Tag Archives: Manchester

2023 ➤ Johnny Marr climaxes his solo career with stunning book and unique live concert

Posted on 2 Dec 2023 | Leave a comment

Live concerts, UK tour, CD, indie rock, Johnny Marr, Spirit Power, Marr’s Guitars, Aviva Studios,

Johnny Marr at 60: creating an innovative sound at Manchester’s new Aviva Studios

❚ WATCH OUT FOR two live performances of classics and fan favourites brought to life as A Night with the Johnny Marr Orchestra, a new, expanded sound as the one-time Smiths guitarist takes to the stage with a full classic orchestra on Dec 7 and 8. I shall be in Manchester (train strikes willing) to report back.

For two special performances this week at the Aviva Studios, the city’s brand-new exhibition and entertainment complex, Johnny is joined on stage by some of the best classical musicians from the North. Together, they’ll reinterpret his impressive solo catalogue currently selling as a limited double-CD titled Spirit Power which celebrates his songs, bangers, and electric shows from the past ten years, “having put myself under pressure to make singles”.

Celebrating Marr’s solo career: an impassioned photo-book and a UK tour next year

All of which trails a UK tour next spring and helps promote his chunky 288-page hardback book, Marr’s Guitars, packed with spectacular colour photos and his own passionate reflections on how his collection of more than 130 guitars has created his innovative sound. As Johnny says: “There is a human story behind these guitars. Historically, guitars do have this association with certain sounds and songs.”

The composer Hans Zimmer – with whom Johnny collaborated on the Bond soundtrack for No Time to Die – pens an impressively flattering foreword in the book, stressing that “Each artist gets their guitar to tell their personal story.” He is not talking about the sound you associate with metal guitars and a cheesy orchestra, “usually tasteless”, but in Marr’s case his own very particular and sensuous aesthetic. “The guitar lets us reveal ourselves more profoundly than words ever could,” Zimmer concludes.

➢ Final remaining tickets to Johnny’s Aviva Studios gigs this week

➢ Buy the Marr’s Guitars book, his double-CD, his earlier full-length albums and more merch here

➢ Pre-order tickets for Marr’s Spirit Power tour from 2 April 2024 via his Live pages

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Posted in books, CD, Concert, indie rock, live music, orchestra, photography, Pop music, UK tour

Tagged Aviva Studios, Hans Zimmer, Johnny Marr, Manchester, Marr’s Guitars, Spirit Power

➤ Maxine and Marr: heard the deeply serious tale about the actress and the rock star?

Posted on 11 Dec 2017 | Leave a comment

Johnny Marr, rock, theatre, film, Maxine Peake, Guardian, interview, homelessness, Royal Exchange ,working class , Manchester

Maxine Peake and Johnny Marr: “You can’t avoid homelessness in Manchester. It touched us both”

Marr: “There are so many things about being working class that never leave you entirely. A certain gratitude. A kind of humility, whether it’s forced on you or not. You could even call it guilt, I guess: working-class guilt.”

“There is a guilt, yeah,” says Peake. “A friend said to me, ‘Are you sure you’re not a Catholic? ’Cos you’re riddled with guilt.’ It’s tied up with a work ethic. You’ve got to be seen to be grafting for what you’re doing. You know what I mean? Constantly.”

➢ Today’s Guardian interview by John Harris delves into the serious stuff behind a blossoming showbiz friendship:

“ When the musician Johnny Marr met and the actor Maxine Peake in 2014, they “clicked straight away”, bonding over a mission to bring back socially conscious art. The first fruits of their partnership are now about to be released: a five-minute piece entitled The Priest, which has been turned into a short film, co-directed by Marr, set in the centre of Manchester, as a vivid first-person account of homelessness. Here they talk about shamanic rock stars, working-class guilt and how their spoken-word album about homelessness strives to be a modern Cathy Come Home. . .

Marr says of Peake at one point: “I’ve actually met someone who probably works even more than me, if that’s possible,” and Peake’s résumé suggests he’s not wrong. Next year will see the release of Funny Cow, in which she stars as a female standup trying to push her way through the grimness of 70s Britain, as well as the staging at the Royal Exchange of Queens of the Coal Age, the play Peake has written about the true story of four women resisting the closure of a Yorkshire coalmine. . . ”

PLUS MARR ON THE M-WORD

“ Marr says he was “crushed and heartbroken” by the vote for Brexit, whereas his former creative partner Morrissey seemed to rejoice in it. Though Marr has remained firmly on the political left, Morrissey now seems to champion the reactionary right. “I’ve stayed the same. I’ve never changed. But … people tend to forget that it was 30 years ago that we were in a band together. Stop and think about it: 30 years. It’s a long time. So I honestly don’t care very much. . . ” / Continued at The Guardian online

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Posted in class system, Culture, Film, interviews, Politics, rock music, Social trends, theatre, zeitgeist

Tagged Guardian, homelessness, Johnny Marr, Manchester, Maxine Peake, Royal Exchange

➤ Taste Masters throw another party to show Cowell there’s real music up North

Posted on 16 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment

Taste Masters 3 , Laboratory Project, Fac251, albums, live concert,Saturday Night Gym Club,

Electronics: Saturday Night Gym Club

Taste Masters 3 , Laboratory Project, Fac251, albums, live concert,Twin Planets

New wave: Twin Planets

❚ THE PRESTON-BASED Laboratory Project is “a utopian vision” as an antidote to the reign of Simon Cowell’s production-line X-Factor performers. The label and studio aims to support artists with integrity, skill and soul to break into the music industry. A new album Taste Masters 3 is being launched tomorrow, Dec 17, at Manchester’s Fac251 venue with seven acts from the north-west promoting the album release on Jan 1.

Shapersofthe80s featured the Lab and its founder Tony Rigg when an earlier album Taste Masters 2 launched last spring, presenting Dresden, The Salford Jets, China White, Jimmy Docherty, Antistar, Super 8 Cynics … Last autumn the original album Taste Masters 1 included Drama King, Evenhand, Fez, Helvelyn 2, Osiris — both albums are still available for download.

Taste Masters 3 , Laboratory Project, Fac251, albums, live concert,Pangaea

Contemporary rock: Pangaea

The Laboratory project is promoting tomorrow’s showcase as a “World Class Live Music Event” featuring these acts:

➢ MC Tunes — seminal British rap artist performing hits and new material

➢ Salford Jets — hard-hitting punk flavoured rock from the Mancunian institution founded 1976

➢ Saturday Night Gym Club — electronic story-telling from Radio 1 favourites

➢ Two Weeks Running — epochal guitar music at its finest

➢ Twin Planets — alternative/ new wave future classics

➢ Pangaea — fusing classic and contemporary rock since 2009

➢ Drew Smith — unplugged acoustic musical delights

Taste Masters 3 , Laboratory Project, Fac251, albums, live concert,Two Weeks Running

Guitar champs: Two Weeks Running

➢ Taste Masters 3 album launch party, Dec 17 from 7.30pm at Fac251, Princess Street  Manchester,  M1 7EN. Tickets £6 at Factory website

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Posted in Media, Pop music, Youth culture

Tagged albums, Drew Smith, FAC251, Laboratory Project, live concert, Manchester, MC Tunes, Pangaea, Salford Jets, Saturday Night Gym Club, Taste Masters 3, Twin Planets, Two Weeks Running

➤ “It will happen again” says London teenager who predicted riots

Posted on 12 Aug 2011 | Leave a comment

Chavez Campbell ,video, Guardian.co.uk, London riots,

Chavez Campbell today: “I’m an outcast because everyone is doing crime and I’m trying to stay on the straight and narrow.” (Guardian video)

➢ View today’s video in which Chavez tours his neighbourhood: “I did predict a riot. The government should have seen it coming”

❚ A WEEK BEFORE LONDON EXPLODED with the most shocking violence in memory, 18-year-old Chavez Campbell predicted the reaction to cuts in local youth services. “There’ll be riots,” he said in a video interview [below] for Guardian Online six days before they actually occurred. He and other young Londoners were describing the bleakness of their daily lives.

Campbell, who has recently left college and is struggling to find a job, does not condone rioting but does represent a voice that has been rarely heard in the maelstrom of recent days. He saw the riots explode, but went home to stay safe. Today Guardian Online publishes a second video interview in which he expresses further concern: “I don’t think it’s over. Because everyone came together and created this massive war zone, I think it will happen again.”

➢ Read today’s report on Chavez Campbell’s views at The Guardian: Riots not condoned by Campbell but says youths with no jobs, no money and no future were ripe for causing mayhem

➢ View the July 31 Guardian video about Haringey youth club closures: “There’ll be riots”

Chavez Campbell six days before the riots: “There’ll be riots” (Guardian credits: Cameron Robertson, Alexandra Topping and Elliot Smith)

UK riots, bbc, video, chris buckler, looting,

Manchester city centre: as arrests continue, police appeal for help. (BBC video)

❏ The police are asking for people to shop those who destroyed and looted stores across the country [above]… Trouble is, as witnesses point out, “there’s no worse crime than grassing” … and “They’ve given out sentences of four months and six months, it’s farcical. In four weeks’ time those people will be out on tag anyway. There’s no point sending them to prison.”
➢ BBC News video August 12: Suspects appear in court

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Posted in London, Media, Politics, Social trends, Youth culture

Tagged 2011, Chavez Campbell, Interview, looting, Manchester, UK riots, Video, youth services

2011 ➤ The ghosts of Fac and Hac walk tall again

Posted on 16 May 2011 | Leave a comment

Hacienda, Manchester, clubbing, Tony Wilson, Peter Hook, Factory Records

The Hacienda today: the former nightclub’s dancefloor is a carpark beneath a block of flats. Click image to run rare video footage as Tony’s son Oliver Wilson reflects on the legacy of his father’s nightclub

❚ BIG NEWS OUT OF MANCHESTER, recently named the UK’s live music capital by the PRS. After a week or two of wrinkles comes a smart new website and the very clear announcement: “Haçienda Records is the official digital label of FAC51 The Haçienda and based exclusively at fac51thehacienda.com. Crossing all forms of indie and dance genres, the label has initially been an outlet to publish the output of Peter Hook but with the new revamp and full establishment of the label, Haçienda Records is also gearing up to release new and established artists on a monthly basis.”

❏ May 18–28, 2011 — Haçienda Records launches its new website with an exhibition of original memorabilia titled The Haçienda Then and Now, at the Richard Goodall Gallery in Manchester. Some FAC51 artworks on show are for sale at the gallery, along with original club posters.

Ben Kelly, Hacienda club, Manchester, clubbing, Peter Hook

Industrial light and magic: Ben Kelly’s design for the Haçienda interior in its heyday — plus that treacherous step onto (or off!) the dancefloor. Two views, idealised as silkscreen prints by Morph & Ben Kelly 2011, available through paulstolper.com

MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS TO PREVIEW AND PURCHASE

❏ Haçienda Records initiates a new cataloguing series that starts with HAC 001, Man Ray’s Summer 88 EP (Jan 2010). The new website contains all Man Ray and Freebass releases to date, plus Basement Jaxx, 808 State and many other Factory mixes.

❏ Man Ray’s new EP Tokyo Joe (Hac 006), released exclusively on the website, is a reworking of the version made for the opening of The Factory club in Manchester in February 2010.

❏ The Light’s debut EP 1102 /2011 is released May 16.

❏ Graeme Park, the Haçienda’s resident Saturday night deejay in the 80s, contributes a mix of classic and modern acid house and disco, as Then Haçienda Now, plus his Vinyl Fixation Vol 1.

❏ “Mancunian Rock Royalty” Hooky and Rowetta presided over world premieres of The Light’s rendition of Atmosphere and the unreleased Joy Division track Pictures In My Mind Friday on BBC 6 Music’s Radcliffe And Maconie Show, April 29.

❏ Haçienda Record’s releases for June and July are Humanizer’s This Tiny Universe EP, and Richie G’s Baum…./Titten, a double header of German and underground resistance-style instrumental techno.

Artists who wish to send material for consideration
should e-mail artists [at] fac51thehacienda.com

PETER HOOK ON THE FOLLY OF FACTORY

24-Hour Party People, Michael Winterbottom,Factory Records, movie trailer,

Face of Factory: Steve Coogan plays Tony Wilson in the all too ironic docu-drama, 24-Hour Party People

❚ BASSIST PETER HOOK was a co-founder of the rock band Joy Division in 1976, originally named Warsaw, with vocalist Ian Curtis, guitarist Bernard Sumner and drummer Stephen Morris. After the death of Curtis in 1980, the band reformed as New Order. Joy Division’s debut album, Unknown Pleasures, was released in 1979 on Tony Wilson’s nascent label Factory Records, the story of which became the most priceless rollercoaster ride in UK rock history. The label attracted a roster of idiosyncratic acts, plus luminous talents such as graphic designer Peter Saville and architect Ben Kelly who created the landmark nightclub the Hacienda, which opened 29 years ago next Saturday, dubbed with its product number FAC51, and with Hook as co-owner. All are parodied in Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, and some feature in Anton Corbijn’s 2007 film Control about the life of Curtis.

In 2009 Hook told the tale of FAC51, in The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club, in a very personal memoir of the 80s which is far sadder, funnier, scarier and stranger than anyone could imagine. The Sunday Times Culture review called him “a born anecdotalist”. i-D has an interview here. In 2010, Hook opened a new venue in Manchester, FAC251, in the former office of Factory Records designed by Kelly. This week the digital record label follows.