Independence Days by Ogg Alex;

Author:Ogg, Alex; [Alex Ogg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 4782983
Publisher: Cherry Red Books
Published: 2016-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The Graveyard & The Ballroom

Rabid, Factory & Zoo

“The area is so neglected, so economically deprived and full of massive housing complexes, that the mood of the place was right and ready for a new movement in music with a markedly different criteria of success. What has developed is peculiar to Manchester and I can only hope that instead of going to London for future deals, the agents and record companies will come here.”

(Tosh Ryan, writing for Melody Maker on 14 May 1977, in an article entitled “New Wave Devolution: Manchester Waits For The World To Listen”)

Manchester music and ‘independence’ have come to be synonymous with the illustrious tragi-comic adventures of Factory Records. But after New Hormones’ ‘Spiral Scratch’, the next Mancunian label to establish itself in the punk era was Tosh Ryan’s Rabid Records, later unflatteringly referenced as “the Stiff-styled funny farm of the north” in the music inkies. As Vinni Faal, manager of the label’s second act Ed Banger And The Nosebleeds would recall: “[Rabid] taught Factory everything they ever knew. They managed the top five single, the marketing scams, the situationist enigma, the unplayable records, they even managed the ignominious bankruptcy!”

Rabid announced itself in May 1977 with Slaughter And The Dogs’ ‘Cranked Up Really High’. This was base camp for a number of personalities who would become closely associated with the city’s later artistic triumphs – notably the photographer Kevin Cummins and producer Martin ‘Zero’ Hannett. “It was a wonderful time for Slaughter,” remembers Mick Rossi. “Rabid were truly the first independent label in the north of England. It gave us the platform in which to release our first single. I liked Tosh Ryan a lot, he’s a colourful character, the only issue we had as a band was that we didn’t receive a single penny from the sales of our live album or any of our releases on Rabid. We were young and naive. You live and learn, eh?”

Ryan himself is far from happy with the way recent histories have recorded the period. “I’m fed up of seeing Malcolm McLaren wheeled out and talking about how he invented this so called phenomenon. In my experience, this thing’s happening everywhere. It was a kind of gestalt thing, happening across the country. There was a similar condition. People were organising their own gigs in back rooms of pubs, because there weren’t any venues to play at. And universities weren’t booking local bands. It really annoys me when Malcolm McLaren stands up and says I invented this. His attitude was very much that middle-class attitude. It’s happened to the arts over the centuries. Interesting things happen, and he was interesting and he did use interesting reference points in the way he plagiarised things – he might call it homage, I don’t know. But it doesn’t pay a lot of respect to what was happening right across the country. There were a lot of people who came from a boom in the 1960s, just in Manchester alone if you think

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