The FAC 51
Hacienda Club was the Joy Division/New Order manager and factory Record label
boss Tony Wilsons creation. The former punk fan Wilsons club in Manchester more
or less created a new sound that mixed the beat from House and the energy and
attitude from punk into something new. For a while Manchester was the hot shit.
So much came out of it that its hard to believe but in this post I will give
you Wilsons protegés, Happy Maonday, as well a few others. Pop Will Eat Itself
and Primal Scream.
The speed and anger from punk may been gone but not the attitude in a very British way. To some point the dance music made by Podigy ans Chemical Brothers used some of the anger and the agression of punk.
OK you geezers, the
inhabitants on the British Islands didn´t invent punk, but they perfected the
American invention. As the did with Rock N Roll etc. Since the days of the Beatles and The Stones they been the force majeure in popular music, especially the harder one. NWOBHM is the most notable. but softer genres the Brits can do as well as the harder. This series of blog is a bit about it.
One
genre (If its a genre) they invented and master still today. A pop/rock genre influenced by punk that added elements of disco, hip hop, blues, soul, Elvis and whatever was the flavor of the month.
When punk
lost its grip on the record companies and the force in European punk ebbed out
for a bit. When MTV, Music Box, and Sky Channel changed the rules for what
music should sound and look like, there was of a whole bunch of Brits to be
ahead of it.
It´s a new
wave kind of style but with the heavier drums that was the sign of the times.
Some
brilliant Pop-Rock came out of it that still being played at discos. Most of it
came from former punk musicians and those who thought punk was cool but to
young to been there.
Billy Idol
started it and it got followers. Fellow Generation X member Tony James Sigue
Sigue Sputnic took it to its height. First labelled as Cyberpunk. Transvision
Vamp and Westworld Followed, and still today there are brilliant poprock in the
genre with Thing tings that are grovy ity to the max.
It is
something about it that only can be done in Britain. Something about the
singing and how to fit it into the instruments that both Swedes and Americans
can´t do.
Note that the Clash manager tried to make the Clash sound like it on Cut The Crap, when Joe strummer fired the members of the Clash and hired some young pretty faces and failed. According to Joe Strummer the manager Berny Rhodes remixed the Clash "Cut The Crap" masters in the final mix and added drum machines etc, to make it sound like the style at the moment which make the record sound like it did.
