Today we are very much on the other side of the Pennines (in Manchester and surrounding areas) as today’s disc is 1990’s Further Adventures of North – More Underground Dance Music on deConstruction Records. This EP has 4 tracks (1-3 being: T Coy’s Carino 90, Annette’s Dream 17 and Frequency 9’s The Way I Feel) but it is the fourth one that I am going to focus on as it is the one we played: 1989’s Stop This Thing remix by Dynasty of Two (feat Rowetta). Stop This Thing is a great track – production by two of the Haçienda’s regular DJs back then (Mike Pickering* and Graeme Park) and vocals from Rowetta (who has done so much, been in the Happy Mondays, been on various TV shows, recently featured on a Shed 7 track called, suitably, In Ecstasy). Here is the 1988 track:
I wasn’t aware of it growing up (because I was a little further north) but once I was living in Leeds I became aware of the Leeds/Manchester rivalry. A lot of it is football related but there are music/nightlife strands too. When I moved to Leeds in 1989 it was slightly before the whole financial centre, Harvey Nicks/posh shopping era and Leeds did feel a bit overlooked and overshadowed by Manchester’s reputation. The Haçienda club being such a big name in the early days of house music and rave probably contributed to this too. Manchester had the famous club, the famous record shop (Eastern Bloc), the trendy clothes market (Afflecks Palace) and Leeds was famous for what at that time – goths and football hooliganism? Leeds did change in the 1990s (ecstasy played a big part in that too I think**) but the rivalry stayed in place to an extent.
I didn’t go clubbing in Manchester much – certainly not around the time this record came out (89/90). I liked the raw, unpretentious nature of the early rave scene in Leeds where it was pretty common to end up in “I used to be fighting all the time and now I love everyone” ecstasy conversations. I always enjoyed those moments (though to be fair you enjoy most things on ecstasy, that’s kind of the point). I think I bought this record second-hand when we started DJing on pirate radio in Leeds in 1992. The station was the house-heavy Dream FM and a friend and I suggested we might do a show as, at that time, they didn’t have any female DJs on the station (though later there were loads of us, more on that in another post). My friend and I called ourselves Daisy & Havoc (after two Mary Quant dolls) and we were given Monday and Wednesday nights (9-midnight). That’s quite a few hours to fill and whilst we both had a passion for music and went out a lot and had cassettes and old albums we didn’t have that much 12” vinyl at the time. We needed to get a collection together quickly and so we scoured shops, charity shops, car boot sales, friends’ and family’s record collections. We also learned to mix, sometimes live on air (and I used to feel bad about that till I heard some of the clatterings that get called mixing on national radio stations in more recent times). I had never actually heard this track before we came across it (maybe it was too Manchester for the Leeds clubs I went to) but we loved it and played it regularly on the radio. In a time when so many club tracks were just using the same words (ecstasy, love, together) this one had different ambitions (“the world is just a great big dustbin” etc.).
Other Manchester (or at least North West of England) records that we enjoyed and picked up second hand for our collections (and that I still own) are below (A Guy Called Gerald***, Sub Sub, Happy Mondays remixes, 2 For Joy). A lot of good dance music did come from over that way:
Somehow I don’t seem to own any Stone Roses vinyl – seems a bit of a gap as they were huge and really popular in Leeds (as well as everywhere else). I still listen to them here and there, they’ve never really gone out of rotation.
Anyway, after being on Dream FM for a while we got club work as DJs and had a job working regularly in the Leeds club Vague. We also DJed elsewhere doing guest spots and played in Aberdeen, London, Newcastle, Rimini (bit fancy, that one). One time we did even DJ in the famous Haçienda – as part of the Flesh mid-week gay night (we were there a bit after its heyday but we still made it). Here is the poster from the event we played at (in 1995 maybe):
Back tomorrow with a cover version.
*Mike Pickering was involved in the production of all 4 tracks on this EP. Over time his best known musical project was the very successful band M People (featuring the vocalist Heather Small who went on to a solo career, in particular the huge track Proud). There has been little mention of CDs in this project but I did have the 1991 M People CD Northern Soul (it featured the early hits How Can I Love You More and Colour My Life, both still great tracks). I didn’t buy it so it was either a promo copy or something my Mum gave me after she joined a CD Club with some magazine in the 1990s before remembering she didn’t like pop music at all (and everything they had in the catalogue was pop).
** It changed the nightlife, made it friendlier, less about drinking and more about having a good time. The Leeds club scene became big and varied and attracted a lot of people to the city over the 1990s.
***Gerald was an early member of the successful Manchester band 808 State too (somehow I never knew that till this week).
For the first intro post to this series go here.
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