come anticipate "factory records: the complete graphic album" with me

YES

YES

YEEEESSS

(If not, hray hray!)

If it had started now, would we be throwing rosepetals at their feet?

Just, more that it could and should have been treated as a discerning form of its own, rather than lumped into the 'new wave' and disregarded by the public at large.

I never played Durutti Column to my parents, probably because they would have loved it.

(I don't know exactly where I'm going with this, ignore me)

could it, though? i mean, section 25 are perhaps my favourite band of all time (admittedly there are personal/non-musical factors there too) but although to these ears their recorded output borders on perfect, i can immediately understand why mrs fiendish thinks "from the hip" is "weedy and thin-sounding" or "always now" is "too grey". a lot of factory stuff was flawed in some way - i, as an obsessive, adore those flaws and the way they add to the myth, but to a lot of people it simply detracts from the music.

i don't know where i'm going with this either, other than to say: i don't think their aesthetic ever had a particularly mainstream appeal. enrique makes a good point, but even then: how many casual scallies would have known/cared about the mondays being on the same label as steve martland and the wake?

i did play the durutti column to my dad. he said: "meh". he was wrong. perhaps i should try again.

I don't know if we can say whether their aesthetic had mainstream appeal or not because up to around the 86/87 they were incapable of getting records into the shops in sufficient quantities/at the right time. Plus the unconventional/lack of marketing. I can't see Kevin Hewick or Crispy Ambulance wowing Joe Public, but also I reckon the likes of 52nd Street/SXXV/Shark Vegas/Marcel King should have had hits.

this is a very, very good point :)

i'm with shaun ryder on marcel king: "reach for love" should have been #1 for ever. fucking INCREDIBLE song. sends shivers down my spine just thinking of it.

not so sure about shark vegas, though. thanks to the mighty bimble, i finally got to hear "you hurt me" last year, and i was unimpressed.

Marcel King's "Reach for love" was being played at 08:00, and I was "He's gone straight in at number one?"

Then I realised I'd retuned to a different radio station.

grimly - YOU HURT ME!! Listen again. Actually YHM reminds me of a Royksopp single that was out a couple of years ago.

did have some success, but was also through it being re-released by bigger american labels.

I would ysi if I could, Billy. But I haf not the know-how.

Dan - what singles were successful in the US? Were they re-releases of the FAC tracks, or are you thinking of the MCA singles e.g Tell Me How It Feels? I was thinking that Can't Afford To Let You Go and Cool As Ice should have been hits with decent promotion.

It's in my top 3 12" of all time along with Everything's Gone Green and Monsoon's Ever So Lonely, I reckon.

enough. i need to go home and listen to shark vegas :)

Can't Afford to Let you Go and Cool As Ice both came out in america, I'll have to check at home, maybe on streetwise or some hip NY label, but I think on Atlantic? In my head I'm mixing them up with Klein + MBO's Dirty Talk. While not huge hits, they had some club play and radio play, I'm sure, but being a DJ in NYC gives me a warped perspective, meaning maybe they only got as far as Jellybean playing them on KTU or at the funhouse but never were nationwide hits?

http://www.discogs.com/release/378085

There are so many great moments in the megamix :

0.22-0.30 The whispered vocal 'Always will/you always will..."

1.20 ish the 'process synth line'

1.40-150 distant synth thunder

2.00 - scraping of metal comes in just before Jenny's voice singing random bits of the lyrics.

2.55 Jenny - 'Bring Me Down' Larry - (whispered)'Inside'

3.37 the syn drums gently patter in, in the background

4.14 a slight change of timbre of the whole track and then (this is my favourite bit)4.15-4.30 4 sections of 2 bars each of treated drums interwoven with the 'normal' drum sound, culminating in an insanely distorted 2 bar section.

4.35 - no THIS is the best bit - the whole track slides down a cliff, the beat stopping for a split second.

4.56 - those sliding hi-hats come in

5.20 the sequencer fizzes up to the surface dragging with it the melody of LFAH proper.

6.01 - glacial ballroom synths

to 7.15ish - a stately glide thru the main elements of the track, but sort of 'far away' compared with the album track.

7.15-end dropping back to drums and quiet sequencer.

although, hmm, that little synth motif in the chorus is good.

actually, this is a lot better than i remembered. there was a tiny bit of cowbell there that made me sit up and go: "ooh". i've got another shark vegas song here called "pretenders of love" to listen to as well.

anyway ... i've got an MP3 of "reach for love" here if anyone needs it, but really: dan's version will almost certainly sound better. so hold off for that.

And the exact timing is 8.08. Ha! Do you see what they did!

heheh, yes, i did notice that. although i wonder if that was james nice/LTM during the CD mastering?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568984227/qid=1137007969/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-0763981-6327335?n=507846&s=books&v=glance

Yes, that's the key to the whole track! Actually the version I am raving about is You Hurt Me (Version) which is on the LTM comp Twice As Nice. Actually the orig of this might not even be on Factory. I'm not sure if that version is on the FAC 12". Anyway it's 90% instrumental, with a percusiion breakdown bit in the middle and B. Sumner's guitar coming in for the final third. There are some female vocals - 'you hurt me/for the last time' etc

for some reason - because i'm a dick? - i never got round to getting that (those?) LTM comp(s). i need to rectify that ASAP.

waitaminute...I just bought Cheyne's Call Me Mister Telephone after finally hearing it post the "oh Lindstrom remixed it! hype". What does it have to do with Factory. My copy is produced by Mark Kamins I thought.

Speaking of...at the same place I bought 2 T-Coy 12"s, Simon Topping and Mike Pickering's late 80s house act.

here it is

Marcel King - Reach For Love
good stuff

Call me Mr. Telephone doesn't have anything to do with Factory - you're right it's produced by M.Kamins and was on Crepuscule originally.

grimly - did you ever see SXXV live? I'm guessing not, since they didn't play live after about late 85/early 86.

As for the book, this will be a must buy for me. The Peter Saville book is excellent too but I want to see everything. I wonder how many FAC numbers actually got allocated items? I know they allocated odd things FAC numbers after the demise of Factory (presumably the copy of Jack magazine with one won't be in it) but will 224 pages be enough?

June - such a long time away...

sadly, no: i was too young. but i bought the "so far" DVD last year and was blown away by every single second of it.

but hey, i got to have a cup of tea with larry in 1994, having worked out that he lived round the corner from my parents ... and then a couple of years ago jenny bought my parents' house. i don't know who was more shocked: me when my mum rang to tell me "we've sold it to a lovely lady called jenny cassidy"; my mum when i said: "O MY GOD WHAT THE ONE FROM SECTION 25?" or jenny when my mum went back to her and said: "er, apparently you were in my son's favourite-ever band, or something." she was overjoyed, apparently: she gave my mum a few old pictures of the band to pass on to me.

i never got to meet her before she died, and i am gutted about that.

"crazy wisdom" is exquisite. ISTR it was the band's favourite too, but i can't remember how i know that. maybe larry said, or something.

Simon, where did you get a Thames and Hudson catalogue from?

a colleague got sent it here at work. i'll see if i can borrow it and get the page scanned in.

Lots of unlikely stuff in there..Rob Gretton's dental records?

the hacienda cat!

the lawsuit!

i used to have the NME factory discography on my wall when i was 16. that, looking back, seems a bit sad.

A Really good Factory website.

well, maybe. but we did a big saville feature last year and his studios have digital versions of everything he did: surely it'd have been cheaper just to get all those and whack them out, rather than re-photographing?

you MUST get the DVD. it is mind-blowing. absolutely fantastic. the chicago performances really do add credence to the "section 25 helped invent acid house" theory ;)

and the weird audiovisual experiment thing (ie larry and co take acid and fuck about with a strobe and a fire) from 1982 is chilling to the bone.

anyway, here we go: one scan from the T&H catalogue. hopefully this is big enough to read but small enough not to be a total pain in the ass.

http://sparky.thehold.net/pix/facbook.jpg

FAC 61 Lawsuit involving Martin Hannett

editioning that made me roffle

LTM must excavate even more. I demand it!

Yeah I was going to say, I don't think it's quite right to say 52nd Street had hits in the U.S. Had they not been linked to Factory I would never have heard them.

The Shark Vegas isn't that great, either, but then I don't think I've heard the version that Dr. C is talking about on Twice As Nice.

but they had exposure beyond "factory" to club-goers, to whom factory doesn't mean a thing, same with From a Hilltop. I always tell people my copy of Looking From a Hilltop 12" has all this like, nyc puerto-rican grafitti on it.

[gets on plane to seattle, armed with vicious selection of hammers and a bottle of industrial-strength earwax remover]

and although i took the piss in my first post, she's convinced me that this:

the label's fundamental role in bringing design to the mainstream

is maybe truer than i realised.

we're redecorating the flat at the moment and it's inspired me to ... well, no, we'll wait and see how that pans out first before i mention it here :)

it also has a full-page white-on-black reproduction of the "anvil" logo from 1980 (i think) ... just right for taking down the local tattoo parlour. seriously: i've been talking about this for years now. i might just go for it.

any fascinating nuggets i learn from reading it may be posted here. or not.

http://blog.factoryrecords.org/2012/03/periodic-table-of-factory-records.html

What it is.

I did get the book, but I can guess I'll be playing with that table..