciate some help!

If anybody has any footage, photographs or personally produced tracks that they wouldn't mind being used please get in touch, it would be a huge help and would of course be credited within the film.

Cheers,

Tom.

On the radio here as we speak. Brings me back instantly to early 90’s. Such great times 😍🦹🏼‍♂️

Hello, We've got a gig in Manchester coming up soon and it sort of fits this into this style. Anyone know of anywhere we can promote the gig to people that would be interested. We're from far away and only ever played it once on a joint tour.

Thank you!

Please don't hate me. I'm new to reddit and also kinda green to appreciating the Madchester scene. Admittedly, I was lead this way thru my indefensible love for Oasis. And it took me until just recently that I began diving into Noel's influences, being that he's an admittedly brash rip-off artist. So I needed to see where those first two albums came from, so to speak. So I've been marathoning Inspiral Carpets, The Stone Roses, Ocean Colour Scene (The Riverboat Song kinda reminds me of King Crimson in some ways) and of course landed somewhere in the 80s new wave stuff like Thompson Twins as well.

I have many questions and also many ideas. I'm wanting to bring back more guitar-driven music that isn't like mainstream rock in America. It's all so heavy, down-tuned, and generally negative and regurgitated. I wanna bring back the musical aesthetic of the transition from Madchester into that 90s britpop, but with lyrics speaking to Appalachian sensitivities, while also refuting most of them.

There's a lot more at play about the whole thing, at least in my head. But I am seeking guidance about some of the best deep cuts of the Madchester scene, to get more insight into the musical and lyrical substance of the issues of that time that drove the scene in the first place, and try to rearrange elements while including lyrical and musical instrumentation that also invokes regional influence.

British music has always been an influence in everything I've done with music. And, although I'd rather be anywhere else, I cannot deny my very Ohioan worldview. Thus, my inclusion of the graphic I currently have on my kick drum. Sans the band name. The only thing on my kick is the graphic. No text.

Elitists need not reply, but I reckon I'll accept it either way. kick

Cheers! I am a huge music fan especially interested in the phenomenon of the prolific musical production of the city of Manchester, particularly during the 80s and 90s, and I would like you to advise me of books that would help me to get a more real idea of ​​this phenomenon from the point of view of the city. Thank you very much and greetings from Spain!

Unknown to everyone, including the bands, Factory Records had a secret occult side. This dates back to Cambridge University in the late sixties, where Anthony H. Wilson befriended fellow under-grad' Paul Sieveking, son of Aleister Crowley's contemporary Lance Sieveking and future founder of Fortean Times as well as translator of key Situationist International texts into English. It is common knowledge that under the influence of Sieveking, Wilson joined the pro-Situationist group The Kim Philby Dining Club. It is less commonly know that Wilson attempted to join more of Sieveking's more esoteric societies. Unsurprisingly, he was dismissed by these societies as, “A wide eyed dilettante', and more colloquially, 'A piss-taker'. But the ideas of the Situationists seized Wilson's imagination and would inform key developments in his later life. Leaving Cambridge, Wilson returned to Manchester and embarked on a successful career in local broadcast journalism. This separated him from his underground contacts. But not for long.
Praxis Makes Perfect
Following on from the relative success of his pop programme, So It Goes, Wilson formed Factory Records with actor Alan Erasmus, producer Martin Hannett and designer Peter Saville as co-Directors. As the prime mover, Wilson quickly established that Factory as a Situationist project. The defining philosophy was that of Praxis, the idea that one learns how to do something by actually doing it and in the process learn their motivation. The immediate beneficiaries of this were, of course, the band Joy Division whose first proper release on the Factory imprint was the seminal Unknown Pleasures album. Managed by Rob Gretton, Joy Division fulfilled the ideological/ cultural fantasies of Wilson and provided producer Hannett with the raw material to conduct his own sonic experiments. This attracted the attention of Sieveking, who introduced Wilson, Gretton and the band to Crowley enthusiast, Genesis P. Orridge of the industrial band Throbbing Gristle. At this stage there is no evidence for any collusion between Factory and the P. Orridge. This would all change in 1981.
New Orders
Following the suicide of singer Ian Curtis in 1980, Joy Division had reassembled as New Order. Meanwhile from the ashes of Throbbing Gristle's acrimonious split, P. Orridge formed Psychic TV, an explicitly pro-Crowley enterprise which had it's own cult, Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth, instead of a fanclub. By now Rob Gretton had been appointed a director of Factory replacing Peter Saville. After New Order's first tour of America, Gretton and the band became seduced by the New York nightclub scene. One night after a New Order gig in London, Gretton was regaling P. Orridge with tales of Hurrahs and the Danceteria and how DJs like Arthur Baker and Africa Bambaata mixed the records into one long glorious tune. Mischievously P. Orridge suggested Gretton convince Factory to build their own nightclub. However, it could not be just any old nightclub. It had to have “significance”. If a club was built on the “correct sight”, the psychic power generated by people dancing to repetitive, tribal rhythms could be harnessed, directed and used. The person who wielded this power could do whatever he wanted; take over Factory, maybe even the whole city? Gretton dreamed.

Schism
Back in Manchester trouble was brewing. Getting wind of Gretton's idea and faced by a drastic reduction in his production budgets, not to mention the indefinite postponement of his own idea of building a Factory recording studio, Martin Hannett took a gamble. Insisting that running a nightclub would be a complete financial disaster, Hannett tendered his resignation from the board, thinking (not unreasonably) that his reputation as the architect of Joy Divsion /New Order's success would force Wilson (who he held in contempt) to dismiss Gretton's nightclub idea and fall into line. However, Hannett had seriously underestimated Rob Gretton. Playing on Wilson's middle-class fetish for the proletariat, Gretton had usurped Hannett and Erasmus in Wilson's confidence. Hannett's resignation was accepted. Gretton's idea for a nightclub would become reality.
Fac 51
But where? The location came from a P. Orridge brainwave. The City Road Inn on the junction of Whitworth Street West and City Road, had been a centre of occult activities in the early twentieth century, indeed a room with occult writings etched into the plaster still exists. There was also a tunnel which connected the City Road Inn to the building opposite. A building which in 1981 housed International Marine, a yacht and speedboat showroom. A building that had a dark history of it's own. Built over a cholera pit and before that (according to some stories) an even older cemetery, the building soon gained a reputation as a place of bad luck. Businesses with offices there failed and in an eerie temporal resonance, there were a handful of suicides. The whole junction (allegedly bisected by a ley line) fizzed with latent power. P. Orridge alerted Gretton. With the board under his control, Gretton effected the purchase. Taking it's name from an Ivan Chtcheglov quote, “the hacienda must be built” and given the Factory serial number Fac 51 (apparently Gretton pushed for Fac 23 until he was reminded that Fac 23 was the serial number of Love Will Tear Us Apart!) the Hacienda opened on 21st May 1982 and immediately ran into problems. Ironically for a club so in thrall to the design aethetic, one of it's main problems was bad design. A convoluted, disperse layout precluded atmosphere on all but the busiest nights, and they were few and far between. Just as Hannett had predicted, the Hacienda haemorrhaged money. Gretton was desperate. So far the club was running on Joy Division's royalties, but this was not enough. New Order's next album and any singles that came from the sessions would have to be hits. As New Order went into the studio to make the album that would become Power, Corruption and Lies, neither they nor Factory had had a hit record since Love Will Tear Us Apart. The idea of New Order selling the quantities of records needed to save the club seemed ridiculous.
Blue Monday
Recording commenced at Britannia Row studios in September 1982. By coincidence (?), the very same time and location Psychic TV were shooting a series of “ritual”videos for T.O.P.Y. An additional factor was the presence of author Michael Butterworth, who, as a friend of the band, inveigled his way into staying with the band under the pretext of writing a book about the experience. Butterworth ran a counterculture bookshop, House on the Borderland, in Manchester. As well as stocking what was then difficult to obtain Beat, Hippy and Sci-Fi literature, the shop did a roaring trade in bootleg LPs. At the time the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester was the enemy of counterculture values, God's Cop James Anderton. Threatening to denounce him to Anderton, a desperate Martin Hannett blackmailed Butterworth into sabotaging the album. This laughably inept strategy was evidence of Hannett's decline into drug abuse and paranoia and easily confounded by Gretton. With Hannett now permanently out of the game, Gretton masterminded the production and release of a track called Blue Monday. Combining the punk edge of the band with the repetitive beats of New York dancefloors, Gretton and P. Orridge knew this was the record that would kick start the Hacienda. No one, least of all the band, entertained the idea that this unwieldy track would be a hit. Whatever rituals Psychic TV performed (a rumour at the time suggested that one ritual was an exorcism performed on Michael Butterworth) worked and Blue Monday became the best selling 12 inch single of all time. Factory and more importantly the Hacienda were saved. But on the eve of what would have been the culmination of Gretton and P. Orridge's bid for power, nemesis lay in ambush.
Power, Corruption
By 1985, New Order had become one of the UK's leading bands releasing a string of Top 20 hits and even cracking the lucrative American market. The money flowed and the power generated by the building was building to critical mass. However, the mental strain began to take it's toll on Gretton. Increasingly erratic behaviour fuelled by a monstrous cocaine habit led to Gretton being sectioned and detained in a secure and discreet psychiatric ward. Meanwhile in Brighton, under constant harassment from the police, P. Orridge fled with his family to the States, eventually finding sanctuary with LSD guru, Tim Leary. In their absence, the acid house happened and the Hacienda quickly became the nexus of this new sound. Every weekend thousands of youngsters danced to the DJ successors of pioneers Baker and Bambaata. The psychic energy grew and grew, unfortunately Gretton was no longer in any position to channel it.
Rave On
By the time a weakened, cleaned up Gretton returned from hospital, control of Factory and more importantly the Hacienda had been wrested from his grip. While New Order had been on an almost constant tour of the States to keep the Hacienda afloat, another Factory band, Happy Mondays, had stolen their thunder and their singer Shaun Ryder had replaced Gretton as Wilson's prole-guru. Flaunting the band's credentials as drug dealers first and musicians second, Wilson made a series of provocative statements concerning the beneficial effects of the new (to the UK) disco drug, Ecstasy on the Hacienda's vastly expanded clientele. But others were taking note. The police led by God's Cop Anderton plotted their own moves, while the ecstasy and amphetamines that fuelled the frenzied dancing attracted the gaze of Manchester's crime underworld.
Nemesis
With Wilson unaware of Gretton's occult machinations, the energy began to dissipate and the profits were squandered. Like Hannett before him, Gretton watched impotently as Wilson pushed his grand scheme's through. A new bar Dry 201 and a new corporate HQ, Fac 251 emptied the coffers and contributed nothing back. But as Wilson pontificated on the benefits of drug taking, rival Mancunian gangs battled for control of the increasingly lucrative drugs trade and the Hacienda found itself on the frontline. Shootings and violence became the norm. Wilson closed the Hacienda then re-opened with beefed up security, but the gangsters were going nowhere and despite battling on as a separate entity following the bankruptcy of Factory Records in 1992, Fac 51, the Hacienda closed it's doors for the last time in autumn 1997. The dream of power was over.