the passing of a factory man

Factory Records founder Tony Wilson shuffled off to the great Hacienda in the sky today.

I'm certain that the serious-minded music bloggers will have detailed obituaries, tributes, and analyses of the man's life and legacy up shortly, but given my areas of interest I'd figured I ought to post something in honor of the man...even if 24 Hour Party People the most mind-numbingly boring movie I've ever made the mistake of watching.

My ambivalence about Joy Division is well known, and any interest I had in the "Madchester" scene was because the cute art students I was attracted to in my freshman year happened to love that stuff, but I can't think poorly of a man (and label) that set loose all sorts of wonderful postpunk music on an unsuspecting world. Plus, Wilson did it with a Situationist's tongue-in-cheek elan, and I can admire that with no qualifiers whatsoever.

So, thanks, Tony, for your part in shaping and presenting a musical genre that has never lost its appeal or been shuffled to the bottom of the musical queue since I first stumbled upon it two decades ago.

Rather than take the predictable Joy Division/New Order/Happy Mondays route, I went with a selection of some other postpunk favorites from the early years of the factory label. They run the gamut from the beautifully atmospheric...

The Durutti Column - Sketch for Summer (from The Return of the Durutti Column, 1979)

...to the hauntingly sublime...

A Certain Ratio - All Night Party (from a 1979 single; collected on Early, 2002)

...to the downright terrifying...

Cabaret Voltaire - Baader-Meinhof (from A Factory Sample, 1979; collected on The Original Sound of Sheffield '78/'82, 2002)