The Haçienda Opens

"Twenty Four Hour Party People" is the book for the film by the sadly missed Tony Wilson. Tony lost is job with World in Action after a bust up with Keith Joseph, but  after lots of setbacks the Haçienda Opensl

I am still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it, which is good

The music is "Blue Monday" by New Order

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

Time & Calendars

1. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
2. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
7. God Knows I'm Good (I Really Do) - Thoughts on Vocal Writing
8. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
9. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer, and this is her Instagram

The Factory Opens

"Twenty Four Hour Party People" is the book for the film by the sadly missed Tony Wilson. We've hit the part where they find a run-down club in Hulme and call it The Factory, which will become the label. We see the genesis of Joy Division via Warsaw and The Durutti Column as well.

This is where it starts.

I was thinking I was doing too many posts on this blog, this is my sixth and it is only the ninth of the month, but whatever.

I am still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it, which is good

The music is "Digital" by Joy Division

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
2. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
7. God Knows I'm Good (I Really Do) - Thoughts on Vocal Writing
8. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
9. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer, and this is her Instagram

There's Only One Tony Wilson

"Twenty Four Hour Party People" the book for the film by the sadly missed Tony Wilson. This is a novelisation of the film script by Tony. I thought he had written a few books, as I have a few in by libraray, but thi sis his only book, the others I have are about him. But I think all the music I feature in this sequence will be probaly Factory Records or Tony Wilson related

I am still reading "Imajica" by Clive Barker on my Kindle. This is a book I never want to end. When I finish it, I just restart it

The music is "All Night Party" by A Certain Ratio , the first Factory Records individual band release.

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal, but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
2. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
3. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
4. The King Of Elfland's Daughter - A Wonderful Book By Lord Dunsany
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
7. God Knows I'm Good (I Really Do) - Thoughts on Vocal Writing
8. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
9. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer, and this is her Instagram

Take The Skinheads Bowling

Yesterday, for the first time in a long time, I walked to and from work. Both walks were in the dark as it's autumn and the days are still getting shorter as we are still on the way to the Winter Solstice and the shortest day. I did about 18.5K steps which at 2.5K steps per mile is about 7.5 miles. I don't think I will do that today as I need to be at work a bit longer today but I will definitely be walking in , and my step cout is ahead of schedule for the month.

I got to listen to the excellent "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monáe, my favourite album of the last two years, repeating a couple of songs as I played it then finishing off with Marcel King's "Reach For Love" , one of my favourite singles and Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single. That's the great thing about walking, these days (and really since the dawn of the compact cassette) we have the ability to listen to music on the move. Although cassettes are having a revival, the problem has always been their fragility, but they did combine that with convenience. A friend of mine had a cassette player that allowed you to program the playing order, but the fact that it had to fast forward and rewind between songs sort of negated the convenience, but an impressive piece of technology none the less.

The blog is now eight posts away from the annual record (last year I hit 316) so that will be easily surpassed this year and that will probably be it for posting records.

One of the points of this blog is to share music with friends and I was thinking of something by Janelle Monáe or Marcel King, but Chris Hawkins on 6Music has just put on "Take The Skinheads Bowling" by Camper Van Beethoven who once retired to a cabin and recorded Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" (my favourite Fleetwood Mac album and even got album of the week from NME despite being a double album by "dinosaur rockers" in the middle of the UK punk explosion, and the CVB one is good as well). So we will go with "Take The Skinheads Bowling".

Just as I was writing this , my tablet box somehow fell out of my pocket. It is round. I looked down it was nowhere to be seen. I guessed right and it had rolled under the chest of drawers. C'est la vie.

Forty Years Since Joy Division Gave Us Unknown Pleasures

Peter Saville Pulsar

It's forty years since Joy Division released their debut "Unknown Pleasures" which has been as influential in sound and design as the first Velvet Underground album.

The cover while being deceptively simple based on Pulsayr waves visualised by Peter Saville. There is further expansion here. Peter was themain Factory Records album cover designer and examples of his work can be found here

The album itself  was a Factory release produced by Martin Hannett and sounds as doomily fresh today as when it came out although then and now it still stands out as being like no other.

All the songs are being reimagined as videos for the fortirth anniversay and will appear on the Joy Division Youtube video channel , and start with "I Remember Nothing" ,

Full Credits here

Forty Years.

I Played A DVD

I am definitely becoming lazier and lazier. Also while I have a large CD and digital music collection, there are big chunks of it I have never heard and probably never will. It's similar with DVD. This week I have actually taken the DVD from it's place on the shelf, switched on the DVD player and switched the channel on the TV and actually watched  the films. The two I watched were "The Golden Compass" which was excellent but has been on the shelf unplayed for ten years, and "Fight Club" (adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's novel) which has been there for even longer. Both these films are excellent, and I should have watched them years ago, but apathy and laziness has meant that despite knowing how good these are ("The Golden Compass" was the film of the first book in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series which is coming on TV from HBO and BBC).

I don't know if this is just a digital malaise, because my vinyl collection is always played when I purchase anything and I often share things on my Instagram Channel , but when you buy digitally it is so easy to put it on one side for later, and after a week or so it's forgotten about. If anthing gets put in a box or a drawer then thats usually it. I still listen to music digitally from my network and on my phone, but still eschew streaming services such as Spotify or Amazon as to use them without wifi means that your data gets consumed fairly quickly, so I load albums from my network to my Google Pixel which I may upgrade to a Pixel 3A in the future.

So one of the good things of being in the digital world is that I can share suitable music with you as I post entries on this blog, but I do think digital storage has turned us into magpies , buying things that we don't actually use or properlay appreciate. With that I will share "Digital" buy Joy Division with you with an excellent video taken from the equally excellent film "Control".

FactoryZoo

Just shoved together two of my most liked record labels Factory from Manchester and Zoo from Liverpool because I do  have a book called "Factory".

Factory was the imprint of Tony / Anthony Wilson and brought us among others Joy Division , Happy Mondays , New Order and lots more as well as lots of iconic design ideas. The Hacienda Club used the black and yellow warning stripes , now every time I see it I don't think WARNING I thing HACIENDA or FACTORY . A brilliant idea. The film "24 Hour Party People" is about Tony Wilson and the lasting enigma of Factory Records. It was also responsible for releasing "Reach For Love" by Marcel King, one of my favourite records ever. It's also Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

Everything on Factory had a catalogue number (The Hacienda was FAC51)

Zoo Records from Liverpool was nowhere near as influential as Factory but I remember getting a compilation (Street To Street: A Liverpool Album - 1978) and loving "Match of The Day" by Big In Japan, who featured Holly Johnson, Ian Broudie , Bill Drummond and Budgie. The label also featured Echo and The Bunnymen , Teardrop Explodes and lots more so still very important.

It is quite surprising that Zoo Records are almost impossible to track down these days and a lot of the Factory compilations are similar. Discogs seems to be the best way of sourcing them.

So it's Sunday , the weather is gorgeous , so I may relax and enjoy it or possibly nip out for a walk, but either way I am going to have a relaxing day. Hope you do too.

Buying Books and Listening To Podcasts

I'm listening to the podcast "How To Burn A Million Quid" the BBC Sounds mockumentary about the story of the KLF and the influence of The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (and my mind immediately connects the Tony Wilson broadcaster, punk leader and Factory Records supremo, but I will put that on pause).

The thing is I have now ordered The Illuminatus Trilogy along with a parralel publication by the KLF themselves. I never knew what KLF stood for, but according to the pocast it is Copyright Liberation Foundation but they decided that the letter "K" was way much cooler than "C" so instead of "CLF" we got "KLF". I sort of see what they mean.

So whether or not I will read the book, I am just getting it to see what tangents it zooms off in, rather than expecting any revelations.

The thing is, it does show you that product placement within an environment you enjoy can influence you to actually purchase a placed product, although I am sure this is not a prime example of product placement.

So it looks like more KLF rated stuff to share so I'll go with their Tammy Wynette collaboration before I go to make my tea,

Steam Quake Goofle

I was going to write a Christmas Day Free post yesterday but in the end couldn't be bothered. This morning I realised that I had no games on my PC although I had back up disk images of Quake, Hexen and Doom but the inherent laziness of finding putting a disk in the drive kicked in as well as trying to get the daamned things to run on Windows 10.

So a quick Google search and I find that a whole Quake collection is available on Steam for £8.49. It was really a no brainer. I just saw that I mistakenly spelt Google as Goofle. Isn't Goofle just a great word.

I also realised I hadn't played a game on this computer since I got it over a year ago, so booted up Quake in Nightmare mode and got killed almost immediately , I then retried in normal mode and the machine froze when I was half way through Level 1, but I'm not too bothered, I think it will sort itself out. I also got Civilization III for 74p.

I decided to listen to some of my favourite Punk compilation 1-2-3-4, five disks of brilliance and the first compilation that The Clash allowed themselves to be included on. I was playing from my network set up and then got sidetracked and was playing Marcel King's "Reach For Love" from the Factory Records box about six times. It really is one of the best records ever, and is Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

I posted on Facebook that at the moment it's my favourite record ever, so obviously it has to be the Boxing Day song although I am up to "Anarchy In The UK" on the 1-2-3-4 album and every song on that box could probably feature in my posts.

Have a fantastic Boxing Day folks.

There's Only One Tony Wilson

Well actually there's more than one , which we all knew. I grew up with Tony Wilson , So It Goes , Factory Records , Joy Division , Happy Mondays , The Hacienda. Sadly missed since he died a couple of years ago , but the guy revolutionised music ,and business , not financially successfully but his vision resulted in some amazing breakthroughs. The first peorgram to have the Sex Pistols performing live on TV and immortalised in the sureal but entertaining 24 Hour Party People.

Anyway a couple of years ago I bought several books pertaining to Factory Records and related groups and a few my the great man himself. One called The Universe on a Bicycle sounded like a Wilson title , but in fact is written by another Tony Wilson (an articled clerk turned artist who patented an origami table) about a bike ride round Ireland pondering the deep questions in life in a very entertaining manner. I only found this out today when I started reading the book and would recommend it to anyone. It's one of those pleasant mistakes in life that actually benfits all concerned . I have found a new author and he has a new fan so to speak.

While not in the same universe as the late Anthony Wilson my world has certainly been enriched by reading both authors.