"Next time we knock ourselves out let's do it for something close to our hearts... like music." These boys grew up through the wild days of punk and were still awake enough a decade or so later to revel in the dionysian splendor of acid. This was a seriously broad canvas for a cinema friendly movie and to focus their passions they chose one city that had been there or thereabouts right through these wondrous explosions, taking punk to it's grimy heart and, a decade or so later, encouraging the mating of Detroit and Ibiza to spawn the dance days of the late 20th Century.

For a story-line they took the exploits of five young Mancunians - who started not a band but a record company. They called it after a sign they spotted announcing Factory Closing.

They decided they'd like a sign saying Factory Opening. They were; an out of work actor, Erasmus; an irascible manager, Gretton; a local TV presenter, Wilson; a nascent Gandalf of the mixing desk, Hannet, and a gifted young typographer, fresh out of college, Saville. Five seriously heterosexual gentlemen who in one way or another, in the words of Manchester impresario Alan Wise, were all in love with each other. They were also in love with their wonderful bands, two of whom would be central to their generations and central to the movie, Joy Division/New Order and the Happy Mondays. And so there's this movie about some strange and wonderful musicians, a company composed of five people who repeatedly failed to give a fuck and a northern city that has stamped it's music legend on the history of rock and roll.

The film is bloody funny and bloody tragic. If you haven't seen it it doesn't matter but you should probably get out more. At worst this soundtrack album is a souvenir of that movie. What is a soundtrack album? At best it's "The Harder They Come". This was the soundtrack album for an utterly marvelous reggae movie from the early seventies, called, unsurprisingly, "The Harder They Come". This soundtrack album was just a fucking great album, containing numerous reggae classics. It could serve as an utterly classic introduction to Reggae for poor little whiteys like me who knew fuck all, or as a sampler full of spectacular classics, collected to be treasured by the aficionado. Now that's what I call a soundtrack album and if we come anywhere close to emulating Jimmy Cliff and cohorts on that one you're holding a good piece of plastic. If for no other reason, that in following the timeline of 24 Hour Party People, from 1976, the dawn of punk, to 1992, the death of acid, my friends Pete and Rachel at London Warners have assembled some of the classic tracks of those eras. They are the songs which shape the film and they are the songs which shaped a few lives.

Track Selection:

01
Songs like "Anarchy In The UK". Where else could our album start? Where else could the movie start? It should be tough for Mancunians to admit they owe it all to a bunch of southern bastards from London, but since those two astonishing nights in June and July 1976 when the Sex Pistols played their first two gigs outside of the capital at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall, there isn't a musical-Manc who doesn't proudly acknowledge that Manchester was propelled towards it's musical destiny by the shock troops of punk. Johnny Rotten snarled us into existence and we say thanks on bended knees. They didn't play "Anarchy" at those gigs. It hadn't been written at that point. But they did play it in Manchester that summer, in late August when they did their first and only live TV performance, for Granada Television. What was "Anarchy in the UK" like, that afternoon. What was Johnny like. Just listen to the laugh that graces the opening bars of "Anarchy". That's what they were like. And to all those Americans who claim the Ramones were more important than the Pistols. Fuck off. Thanks Iggy and the Dolls but great rock and roll is sprinkled with irony and that's what our boys add. "Another council tenancyyyyy." This is it, the clarion call of the punk revolution.

02
Spin forward ten years or so. Another bunch of wild kids. The Happy Mondays. And they're calling for action too. For "24 Hour Party People". How old are you? Are you old enough? Shaun's a bit pissed off that no-one asked his permission to use his words for the movie title. That's 'cause people tend to think it's a phrase that always existed. It didn't. It's Shaun's. But then again, some famous geezer once complained that the problem with Shakespeare was all the cliches. Poor fucker didn't realise that when Bill wrote them, no-one had said them before. He just expressed something so perfectly they became part of the language. Oh god, he's comparing Shaun Ryder to Shakespeare now. Indeed the film does deal at length with the contentious belief that Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays is one of our finest poets. But he is. This early classic from their early years still makes ultimate sense today and has seen a delicate revisiting by Jon Carter. He has carefully and sonically added a little of the now to a group without whom we wouldn't have got here. At least not with as much fun. Musically, of course, it was the Mondays who collided the house rhythms of mid 80's Chicago and Detroit with working class UK indie punk and Ibizan drug rituals to forge Acid House.

03
The Mondays were Factory's second truly great band. The first have had many names. Back in the Lesser Free Trade Hall for those Pistols gigs were some lads who were so inspired they went out and formed a band. First they called themselves Stiff Little Kittens. For about a week. Then they were Warsaw but somewhere down the road they changed their name to Joy Division. Writer, Paul Morley calls them the last band or the first group????? Or something. Read his book Nothing. Please. Wonderful writing about a group whose first pure seven inch single was "Transmission". Great rock bands are always great dance bands and it is no surprise that the melodic punk thrash of Bernard Sumner's guitar, soon to be trademark high fret bass playing of Peter Hook and the insistent rock thump of Stephen Morris's drums filtered through producer Martin Hannett's digital delay machine, supported a semi-manic lead singer imploring the world to dance to the radio. Dance, dance, dance. The connection with Rotten is clear. The energy. The attack. For two years punk had torn down the walls and screamed fuck off. It was eloquent but limited. Now here was the band to let punk say more. To make punk say more. Expand expression. My favorite bit of Transmission has always been the way Ian winds up through the second chorus and then hits straight into the third verse without pause. Verses were never meant to be sung so intently. Until now. Until "Transmission."

04
And I've told a half lie. Yes, Joy Division took punk energy and instrumentation into deeper waters, but another Manchester beat group had already touched the heartstrings. They arranged those gigs at the Lesser Free Trade Hall, even played their debut gig at theLesser Free Trade Hall, even played their debut gig at the second one. But that touched a city. They went on from the expressive ennui of boredom to touch the world with a series of classic love songs. Punk Love. The Buzzcocks. How strange again that this northern industrial conurbation would make this emotionally delicious contribution to the punk song book. Ever Fallen in Love is the touchstone of their opus. Shelley's voice was made to sing of love. Was made to sing this song. And those literary mancs; who else would use the word "commotion"? And of course it's timeless. Pete has that wonderful phrase, 'nostalgia for an age yet to come'. Exactly.

05
So we're two parts into the punk pantheon. Maybe it's the fact I grew up with The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas swapping number one slots for three months at the dawn of my own youth. (As mancs we draw a veil over the postmodern irony of Freddie and the Dreamers cause we don't think foreigners will understand it.) Anyway I always see these things in threes and in the punk explosion there was a big three indeed. And the fucking Ramones weren't any of them. Pistols and Buzzcocks? The Pantheon is utterly incomplete without the white riot boys. The Clash. Bastards arrived three hours late for soundcheck the day Granada filmed them for their debut TV stuff. And they bought this other lot with them who we'd never heard of. Siouxsie and the something or others. Late show meant minor crowd riot outside with 66 yards of plate glass doors kicked in and a good old rumpus after a fab set in which Janie Jones was a stand out and Strummer kept singing after he fell over and concussed himself on the drum riser. Fab. And the Banshees were great too. This was the last ever gig at the Queen Elizabeth Hall Belle Vue. 'Cause the Clash played. And the audience did as they were told. And rioted. And the song; well Mick Jones may have been a bit of a hippy but those singular slash chords in the opening bars of Janie Jones are simply thrilling. And Strummer may have been a diplomat's son but his cockney drawl was the voice of '77.

06
And arguably the movie of '95 was "Heat"; the De Niro-Pacino vehicle. My partner, Yvette, and I were watching said movie in the Universal Multiplex on top of Barham Blvd in Los Angeles one wonderful warm LA evening. Midway through the movie, vehicles start moving and a great boom heralded one of the most powerful pieces of soundtrack imaginable. Thrilled from the start, 30 seconds in, I go nuts; "fuck me, it's one of ours, it's one of ours." Took me a little while longer to figure it was "New Dawn Fades" in a stunning reworking by my favourite Christian, Moby. Just an amazing moment in my life. Thanks, M.

At the Moby LA gig in the summer of 2001, Moby, John Frusciante of the Chili bunch and Billy the bald one from the Pumpkins suggested that they join the support act in a rendition of said Joy Division classic. Since the support band were Joy Division/New Order it's rewarding to know their initial reply was "how does it go?" Moby then mixed this live performance especially for "24 Hour Party People" Here it is. Again, thanks to M. And if you ever get to read the book of the movie, published by Macmillan books, price 9.95 in the UK, you'll know that NDF contains the unnerving suggestion that the lead singer of said group takes the blame.

07
And then there's the epitaph to this period. If punk died when Sham 69 got NF'd at gig after gig, post punk died with Ian and was reborn with Bono as the new rock and roll. Joy Division weren't rock and roll. Don't walk away in silence is hardly the thing of which rock anthems are made. Atmosphere - or "the bells, the bells' as I tend to think of it. Hannet's sweeping crashing tingling sound that takes us into the chorus each time round. And my other late partner, manager Gretton always hated the video for this track which is the centrepiece of the movie. Anton Corbijn animating his own photographs on a beach in Spain, some 7 years after Ian's departure. Rob thought it was sentimental and self-mythologising. Probably right, but I found out a few months ago that the bloody band love the bloody video so I feel a bit better about it.

08
And now a Vini Reilly track. As God says in the Movie, it's good music to chill out to. With all the mythologising over the Ian Curtis suicide, the applause at the way Blue Monday reshaped music and the delight at the way the Happy Mondays reshaped their central cortexes, it can be forgotten that Factory Records of Manchester, England, was begotten to get the music of an anemic-looking waif-like (genius) guitarist out there on the street. I'm not going to explain the origin of the Nom de Plume that Vini worked under - The Durutti Column - buy the fucking book. But I will explain that the track "Otis" comes from an album called Vini Reilly, the sixth of ten major albums by our Vin. This is the point in the 80's where the fiddling with the new computer technologies via a bunch of wires and a bunch of gaffer tape, has progressed to the motherboard and you can buy all-in-one boxes that do the trick very nicely thank you. Bit like replacing ten years of meditation with a tab of acid. We bought Vini some boxes; a sampler and a sequencer to be exact. And this is the result. The machines work well but it's still Vini's guitar that haunts

09
Voodoo Ray. This album should perhaps provide a soundtrack of our lives, at least the lives of those who really lived through the past three decades. And if this early classic of British House culture was not part of your soundtrack, then you didn't fucking live. I remember the rumours. He was called Gerald. Honest. And there was some indie label in Stoke. It was a seven inch single or maybe twelve. And you'd walk into the Hacienda, turn right after the entrance and before you had even passed through Ben Kelly's post-modernist arches, if you were lucky, it would be A Guy Called Gerald and those oooh aaahs that would propel you to the dance floor. This classic piece was really the first sign that this wasn't just an import culture. Why were we so surprised by what Gerald had done. Hadn't it happened before. America the beautiful, but she needs the twist that the children of Albion bring to Rock and Roll. Talk Chuck Berry, Iggy Pop, Derrick May and Slipknot. And in the late 80's the Detroit boys were getting the treatment from Gerald and Voodoo Ray wasn't just great music. It was one of the first signs that it was happening all over again.

10
Now Temptation by New Order 'cause this is where the Detroit boys were coming from. One of the beauties of the house music timeline was that this mindbending American import had it's origins back on this side of the Atlantic. The mid eighties inventors of acid stripped beats tell how in the early 80's they tired of America's then black music, a tired bastard of disco, and found succour in driving their cars round the streets playing the primitive synthesizer constructions of English bands like Depeche Mode and New Order on their stereos. Fuck me, Detroit in awe of Basildon. But that's exactly what happened. And Temptation is the perfect example. It's one single after Everything's Gone Green. (And that's the daddy of them all as well as being Martin Hannet's last piece of work with Barney and chums.) But this is an album of classics, and EGG suffers from (new) lead singer Bernard trying to write lyrics like his lost friend. But on Temptation Barney starts to find his own voice, almost a childlike nonsense prose which nevertheless creates it's utterly memorable phrases. What colour are your eyes. I don't fucking know.

11
The colour of the jeans was blue but you wouldn't have any tight ones in your wardrobe. Loose Fit is simply and unashamedly anthemic, and as a celebration of the wide thighed jeans and broad shouldered t-shirts needed to accommodate the sweaty invocation of a Manchester/Ibiza dance floor, LF makes the phrase baggy sound less of a swear word. Throughout all it celebrates the bagginess of that special rhythm which had everyone dancing. Everywhere. That was 88/9/90. People didn't just dance on the dance floor. They danced in alcoves, they danced in the toilets, they danced at the bar and behind the bar. Everybody moved. Why? Listen to the rhythm of this song and don't ask any more. When the Happy Mondays did one of those reunions to pay the tax bill at Manchester's MEN arena in early 2000, I called to pick up my son. I arrived during the encore, high up in the eaves of the building. The Mondays, even without central personnel like Moose and PD were doing Loose Fit and every one of the 16,000 mad fuckers in the audience, were dancing. Grooving. Irresistible.

12
Pacific State. Perhaps the Manc classic. I have problems with the track merely because I can no longer separate the sound from a particular image. Steve Lock, then of Granada TV in Manchester, made a one hour doco on Madchester. And the core scene showed legions of cars, queuing, traipsing, searching, through an industrial estate in Blackburn in the early hours of the morning. (How many holes indeed?) All to the sound of 808 State's perfect tune. They were searching for a rave, the big one that was weekly up in North East Lancashire, until the Manchester gangs got too close. So this track is real soundtrack. Implying everything. Hopefully you'll have a flashback yourself...

13
And now a piece of shit called Blue Monday I'm being very LA here. P of S is a term of endearment for a unit of commercial art, out there on the coast. And this is ground breaking commercial art. I objected to this bit of the set list but bow to the superior commercial and artistic sensibilities of Mr. Tong. And yes it's a pretty good song. Well, Kylie thinks so. The movie has several references to implied Factory records supposed Nazi chic, an accusation sometimes leveled against a largely leftist/anarcho bunch of trendies. One afternoon in New York, in the Summer of 1989, at the chaotic and crowded Hyatt Marquis on Times Square, in the middle of a hectic New Music Seminar conference with 10,000 attendees, I was summoned from my little panel on sex and rock to hurry to the main ballroom. It was a hip hop panel and Factory were underfire for being fascist. Again. In New York, What the hell was the problem. Turned out Blue Monday was the problem. We, or rather New Order and this track, had stolen black dance music. We were accused of interracial theft. Like one informed journalist once put it. The second half of the 80's was all about technology. Electronics that could make a white boy play nearly as rhythmically as a black boy and drugs that could make a white boy dance... Etc...

14
Which brings us to Move Your Body. What's this one called? Move your what. No. Is it. Oh yes, oh God, it's that one. Time to remember how we never remembered, or at least never knew the titles most of the time. Which is that one that goes der der de dede...? Two points to be made. House returned the piano to the land of the living. It had been redundant for a decade and then here we have it. Fresh and thrilling. Second point. Any movie or collection of songs that seeks to address the 80's and went into battle without a Marshall Jefferson track wouldn't be worth pissing on. I'm sure there's an MJ track with a piece of Kennedy or maybe Abraham Lincoln in it, but I've been asking for that for about ten years now and I'm giving up. This one will do. In fact it is just bloody marvelous and oh the innocence it represents when one could use the word House and not drown in cheese. The innocence of those T-shirts with the US face. Innocence.

15
Which brings us back to dancing and the core experience of both movie and album. She's Lost Control. I was doing an interview with a geezer from Radio Wales the other day. He said he had been a. Jam fan. And as such had waited one night in early 1980 for the Jam on the BBC. But before Weller strode into view he had to watch the support band on his TV. Joy Division. They sang She's Lost Control. He told me he had never seen or heard anything like it before. I should hope not. It was a cruise missile into the nervous system of any viewer. It was Ian Curtis, describing and being and living the moments of Uncontrol. It was extraordinary and this is an extraordinary song. Of course the lyrics and the myth get confused. Ian's epilepsy remembered in all his movements. And the song. Maybe best to forget the life, the death. Just listen. To then. And to now.

16
My personal fave moment of the 24 Hour movie is when the helicopter shot zooms over night time Manchester which looks as good as LA or any other fab city as it's lights twinkle and entice. And suddenly the beat hits, the music explodes and that voice, that voice. Hallelujah. It could be no other song as this Northern City is celebrated. And as a vital point in history this is the start of the Oakie and Osbourne collaboration with the Mondays. Plus the excellent Andy Weatherall on this one. It was, in it's early and original version, a religious song. The reverend Shaun William Ryder is going to lie down beside you and fill you full of junk sounds pretty religious to me. But O and O turn it into a truly religious piece. It's not just the plainchant stuff that my son wants to sample for some jungle shit he's working on, it's the ecstatic sense of celebration contained in every sweep of every line and bar. I believe. I believe.

17
Near the end and we find we're Here to Stay. If this piece of plastic rejoicing in the past is meant to flash a little light on how we all got here, then let's have a new piece from the prime survivors. New Order in fact turned to the above Mr. Osbourne, who got his teeth into producing with the Mondays in 89/90, to make their most recent work bite. The hard edged guitars, just right for the 2000's. Forgot to congratulate Steve on that one, too embarrassed when I visited the studio, still on my to do list, so maybe I should say it now. Osbourne = Genius. Now add in the beat-brain of the Chemical Brothers and we have a New Order track to stand comparison with all their other stand out stuff.

18
Which brings us full circle and how else to close but with Love Will Tear Us Apart. Nothing more to say. Except that someone in New York picked up the Rolling Stone single of the year Award for 1980 for LWTUA on our behalf and never passed it on. If he's reading this, and he's still got it, could he get in touch. Thank you.