And, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?---Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky ---Notes from Underground Even now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory. I have many evil memories now, but ... hadn’t I better end my “Notes” here? I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I have felt ashamed all the time I’ve been writing this story; so it’s hardly literature so much as a corrective punishment. Why, to tell long stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally rotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through divorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world, would certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the traits for an anti-hero are expressly gathered together here, and what matters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are...
Hope
To be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope.--
Erich Fromm
Factory Records - From Joy Division To Happy Mondays
The story of the rise and fall of "the most successful independent record label" in British rock music history.
Documentary celebrating the triumph, tragedy and human comedy that was Manchester record company, Factory. Started by the late Tony Wilson, Alan Erasmus, Peter Saville and Martin Hannett in the late 1970s, it became known as the home of Joy Divsion, New Order and Happy Mondays and for creating the Hacienda club. The label pioneered Britain's independent pop culture, creating a new Manchester and blowing a shed-load of money. Includes interviews with all the main players in the Factory story.
"24 Hour Party People," which tells the story of the Manchester music scene from the first Sex Pistols concert until the last bankruptcy, shines with a kind of inspired madness. It is based on fact, but Americans who don't know the facts will have no trouble identifying with the sublime posturing of its hero, a television personality named Tony Wilson, who takes himself seriously in a way that is utterly impossible to take seriously.
As the film opens, Wilson is attending the first, legendary Sex Pistols concert in Manchester, England. Here and elsewhere, directorMichael Winterbottomsubtly blends real newsreel footage with fictional characters so they all fit convincingly into the same shot. Wilson is transfixed by the Pistols as they sing "Anarchy in the U.K." and sneer at British tradition. He tells the camera that everyone in the audience will leave the room transformed and inspired, and then the camera pans to show a total of 42 people, two or three of them half-heartedly dancing in the aisles.
Tony Wilson, who preaches "anarchism" not as a political position but as an emotional state, knows he has seen the future. He joins with two partners to form Factory Records, which would become one of the most important and least financially successful recording companies in history, and joyously signs the contract in his blood (while declaring "we will have no contracts"). His bands include Joy Division (renamed New Order after the suicide of its lead singer) and Happy Mondays. His company opens a rave club, the Hacienda, which goes broke because the customers ignore the cash bars and spend all their money on Ecstasy.
The movie works so well because it evokes genuine, not manufactured, nostalgia. It records a time when the inmates ran the asylum, when music lovers got away with murder. It loves its characters. It understands what the Sex Pistols started, and what the 1990s destroyed. And it gets a certain tone right. It kids itself. At one point, Wilson looks straight at the camera and tells us that a scene is missing, "but it will probably be on the DVD." As the screenwriter of an ill-fated Sex Pistols movie, I met Rotten, Vicious, Paul Cook, Steve Jones and their infamous manager, Malcolm McLaren, and brushed the fringe of their world. I could see there was no plan, no strategy, no philosophy, just an attitude. If a book on the Sex Pistols had an upraised middle finger on the cover, it wouldn't need any words inside. And yet Tony Wilson goes to see the Pistols and sees before him a delirious opportunity to--to what? Well, obviously, to live in one of the most important times in human history, and to make your mark on it by going down in glorious flames.
Joy Division was an English rock band formed in Salford in 1976. Despite a career that lasted less than four years and produced only two studio albums, they are considered one of the most influential bands in the history of alternative music.
1. Formation and Early Years
The band was founded by childhood friends Bernard Sumner (guitar/keyboards) and Peter Hook (bass) after they attended a legendary Sex Pistols concert at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in June 1976. They were soon joined by vocalist Ian Curtis and, after a series of short-lived drummers, Stephen Morris.
Original Name: They initially performed as Warsaw (a tribute to David Bowie's "Warszawa").
The Name Change: In early 1978, they became Joy Division, a name taken from the 1953 novel The House of Dolls, which referred to groups of female prisoners kept for the sexual pleasure of Nazi soldiers in concentration camps.
2. The Sound: Sparse and Haunting
While they began as a raw punk act, their sound evolved into something much darker and more atmospheric. This transformation was largely due to two factors:
Ian Curtis's Lyrics: Deeply introspective, focused on alienation, isolation, and emotional paralysis.
Martin Hannett's Production: The producer at Factory Records used unconventional techniques (digital delays, recording sounds in toilets or elevator shafts) to create a "wintry," spacious sound that defined the post-punk genre.
3. Landmark Discography
Unknown Pleasures (1979)
Their debut album is widely regarded as a masterpiece. It features Peter Hook's melodic, high-register bass lines and Stephen Morris's "machine-like" drumming.
Key Tracks: "Disorder," "Shadowplay," "She’s Lost Control."
The Cover: The iconic waveform design is a plot of radio pulses from the first pulsar ever discovered (PSR B1919+21).
Closer (1980)
Released posthumously, this album is even darker and more synth-heavy than their debut.
Key Tracks: "Isolation," "Heart and Soul," "Twenty Four Hours."
Legacy: Often cited as the ultimate "goth" or "post-punk" record, reflecting the worsening mental state of Ian Curtis.
Non-Album Singles
"Transmission" (1979): The band's first real anthem.
"Love Will Tear Us Apart" (1980): Their most famous song, a haunting chronicle of Curtis's disintegrating marriage. It was released just weeks after his death.
4. The Tragedy of Ian Curtis
Ian Curtis suffered from severe epilepsy and depression. His health deteriorated as the band's fame grew; the strobing lights of the stage often triggered seizures during performances, which audiences sometimes mistook for a frantic dancing style.
On May 18, 1980, on the eve of the band’s first North American tour, Ian Curtis took his own life at his home in Macclesfield. He was 23 years old.
5. Legacy: New Order and Beyond
The surviving members—Sumner, Hook, and Morris—had previously agreed that if any member left, the band would change its name. Following Curtis's death, they recruited Gillian Gilbert and formed New Order.
While New Order initially carried the Joy Division gloom (on their debut Movement), they eventually shifted toward electronic dance music, becoming pioneers in their own right.
Cultural Impact
Cinema: The films 24 Hour Party People (2002) and the Ian Curtis biopic Control (2007) helped cement the band's mythology for new generations.
Fashion: The Unknown Pleasures artwork remains one of the most recognizable and reproduced images in pop culture history.
Musical Influence: Countless bands, from The Cure and U2 to Interpol and Radiohead, have cited Joy Division as a foundational influence.
A profile of Ian Curtis, the enigmatic singer of Joy Division whose personal, professional, and romantic troubles led him to commit suicide at the age of 23.
The Happy Mondays are the definitive "Baggy" band, a group that turned Salford street culture into a global musical phenomenon. They didn't just bridge the gap between indie rock and dance music; they demolished it.
The Core Lineup
Shaun Ryder (Vocals): The band's "poet laureate" of the gutter. His surreal, slang-heavy lyrics defined their sound.
Bez (Mark Berry): The "vibe master." Nominally a percussionist, his main role was "freaky dancing"—becoming the physical embodiment of the rave era.
Rowetta Satchell: Joined in 1990, providing the powerful, soulful vocals that elevated hits like "Step On."
The Musicians: Paul Ryder (Bass - deceased 2022), Gary Whelan (Drums), Mark Day (Guitar), and Paul Davis (Keyboards).
The "Big Three" Albums
Bummed (1988): Produced by Martin Hannett. A dark, druggy, psychedelic funk masterpiece.
Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches (1990): The commercial peak. Produced by Paul Oakenfold, it fused house beats with guitar pop perfectly.
Yes Please! (1992): The "record that broke Factory Records." Recorded in Barbados amidst legendary debauchery, its failure led to the label's bankruptcy.
Essential Tracks (The Baggy Playlist)
"Step On": Their most famous track, a cover of John Kongos' "He's Gonna Step On You Again."
"Kinky Afro": A groovy, funk-inflected anthem with an instantly recognizable guitar hook.
"Wrote For Luck (W.F.L.)": The song that pioneered the indie-dance crossover.
"Loose Fit": Captures the laid-back, wide-legged trouser aesthetic of the 1990s Manchester scene.
"24 Hour Party People": The song that gave the famous movie about the scene its title.
Cultural Impact: The Madchester Scene
The Mondays were the "court jesters" of the Haçienda, the legendary Manchester nightclub. While The Stone Roses were the "pretty" face of the movement, the Mondays were its gritty reality. They represented a shift in British culture where working-class "casuals" embraced electronic music and ecstasy, creating a hedonistic, inclusive party atmosphere that paved the way for Britpop.
