Factory Records - Communications 1978-1992 (4CD)

No es una reedición de "Palatine", pero casi...

Recopilado por Jon Savage, con textos de Paul Morley y artwork por Peter Seville

Description:Rhino.co.uk pre-order offer! The first 100 orders will receive a free roll of exclusive Factory Records tape - FAC136!

Available to pre-order, shipping from 12th January 2009

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Factory, Manchester’s most well known record label, Rhino records UK is pleased to announce the release of “Factory Records: Communications 1978-92”. Founded in 1978 when former Granada TV presenter Tony Wilson teamed up with Alan Erasmus, an unemployed actor and band manager, soon to be joined by maverick producer Martin Hannett, The Factory name was first used for a club featuring local bands including The Durutti Column, Cabaret Voltaire and Joy Division. The founder members of the label decided to release an EP of music by the acts who had performed there; “A Factory Sample” - and Factory Records was born. The first album on the label was Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures', which produced the hit single 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. Lead singer Ian Curtis tragically committed suicide, but the rest of the band renamed themselves New Order. In 1981 Factory and New Order converted a former yacht showroom into The Hacienda nightclub and, to complete the achievement, had Bernard Manning perform the official opening, Factory was however much more than just it’s headline acts. “A Factory Box Set” celebrates the label from the first release “A Factory Sample” through an extremely diverse roster of acts from the cutting edge post punk of A Certain Ratio, Cabaret Voltaire, The Railway Children, OMD, James and Joy Division to obscurities such as Section 25, Biting Tongues, Crispy Ambulance, Miaow and Swamp Children via early dance culture - ESG and 52nd Street, to the full flowering of the ‘Madchester scene’, ending fittingly with the last Factory release, “Sunshine and Love” by Happy Mondays. Nothing if not idiosyncratic, Factory was also known for the way it catalogued its assets - all the records had catalogue numbers beginning with FAC, but everything else connected to the label came under the same system. So the poster advertising the nightclub was FAC1, the Hacienda's cat was FAC191, the office sellotape was FAC136 and a bet between two of the partners was even given the number FAC253.

The Smiths singles box (Rhino Uk - 2008)

Rhino UK are proud to present “Singles Box”: a clamshell card box containing the first ten UK-issued singles in their original picture sleeves. What makes this particularly special is the two singles which are exclusive to this box set: These unique inclusions are the projected fourth single - “Still Ill” (which was pressed only as DJ promo “A” label) but was ultimately passed over and replaced by “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” along side the Dutch release of “The Headmaster Ritual” housed in it’s black & white “cowboy” sleeve – the rarest commercially issued Smiths’ single in any territory. The box is completed with four contemporary badges, a poster featuring the single artworks as well as an authentication certificate that contains a unique redemption code for mp3 downloads of the tracks. An absolute must have item for Smiths‘ fans, and limited to 10,000 copies only. All singles utilise the original production masters from the period. The front cover image of the box was personally chosen by Morrissey. It features Joel Fabiani from the 1969 TV series "Department S", starring Peter Wyndgarde, Joel Fabiani and Rosemary Nicols.


1. 7" #1 (Originally Released November 1983) Hand in Glove
2. Handsome Devil (Live)

1. 7" #2 (Originally Released November 1983) This Charming Man
2. Jeane

1. 7" #3 (Originally Released January 1984) What Difference Does It Make?
2. Back To The Old House

1. 7" #4 (Previously Unreleased Commercially) Still Ill
2. You’ve Got Everything Now

1. 7" #5 (Originally Released May 1984) Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now
2. Suffer Little Children

1. 7" #6 (Originally Released September 1984) William, It Was Really Nothing
2. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

1. 7" #7 (Originally Released February 1985) How Soon Is Now?
2. Well I Wonder

1. 7" #8 (Originally Released March 1985) Shakespeare's Sister
2. What She Said

1. 7" #9 (Originally Only Released In Holland) The Headmaster Ritual
2. Oscillate Wildly

1. 7" #10 (Originally Released July 1985) That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore
2. Meat Is Murder (Live)

1. 7" #11 (Originally Released September 1985) The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
2. Asleep

1. 7" #12 (Originally Released May 1986) Bigmouth Strikes Again
2. Money Changes Everything

Limited to 10,000 boxsets worldwide.

The Smiths' Singles Box is a clamshell card box containing the first ten UK-issued singles in their original picture sleeves.

Two singles in this box are exclusive to this box set, the projected 4th single - Still Ill (which was pressed as DJ promo 'A' label singles, but ultimately got passed over and replaced by Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now), presented in its original form, and the Dutch release of The Headmaster Ritual housed in its black and white "cowboy" sleeve – the rarest commercially issued single in any territory.

The box is completed with four contemporary badges and a poster featuring the single artworks. All singles utilise the original production masters from the period.

Mike Alway en The Guardian - "Music to watch soufflés by él Records" by Rob Fitzpatrick (28-11-08)

Gracias a Federica Pulla me entero que The Guardian publicó este excelente artículo sobre Mike Alway el pasado 28-11-2008 (anonadado me he quedado con lo de Belter...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/nov/28/el-records-mike-alway

Music to watch soufflés by

El Records is probably the most English label there has ever been. It never made any money, but it had a thrillingly sly, subversive style. Rob Fitzpatrick welcomes its return

Mike Alway is an exemplary pop theorist because he really, really cares. He will talk about the Archies' Sugar Sugar as passionately as he talks about the records of Jean Cocteau and Peter Cook. In Alway's mind, a good record is a good record is a good record. El, the record label he founded from within the Cherry Red indie empire in the mid-1980s, had a style, an aesthetic and an attitude that one can barely imagine anyone else even daring to attempt. Probably the most innately English record label there has ever been, it was as devoted to great British film-makers and satirists as it was to anything as workaday as pop groups. It never made Alway (or anyone else) much money, but more than 20 years after its first wave of releases were selling just a few hundred copies each in Britain, its sharply delineated pop projects still provoke interest from around the world. And now Alway has reinvented El, turning it into a daring and stylish reissue label that is driven by his desires to save and promote great forgotten music.
"I originally came to the record industry as an enthusiast," says Alway, sitting in his sunny front room in Richmond, south-west London. "And part of what enthused me was mystery. I imagined in my green innocence that other people felt the same way."
Alway came to Cherry Red in 1980, when label founder Iain McNay hired him as an A&R man. Within a couple of years he'd signed indie royalty in the form of Felt, the Monochrome Set and the Marine Girls (Tracey Thorn's first group) and put together the ground-breaking Pillows and Prayers compilation. Alway's signings dominated the UK indie scene for three years before was tempted away to set up the the first indie-within-a-major, the Warner offshoot Blanco y Negro, with Rough Trade's Geoff Travis, taking Thorn's newly formed Everything But the Girl with him. But he soon realised he didn't have the patience to work for a company that took so long to make any sort of decision, and that being at his bands' beck and call held little or no appeal.
Alway left Blanco and started planning a new label. Much time was spent listening to classical music and watching Powell and Pressburger films. "I sensed a way of applying what they did to music. In Powell's books he describes a production team with someone firmly at the helm. I began to see that you could cast a musical project like you would a film or a play."
The label began in a fairly conventional manner. Alway signed Nick Currie in his Momus guise, and Bid from the Monochrome Set, but when Currie left to sign to Creation, Alway changed direction and began to look for the artists who would become the characters that would populate the label. It was less A&R work than a casting process.
One of Alway's first castings was Simon Fisher Turner, a man whose life story includes child stardom in Tom Brown's Schooldays, taking Robert Mitchum to see Siouxsie and the Banshees, being "the new David Cassidy" on Jonathan King's record label and playing bass for Adam and the Ants. "I was making music in gallery spaces," says Turner, now a respected soundtrack composer. "But no one was really interested in a guy bagging up handmade cassettes with small bits of art and one-off collections of sweets and postcards and cheap toys. I wrote Mike a letter and sent him a cassette. He returned one to me fairly promptly and I went up to their office. He offered me a job [recording] as the King of Luxembourg there and then - I liked that. Instant. Very Jarman."
They agreed that Alway could manipulate the work musically and aesthetically as he saw fit and the "King" was dressed by Berman's & Nathan's, costumiers to the London stage for more than 200 years. "He also banned any use of the bass guitar," says Turner. "But having been through a humiliating musical experience with Jonathan King as a kid, it was a delight to have a second chance with Mike. He was a complete control freak, but this control was actually very broad and, perversely, adventurous. There was a lot of fun to be had on El - dressing up's always a gas."
The artists weren't the only thing that was dressed up: the look of El was developed through hours spent in junk shops looking at hundreds of old LPs. "These were all the records that people didn't want any more, despite them looking fucking incredible," Alway says. "Everything El was came from a Spanish record label called Belter - if you look at their sleeves you will see El. The only thing I added was this late 50s, early 60s classical music aesthetic. I darkened the atmosphere slightly, to make everything seem more complex."
El revelled in its thrillingly sly upper-class style. His artists weren't knuckle-dragging gangs from rough backstreets: they were presented as languorous Vogue models, archbishops' daughters, royalty. There were songs about the British Empire, soufflés, choirboys and stately homes, but there was never the merest whiff of snobbery, just the crisp, lemony cologne of a delicious privilege shared.
As Momus would later say of El: "Although it sounds like 'pa-pa-pa' and songs about 'high tea on my country estate', it's actually a blast against almost everybody in Britain."
"I used to buy lots of anachronistic magazines and trawl them for song titles," Always says. "I got the King's Turban Disturbance from a column in the Spectator. Cookbooks were good, too. People hadn't written songs about trivial things like soufflés, everything was drowned in this awful bombast. I wanted to move pop music's vernacular on a bit. We were anticipating a Britain yet to come, a more stylish place in line with the Italian and Spanish culture I loved."
In 1987, Time Out put El in the list of things that were going to be big in 1988 - "Us and Tottenham Hotspur!" laughs Alway - but press interest didn't add up to any sales in Britain. However, in Japan, El releases were selling between 8,000 and 15,000 each. El was as pretty and as disposable as Japan's own pop culture - everything the UK press and radio disliked was precisely what Japan loved. The influence El had on "J-pop" and musicians such as Cornelius and Pizzicato 5 was enormous, while Kahimi Karie would have a hit in 1992 with a song called Mike Alway's Diary. But time was running out for the first incarnation of El. The losses were too great to sustain, and the label was closed.
In the mid-90s, Alway started to get letters from America about El, and plans were hatched to revive the imprint. He knew Cherry Red wouldn't want to invest heavily in new, untested music, so he went back to the LPs that inspired him in the first place. The new incarnation of El means near-forgotten recordings by Sabu ("The Elephant Boy") and Orson Welles, Roy Budd and Al "Jazzbo" Collins, Stravinsky and the Ink Spots. The majority of these artefacts date from a time when it seemed perfectly reasonable to lavish skill and money on an LP of questionable commercial appeal, and each one feeds neatly into Always' master vision of a better world where people dress more tastefully, read more widely, think more deeply and take an interest in the world outside their immediate environs. Four wonderfully odd CDs are released every month, each selling between 1,000 and 3,000 copies. Each is a gem.
"We put a lot of effort in the packaging and the sound quality," says McNay. "We do things properly, we pay the publishing, the MCPS to the writers, we make payments to a charity that helps ageing musicians. We're sensitive to where we get the sound from. Ultimately, we just want to put out interesting records."
"There is a definite correlation between the original El and where we are now," Alway says, making another cup of tea. "These records informed the original El - we are somewhere between beat, meaning beat poetry, and the hipsters, jazz and the embryonic pop of the late 50s. For me, and for El, there is a future based on the glorious failures of the past. All these amazing records that are so close to being forgotten and there are so many of them. It's not easy, there are economic difficulties to face, but walking on thin ice keeps a man on his toes."

Foto: extraida del blog de Momus (http://imomus.livejournal.com/2004/11/30/)

Más sobre Mike Alway: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Lounge/4156/m_alway.html

Music legends Orange Juice together again 26 years after split

http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/tv-showbiz-news/music-news/2008/10/26/music-legends-orange-juice-together-again-26-years-after-split-78057-20840168/

Oct 26 2008 By Billy Sloan
THE legendary Orange Juice are getting back together for the first time in 26 years to receive a top music award.
The band will get together next month to be honoured by Nordoff-Robbins Scotland.
It will be an emotional reunion after singer Edwyn Collins almost died from a brain haemorrhage in 2005.
The charity raises money to fund music therapists and Edwyn benefited from Nordoff-Robbins' painstaking work during his long road to recovery.
Edwyn, 49, said: "I'm very flattered.
It's all part of the renaissance of Orange Juice. I have fond memories of the band and am looking forward to seeing them all again."
The original Orange Juice line-up - Edwyn, bassist David McClymont, guitarist James Kirk and drummer Steven Daly - formed in 1979.
Over three years they released four singles, Falling And Laughing, Blue Boy, Simply Thrilled Honey and Poor Old Soul, on indie label Postcard Records.
Their debut album You Can't Hide Your Love Forever peaked at No.21.
The band have influenced hundreds of acts such as The Smiths, Franz Ferdinand and Belle And Sebastian.
David, 48, said: "Orange Juice were a dysfunctional bunch of people whose career was a roller-coaster ride.
"We went from being an act nobody was interested in to one of the biggest indie bands in the UK.
"We really needed a level-headed manager but, if anything, Postcard founder Alan Horne was even crazier than we were. It took years for me to realise I'd been part of something so important musically.
"Now with the endorsement of Franz Ferdinand it's almost come full circle.
It's the end of a journey in a way."
Steven said: "Orange Juice set rolling a multi-million pound industry and completely reshaped Glasgow's self image.
That wasn't easy.
"We were self aware enough to realise our records were making history."
David met Edwyn at Glasgow College of Printing in 1977. Steven and James had been school mates at Bearsden Academy.
David said: "When I first saw Edwyn I thought he was an interesting looking guy. He asked me to join his band even though I couldn't play an instrument.
"He taught me bass guitar two weeks before our first gig at Glasgow School of Art on April 20, 1979."
Steven, 48, had spotted Edwyn on a Glasgow bus a year earlier.
Steven said: "He was reading Melody Maker - the wrong thing to do at the time - but he was wearing a Buddy Holly badge. I thought he looked pretty cool.
"He played me his record collection. It was full of Velvet Underground, Nico and David Bowie."
It will be the first time the band have been together since 1982. They were devastated when Edwyn fell ill three years ago.
He battled back to health and released solo album Home Again last year.
David said: "It's amazing what he's achieved since his illness. That's why it's important for us to get together."
James and Steven had left by the time the band had their biggest hit Rip It Up in 1983.
The reunion will bring back fond memories.
Steven said: "In 1981, we played the Bungalow Bar in Paisley, supported by Aztec Camera.
"We were getting great national press but had no idea if anybody in Glasgow even cared.
"We rolled up and saw hundreds of art school kids queuing outside. That's when I knew something was happening."
Joe Aitken of award sponsor Glasgow City Marketing Bureau said: "Orange Juice are fantastic ambassadors for the city, both as musicians and style icons.
"We're delighted to recognise one of Scotland's greatest bands."
THE original line-up of Orange Juice have not been on stage together since splitting in 1982. Here we catch up on what they have been doing since then.
JAMES KIRK
WROTE two of Orange Juice's most famous songs - Felicity and Wan Light.
When the guitarist and drummer Steven left Orange Juice in 1982, they formed a new group called Memphis and released one single, You Supply The Roses.
He wrote songs with Paul Haig and The Independent Group before leasing a solo album, You Can Make If You Boogie, in 2003.
James later quit the music business and is now a chiropodist with a actice in Glasgow.
STEVEN DALY
IN 1989, Steven moved to New York where he lives with wife Kirsten. They are expecting their first child in January.
He is a contributing editor for US glossy Vanity Fair and travels the world on assignments.
Steven has interviewed Madonna, David Beckham, Jim Carey and Johnny Depp. He said: "I interviewed Becks while he played for Real Madrid.
"Posh - who was wearing just a pink bikini - lay on a towel just 12 feet from me sunbathing during our chat at their Spanish home."
DAVID McCLYMONT
IN 1984, David - of Girvan - emigrated to Australia where he lives with wife Janet near Melbourne.
He is a writer for the respected Lonely Planet travel guides and played bass with Kylie Minogue on an Aussie TV pop show.
David, 49, said: "I moved to Australia to escape the music business. I didn't realise Orange Juice were famous 11,000 miles from home.
"Sydney was full of Postcard Records' obsessives so I suddenly got invited to a lot of dinner parties and it opened many doors for me."
EDWYN COLLINS
NOW lives in London with wife and manager Grace and their teenages on William.
He wrote Rip It Up which reached No.8 in the charts in 1983. It was to be Orange Juice's biggest hit when they continued with a new line-up.
When the group disbanded two years later, he pursued a solo career which included hit 1994 single A Girl Like You, later covered by Rod Stewart.
He is also a record producer having worked on albums by The Proclaimers and The Cribs.
Earlier this year, Edwyn played his first UK concerts since his illness.

Bill Drummond - "The Man" (LP 1985 - Creation)

Este disco lo pinchaba mucho el Albi. Atención no sólo a "The King of Joy" -el single- sino también a la spectoriana "I Want That Girl".

Bill Drummond - The Man5 stars

HE USED to be a deep sea trawlerman, used to manage the Bunnymen and the Teardrops and had the dubious honour of playing with Holly Johnson in seminal Liverpool compbo, Big In Japan. And now as he turns 33 and a third, he releases his testimony, ‘The Man’, a long playing record. When managing the Bunnymen, Drummond had a fascination with ley lines that led him to send the band on a tour that began in the Scottish Isles and ended in Iceland. Perhaps it’s this familiarity with the supernatural that allows him to release his album to coincide with the resurgence of Julian Cope and thus attract much publicity with the track ‘Julian Cope Is Dead’. This composition combines Drummond’s plea for Copey to commit suicide as a publicity stunt with the Bagpuss theme, and is every bit as funny as it sounds. Not that ‘The Man’ should be regarded as some adjunct to the career of everybody’s favourite Tamworth sex god. This album, which crosses the eccentricities of Ivor Cutler with the rock ‘n’ roll fascinations of Kim Fowley, is a touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement. Recorded with The Triffids and Voice Of The Beehive in a village hall in his native Galloway, ‘The Man’ veers between Scottish jigs and Phil Spectorisms. ‘I Want That Girl’ is a breathless tale of love forgotten, ‘I’m The King Of Joy’ a ridiculously optimistic account of his lust for life: “I’ve a heart like a Viking, and faith like a child/ Have you ever heard the song ‘Born To Be Wild’?” And the lynchpin, ‘I Believe In Rock & Roll’, is an eloquent exposition on Bill’s primary fascination. ‘The Man’ is a work of humble genius: the best kind.

ROY WILKINSON (Sounds - November 1985)

"Bill's my pal, but I thought his record would be crap. He gave a cassette to me and I didn't play it for ages. Then I put it on when I was I the bath one night, I nearly drowned I laughed for about half an hour. It s the work of a complete nutter"

ALAN MCGEE

Peter Astor and The Holy Road - "Paradise" LP (Danceteria - 1992)

También he conseguido este lp de Peter Astor que tengo en vinilo (en su día lo compré en Delsur) pero que deseaba obtener para tener en mp3 esa gran canción que es "Almost Falling in Love", su canción más pop que casi casi podría firmar LLoyd Cole. Fue el penúltimo coletazo de una carrera que pasó muy desapercibida hasta tal punto que terminó editándose a través de un sello francés....

The Weather Prophets - "Why Does The Rain" y "She Comes From The Rain" (Elevation 12" - 1987)

Hoy he conseguido los dos maxis que editaron The Weather Prophets para Elevation (la subsidiaria de Wea que acogió a proyectos de Alan McGee). "She Comes From The Rain" viene con 3 temas, dos de ellos versiones ("Who By Fire" de Leonard Cohen y "You Upset..." de Tim Hardin; las dos -la verdad- bastante flojitas) y "Why Does The Rain" con tres temas extras también, entre ellos la maravillosa "Midnight Mile" (¡temazo!), que sólo tenía en la versión BBC que incluyeron en el recopilatorio "Temperance Hotel". Todo lo que publicaron en Elevation permanece inédito en versión cd, excepto el lp que se editó en Japón. He leído en algunos foros que varios sellos indies han intentado conseguir los derechos de estas grabaciones -al igual que otros grupos similares que grabaron en multinacionales como The Bodines- pero les piden más de 12.000 euros en la mayoría de los casos...

Tracey Thorn on The Marine Girls (Caught in Flux Fanzine - Number Two - January 1994) PARTE 1

Esta es una carta que Tracey Thorn escribió a Elisabeth Vincentelli dándole respuesta a sus preguntas sobre la carrera de The Marine Girls y que puiblicó el estupendo zine neoyorkino Caught in Flux

Tracey Thorn on The Marine Girls (Caught in Flux Fanzine - Number Two - January 1994) 2ª PARTE

Esta es una carta que Tracey Thorn escribió a Elisabeth Vincentelli dándole respuesta a sus preguntas sobre la carrera de The Marine Girls y que puiblicó el estupendo zine neoyorkino Caught in Flux

St Christopher (Les Inrockuptibles, nª54, Avril 1994)