that bloke off the telly, not richard and judy richard the other one, no the other one. no that's stuart hall. him, you know, that bloke

factory ruled my youth. haircuts overcoats basslines. we bought stockholm monsters records and scrawled section twenty five on the side of supermarkets. tony wilson was on our tellys every teatime being not as famous as the bloke off the krypton factor but making up for it by occasionally baffling the whole of granadaland with the buzzcocks or the fall or some other hellish end of show racket. we got stuck in blackpool and had to ring my dad to come rescue us after our first glimpse of new order being rubbish. we went to gawp at a building site full of bricks and girders with a little fac 51 plaque stuck outside months before we got to wiggle ridiculously to the velvets on an empty dancefloor. it even got all over cards i've miraculously still got from my eighteenth birthday. i think they missed a jaunty marketing trick there.


postcard and fast product will always be mine but i'll always love a label with no contracts and huge ideas and popstars changing lightbulbs even if i hadn't bought one of it's records since fac 128. these are a couple i couldn't bear to be without

marcel king - reach for love

a certain ratio - the fox



there's a great old interview 'oh lord leave me record shops' with anthony h here that's well worth a look.