Entertainment For Lively Minds
Plaque erected at the site of The Haçienda..but can you guess what for?
Posted by Dr Volume on 5 November 2011 - 2:38am.
Walking back to the office earlier this week I noticed a small crowd gathered outside the apartment block which now stands on the site of the legendary Haçienda nightclub in Manchester. There were cameras and a TV crew, and I could see that there were small curtains affixed to the wall and a plaque had been unveiled.
So, Massive, can you guess who, or what the plaque was commemorating?
(If you know the answer keep schtum, and no Googling).
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I'l guess on your "or who."
Somebody played their first gig there - Joy Division, perhaps?
Ian Curtis
died a couple of years before the club opened, although it was paid for from the proceeds of sales of his records.
Ah. Thanks.
And pardon my ignorance. Worth a try, anyhow.
I'm off to Google it now, or I won't get to sleep wondering about it. You'll hear nary a peep from me until after somebody else gets it right.
Wasn't the site some sort
of boat building factory before it became a nightclub?
'Here stands the most inland boat producing site in England'
It was indeed a Yacht builders showroom
but no, that's not the answer.
The first E
ever sold in the UK?
I was honoured..
.. that they decided to mount a plaque which says...
THE MVPS, (1970- )
SPENT A GREAT DEAL OF
HIS MISSPENT YOUTH IN HERE
AND IS STILL ALIVE DESPITE
HAVING HIS MELON TWISTED
ON HUNDREDS OF OCCASIONS.
Ah yes Louder Than War covered this
Commemorating a Big Country support slot by all accounts.
I lived in Manchester from 89-93. Never went to the Hacienda.
Peter Hook and co do seem to be inflicting a sort of nostalgic sentimentality on the city. Which is all a bit, well, Liverpool really...
Like European Cups wot need polishing......
.....I think Liverpool has a little bit more to be nostalgic about.
I was thinking about that the other day
While Manchester has produced so many top level acts - The Smiths, Oasis, Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, New Order - Liverpool has produced undeniably the greatest band of all time and a slew of fantastic cult acts - The Coral, Echo and the Bunnymen, Half Man Half Biscuit, Shack, Boo Radleys.
Enviable either way.
I didn't realise
that nostalgia was a competition.
How do you measure nostalgia? For many people Joy Division or New Order or The Stone Roses were/are their "Beatles". Sentimentality is largely what underpins nostalgia so it seems to me that it's largely irrelevant who is trading in it. Hooky has no less valid reason to discuss the good old days as Macca. People want to hear about it and people want to remember it; whether it was in The Cavern Club or in The Hacienda is neither here nor there.
It's odd that the Manchester music scene...
...still has the millstone of Factory round its neck when the acts who actually DID something (Buzzcocks, Smiths, Roses, Oasis) owe nothing to Wilson and co.
True
Apart from the Mondays and Joy Division/ New Order who bankrolled the whole thing. Didn't TW turn down the Roses, The Smiths and Oasis?! That's almost Dick Rowe territory
Please don't tell me
it's for "Madonna performed here".
Sadly this could well be it
Wasn't it the location of her first UK gig?
Yes
It was recorded for 'The Tube' wasn't it?
James
'The Sit Down Hitmakers', isn't it?
Correct!
Yep, of all the legendary bands that played the Hac, many mentioned above, and all the cultural Shockwaves it supposedly created, the single most important event that the PRS felt worthy of a blue plaque was...James, supporting Big Country in 1983. It wasn't even their first gig.
Now, nothing against the 'Born of Frustration' hitmakers. They've written some toe tappers and perhaps are somewhat overlooked in the pantheon of rock and pop....but this is hardly the stuff legends are made of is it?
Bloody hell
I didn't know Marco Pantani was in James.
"On this site, 1987-1990..
..Lenny Law and lots of his friends were the only people not completely off their tits on chemicals. This was not because of any aversion to the things, but that they were too daft to realise what the bloke in the bog saying "E's an' trips.." to all punters was going on about."
I was member No. 102 of the Hacienda
The membership card looked like this:
I'd like to tell you that I spent hudreds of nights there completely off my head on dangerous drugs, but that would not be true.
I did, however, go to a few interesting gigs in the first two years of the club's existence:
1. New Order
2. The Associates
3. Wah! [abandoned after about 15 minutes when the band left the stage after taking exception to something shouted out by an audience member. We never got a refund]
4. Erm ... William Burroughs doing a reading
My ladyfriend....
When she was an innocent stripling from Darlington, used to go there and wonder why everyone just drank water.
See above..
The barstaff used to look at us strangely when we asked for four pints of lager.
The comments in this thread...
... give the wonderful impression that, actually, nobody at the Hacienda was ever on drugs. But everyone thought everyone else *was*. ; )
Radio 1
back when they did such things, did a three-part history of recording technology called "The Art of Noise" (circa 1992, at a guess. I've got them on tape here somewhere.)
Each episode had a different presenter (George Martin doing the one covering the advent of stereo and the Beatles.) The final part was presented by Peter Hook, and featured an interview with one of James talking about digital techniques.
Paraphrasing slightly, the piece went thus:
Bloke from James: "So, we've got this great bass part, but it's slightly out-of-time in places and with a couple of bum notes. We can use the sampler to fix that."
Hook (back in the studio): "I don't know how he thinks something played out-of-time and with bum notes 'a great bass part.'"
Can't see from the picture but is the plaque
an official English Heritage one? There's nothing to stop anyone sticking a commemorative plaque anywhere, so perhaps James' fan club or record company decided to fund an unofficial one?
No, it's erected by the Performing Rights Society (PRS)
they've also commemorated, seemingly chosen at random, The Blur, Jethro Tull, UB40, Squeeze and Dire Straits. The Plaques usually coincide with a comeback gig.
http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/news/Pages/HeritageAward.aspx
I hope the Dire Straits one looked like this
to serve as a warning.
Woh! That is quite possibly the most uncool
thing in all of Rock history.
Indeed
so much so that my mind had actually surpressed the memory of having owned it, until the shaped picture disc thread brought it to the surface.
I'm recovering slowly, though there was one night last week that i couldn't sleep until I had gone through all of my vinyl just to check that I really had thrown it out all those years ago, and that it wasn't just lurking there between a couple of old 12"s
Blue Plaques
are quite often a little hard to fathom.
For example, at the former site of the Marquee Club in Wardour Street where, let's face it, every band short of the Beatles played in the 60s and 70s, all we see is a single Heritage Foundation plaque telling us that "Keith Moon, legendary rock drummer with The Who played here".
Likewise, in the foyer of the Hammersmith Odeon, where the Beatles DID play (several times), is a solitary plaque commemorating the appearance there of Buddy Holly in 1959.
All very commendable, but why just Buddy and Moon? These are/were hugely significant rock venues, where countless great artists have appeared, after all.