Noise of Resistance # 2

[stuhuggett]

Copies of this fairly pointless 'zine are still available, so what's going up on this thread currently are just excerpts.

[stuhuggett]

A talk about 24 Hour Party People, given 29th October '02 at Electric Palace, 39a High Street, Hastings.

Hello, I've been given 10 minutes to introduce 24 Hour Party People to you this evening. the film covers the rise and fall of Factory Records, home to Joy Division, new Order and the Happy Mondays, and the part it played during the various peaks and troughs of the Manchester music scene, from the late 70's to the early 90's. Factory went into receivership on November 24th 1992, due to a combinationof bad luck and bad financial management. That 10 years later we should be here to watch a film about a record label that now only has minor cult appeal is a testament to the impact that it's music and ways of operating had on the production team and cast of this film. For those of us with an interest in the present and future of the arts in Hastings, there are relevant reminders in the film of the problems that can accompany the cultural and financial expansion of a city or region.
My reasons for wanting to introduce this film are that since being a fan of New Order at school (they're always my favourite band), their attitude and that of the Factory label has exerted a strong influence on my own participation in the music scene here. It's worth pointing out, though, that I have no major involvement with any of the arts in Hastings. Despite sporadic, minor achievments in the creation and promotion of music here, I tend to just scarbble around on the margins, absorbing as much information as I can, and regurgitating it in possibly inaccurate forms and theories, rather like I'm doing now.
As we will see at the beginning of this movie, the catalyst for activating the various chracters in Manchester to realise their creativity was the appearance of the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall on June 4th 1976. Along with other key events in this film, actual footage shot on that night is edited into the movie alongside reconstructions. The Pistols' Manchester debut was organised by Howard Devote and Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks, who became one of the first bands of that era to record and press their debut single on their own New Hormones label in early 1977. This example of independence was a huge influence on many bands and labels back then, which would include Factory. Buzzcocks subsequently signed with United Artists, part of the company that would eventually finance this film. Like Factory later, United Artists studios suffered massive financial collapse in the early 1980's after overspending on Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. Whether that got noted during this film's production I can't say, but there's some irony for you.
The changes brought about by punk had been fully absorbed into the music industry ten years later, when I was becoming seriously interested in the dreams and possibilities of pop. However, Factory Records and New Order had continued developing new directions in music and design, as I began discovering when I fell in love with the idea of New Order at school. As my friends and I searched through record stores for music and information on our favourite bands, the media was gearing up to highlight Manchester as the centre of a marketable youth culture. We just carried on digging up music by Manchester acts including The Fall, Happy Mondays, A Guy Called Gerald, The Smiths, 808 State, The Stone Roses and A Certain Ratio, amongst many others, not realising how the media were pointing us in this direction. We were marvelling at the music we were turning up, imagining a mythical Manchester of energy and creativity, that became the Madchester celebrated in the second half of this film. Celebration, in fact, was the title of a 1990 Granada documentary on Madchester by Steve Lock, footage from which also turns up in this film. This documentary crystallised the mythic Manchester in the minds of my friends. The fact that these bands were putting out all sorts of distinct, original and modern music on independent labels away from London, and even had their own club, the Hacienda, to go to, was the inspiration that made us want to form the first of our many bands that year. This was closely followed by inventing our own record labels, putting on gigs in each other's houses, designing posters to try and kick-start a scene, and filming our bands at any opportunity that arose. After the media moved on, and Factory had gone under, we continued to put on gigs, festivals and club nights, right up to the present day.
24 Hour Party People attempts to illustrate the freedoms and inspirational qualities of Factory Records during it's heyday. In his sleevenotes to the soundtrack album, Tony Wilson claims the film was made so that its creators could explore their passion for music, from punk through to acid house; two scenes a decade apart that were huge in Manchester. In an interview with Stephen Dalton in Uncut magazine, producer Andrew Eaton confirms this, saying "Our interest in the story is because we love the music, we love the era, and we love what Factory did.(1)" In the same article, director Michael Winterbottom states "We decided that if we were going to make it, we should make it in the spirit of Factory, and part of that spirit is mythologising itself.(2)" This is important, because, in a break with his previous films, Winterbottom employs many post-modern devices in this mythologising. Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson character frequently turns to the audience, idicates to us that certain scenes may or may not be true, discusses the making of the film and it's possible future, introduces us to the real Tony Wilson (amongst other cameos), and ends up debating the preceding story with a manifestation of himself on the roof of the Hacienda. These devices serve to mix-up what may otherwise have turned out to be a more cliched sex, drugs and, well, not exactly rock&roll story. The fact that the elements of chance in the Factory story were interpreted by the protagonists as having a theoretical background in Situationist writings is only alluded to briefly in the film, but a useful exploration of this background is made by former Hacienda DJ John McCready in Dazed and Confused magazine. In this article, Factory designer and partner Peter Saville says of their achievments "We picked up the clues that had been left for us by a previous generation, without even realising it at the time. And if they were right - and they were - then these things were bound to happen.(3)" The fact is that the story of Factory Records becomes another clue for those that come after, to show ways to create a thriving youth culture, if the timing is right. In a speech towards the end of the movie, the Wilson character encourages the Hacienda crowd to liberate the contents of the club for their own creative ends. It is the call to action that punk gave the Factory staff and musicians, repeated to inspire a subsequent generation to bloom.
As I previously mentioned, the idea of following you instincts, and creating situations to encourage artistic activity, greatly influenced the efforts of my friends and I to contribute to the music scene in Hastings. However, we generally failed to convince anyone that Hastings was worth much more thatn a glance for underground musical activity. Part of the problem we found was that, sooner or later, the muscians, if they don't give up or turn to the pub circuit, often move to London, or more commonly Brighton, for the greater opportunities there. A check of the recent music press will reveal signs that those who have gone to Brighton in the last few years may have made the right choiue for the moment, as the media spotlight is being trained on that city. Musicians in Brighton are certainly aware of this, and are frantically forming bands in anticipation of chances coming their way. Hastings creatively has close links with Brighton, and what looks set to be a media-fuelled expansion of that city's art scenes may have a knock-on effect to us here.
Even if this is not the case, Hastings is undergoing its own social and artistic renewal; this film festival is emblematic of that fact. However, like Manchester and many cities and towns, Hastings has a great number of social problems in areas such as employment and housing. 24 Hour Party People illustrates how the blossoming of Mancunian talent and wealth brought elements of the city's social problems into the open; as extortion, drugs and guns helped bring down both Factory and the Hacienda. When there's large anounts of money being generated and spent in a town, there are always some types of criminals wanting a cut of it too. If we accept that a renaissance may happen in this town, we've also got to expect an increase in these dangers, and be prepared for them somehow.
One final diversion. In an uncomfortable scene, Simon Pegg appears as a journalist visiting a chapel of rest. Referred to as 'Michael' in the film, Tony Wilson's own novelisation of the script clarifies his identity as Paul Morley. If you've seen Paul Morley on Late Review for instance, you'll recognise him in Pegg's performance. In 1993 Morley directed the definitive documentary on New Order for the South Bank Show. It's screening co-incided to the hour with New Order's appearance at the Reading Festival, their last British gig for five years. My friends and I went. The documentary, titled Neworderstory, was released on video, and is well-worth tracking down as an accompaniment to 24 Hour Party People. When New Order resumed playing in 1998, they appeared at Reading Festival again. My friends and I were there too. A short clip of New Order encoring with their 1990 number one World in Motion appears in this film. Somewhere in amongst the pixels are me and my friends, though admittedly some of them are walking away from the stage in order to avoid the football song. This is probably as close as any of my social group will ever get to sppearing with our heroes, but it still makes us happy.
Thank you.

Quotes:
'Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches', Stephen Dalton, Uncut 59, April 2002, p40 (1), p38 (2).
'24 Hour Arty People', John McCready, Dazed and Confused 85, January 2002, p99 (3).