Manchester RAVE ON (the halycon days of 1988-91)

I remember with some annoyance a shopping trip to Afflecks Palace in the Northern quarter of Manchester, where I got a blue top. It had a hood and was, to use the lingo of the day, a 'Raver's top' from the shop Big Banana. Nothing to feel very annoyed about there, you might think. But I was overcharged though. I was charged £30 and it was only meant to be £20! Now, as a 17 year old in 1990, that was Big Bucks (from Big Banana!). What was interesting though, is that we used to spend a lot of money on our music and our clothes, in relation to anything else. In a way, I haven't changed much. In other ways (as you'll see) I've changed beyond belief.

Someone once asked is it something they put in the water in Manchester that makes a good proportion of the residents make absolutely life changing and innovative music. I'm not sure about that, but I've experienced Manchester's music power at its height and I'm so glad I was there.

Like Punk before it, what became known as "Madchester" and 'Baggy' (it was the flares, man), was a pop movement or moment that relied a lot on anarchic energy and colourful wit. It was about being young, but it was also about the wonderful possibilities of overcoming the drab, rain soaked city that in many ways had left its glory days behind it. Magnify that to include the whole country and you can see why these things take off.

In some ways, the whole late '80s Manchester scene fills that gap between what happened with Punk and New Wave, and the so-called C-86 bands (at about the same time as The Smiths)... and what was to come in the mid '90s with Brit-Pop. I was old enough to appreciate Brit-Pop as something heavily derivative but ultimately engrossing, whereas 'Madchester' was there just as I left school and was full of naivety. It couldn't have been planned better.

Several things made this time quite unique and special...

Firstly there had been the rise of Factory records in 1978, whose artiste roster came to dominate this scene. They were there when Punk was starting to do more interesting things as well, and become 'New Wave'. Joy Division never interested me much when I was a teenager, I must say, but now I see what the fuss was about. Ian Curtis obviously had problems, but that added to its decadent charm. Plus bands like that never quite sound like anyone before them, and often true innovators take a while to be appreciated by young ears who grew up with Boney M.

Anyway, Factory was a very important facet of this wonderful world of music back then, and by 1989 they had New Order, The Happy Mondays and...um...Northside on their rosters. Factory boss Tony Wilson was once again bleating on about how it was a great new dawn for British music (or some such). One aspect of Factory I always found amusing was their cataloguing system of numbering every product they made (everything from records to press releases). The fact the resident cat (yes, Cat) at the Hacienda club got a number was either inspired or extremely bizarre (depending on how you look at it).

Ah yes....Secondly there was The Hacienda. On the corner of Whitworth street, near Castlefield, it looked like the outside of an old factory. A nondescript wall of bricks that had nothing to distinguish it as a club. There was a metal plaque (FAC51 The Hacienda) and that was it. Going inside The Hac was like entering Club Ground Zero. It was as if no other night club had ever existed or ever mattered. It demanded my attention. And if it there were other clubs, they certainly didn't look like this.

From the entrance (always with quite scary bouncers it must be said) you could go downstairs to "The gay traitor" chill out room, where the steps zig zagged down to the bar/DJ area. Half way down you could stop and lean over the edge and have a nosey. The dance floor was usually hidden behind tinsel. You went into the main club through several heavy strips of plastic hung from the ceiling, rather like going into a butcher's larder.

It was huge and it was unique. This was not the local Ritzy. Even other Manc venues didn't compare. After a night in The Hac, The Venue (also now defunct) looked like a of a moody teenager's bedroom. It did used to be a warehouse, and made absolutely no attempt to convince you other wise. Despite the state of the art lights and club fittings, the place was all striped steel girders and rivets. Two sets of metal steps went up to the veranda, over looking the dance floor with seats. Underneath there were seats in booths, in the darker recesses. Facing the platform was the dance floor and stage (which functioned as well for dancers as for bands). Mind you, even as far back as late 1990, when I first went in, it's prices were fairly steep. But who was drinking anyway...which leads me onto something else....

Drugs. I've been quite candid about them before, and I won't dwell too much on them here, but the scene at the time was very much fuelled by them. ...especially Ecstasy. How much is open to debate, but the central idea of every weekend being a mini holiday-style celebration (a "let's carry on our Ibiza visit the whole year round") didn't lend itself well to sobriety. As such, those Madchester years were numbered almost as soon as they began.

There were also other clubs of course. I was far more a regular of a place called The Pleasuredrome in Farnworth, where I used to leave soaking wet with sweat. Also, getting in someone's car, jam-packed with others, to seek out some mysterious event in the middle of nowhere, was a regular occurrence. By this time (1991) the music had veered off into far less creative avenues. The guitar element was missing, replaced by relentless beats and anthemic verses. The Prodigy made their first appearance, sampling old '70s ads and the likes of Love Decade, PKA and Oceanic sound tracked by exhibitionist plinth dancing. Some electronic tracks (like "Voodoo ray" and "Pacific state") remain true classics of the day.

The later, more uninspired dance hits aside, the records were generally fantastic. Around 1989 they were usually a groovy combination of '80s indie pop with the sounds of House music and Hip Hop getting a look in. Even when the record was below par, it usually had a great cover. There were some very innovative presentations going on around that time, and you could spend a lot of the time marvelling at the type faces and photo work, and trying to figure out if that tinted close up picture was of ice cubes or something else. The Stone Roses had the best covers around 1989/90, and one often did wonder about the significance of the sliced grapefruit. Many covers had type and nothing else, and 808 state, I recall, seemed to have a fondness for pictures of tropical fish. These designs were often courtesy of Central Station Design (who were quite in tune with the oddness of the times, by the very fact they were based in what had been a fire station).

It couldn't last, because (let's face it) no party ever does. There is always the bad head and clean up the next morning. For Factory the morning after was a case of bankruptcy (caused by The Mondays spiralling recording costs, which they never made back from their final flop LP) and the label's back catalogue now rests in the hands of London records. Shit records were coming out left right and centre and the scene had gone overground. It was no longer innovative or radical. As with most pop moments, it was now pastiche and often spoof.

'Rave' quickly became an unfashionable term and the big warehouse parties dried up, to be replaced by a corporate club scene keen to plug the gap and steal the crown. The birth of Cream was nigh. The Hacienda struggled on for a few more years. I was last there in June 1996 at a college party down in the 'Traitor' bar. It was the last time I ever stepped foots in the place, by then a shadow of its glory days. It closed in a celebratory (but bittersweet) night in 1997. I wasn't there, and I do think sometimes perhaps it could have been nice....but is it ever? Pop music does that to you. It soundtracks the glory days and then sticks around to churn up your bittersweet memories. Perhaps being there in '97 would have made the ache all the more poignant.

The club is now a block of luxury flats (also called The Hacienda) and the days of Baggy and Rave have long since left the city, to be replaced by a less hedonistic and continental vision.

Back then I was fooled. I thought I'd found something special that could and would make me a great, cool person. It never did. But it led to future times and places were I do feel more like that, and the folly of youth is the wisdom of tomorrow.

It was crazy, it was reckless, and it was basically like gatecrashing someone else's party. It was glorious, emotional and sometime shallow. It was about the music and the fashion and the shagging. It was also about substances that (looking back quite frankly) could well have killed me....and you don't know how close. It was about meeting some wonderful people bonded by a common love, as well as some not so wonderful ones. We were all in it together, and like all great times you never think it'd end.

It did.

But I don't regret a single fucking thing.

Well, almost... I still want that tenner back.

That top was crap.