I like this game so here’s some more, in no particular order.

• A Certain Ratio – Shack Up
• Stiff Little Fingers – Johnny Was
• Psychic TV – Only Love Can Break Your Heart
• Sex Pistols – No Fun
• New Order – Turn the Heater On
• This Mortal Coil – Song to the Siren
• Siouxsie & the Banshees – Helter Skelter
• Bow Wow Wow – Fools Rush In
• John Cale – Hallelujah
• Franz Ferdinand – All My Friends
• Moby – Temptation
• Nick Cave – Death Is Not the End
• Nick Cave – The Carnival Is Over
• Johnny Cash – Personal Jesus
• Roland Howard & Lydia Lunch – Some Velvet Morning
• The Fall – Victoria
• Kirsty McColl – A New England

She was always with a boy. The boy always had an LP tucked under his arm. The cover had a photo of two guys, a short one wearing a scarf and a taller one with curly hair. The boy looked a bit like the taller one in the photo. He always wore a long raincoat and a scarf. He was from the posh estate and was called Timmy.

I needed that LP to impress the girl and to look like the boy. I wheedled and pleaded for it until my mum finally gave in and bought it for me. I played it endlessly on my sister’s red dansette, learning the words to every song, singing along to The Boxer, Cecilia and The Only Living Boy In New York. One of the men had the voice of an angel. So did my six year old self (lost it when my voice broke, unlike Artie – lucky bugger to be blessed with that voice).

The girl eventually went to university (not many did back then, especially from pre-fab council estates) and subliminally I must have associated the LP with a different world, one that was out there. Like the album cover of Freewheeling that my sister had in her record collection, it evoked possibilities.

In later years I was embarrassed by it. Hid it at the back of my record collection, somewhere south of Sex Gang Children. Then I recently saw the BBC4 documentary about the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water and the floodgates opened. I could appreciate the harmonies, the melodies and how it was born out of close friendship, love even, between two young men. How it came out of a more radical, less cynical and a more innocent time. How it still sounds great today.

There, it’s out. Now I feel better. And the girl? Well she lived on a kibbutz for a while, became a teacher, settled down and eventually married a man with money rather than a poet.  But I still remember the sixteen year old. I wonder if she does.

So here are my favourites, in no particular order.

Ghost Poet : Survive It

Haunting, sparse, this is the soundtrack to urban Britain falling apart at the seams. Like The Special’s Ghost Town 30-odd years before it captures urban fear and decay while rising above it. Nothing changes.

Foster The People : Pumped Up Kicks

Never has a song with such a grim subject matter sounded so damn upbeat. I was whistling it all summer not knowing it was based on a real high school massacre in the US. If  the Monkees had sang about Spahn Ranch it would have sounded like this.

Of Monsters and Men: Little Talks

OK – it’s sounds more than a little like Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, but I love the jolly sea shanty-ness of this. And they’re Icelandic – what’s not to like (although I can see myself kicking the tele in this next next year as the B&Q advert  play it for the millionth time).

I Break Horses : Hearts

More Scandies – this time Swedes. Those long nights sure do much talent make. I love the C86, My Bloody Valentineish, shoegazerness of this. Lovely.

Miracle Fortress: Miscalculations

Everything reminds me of something in this crazy post modern pop world we live in, and this reminds me of early Talking Heads.

S.C.U.M : Faith Unfolds

And if we are going back to the future, this is like all the best early 80′s tracks, mashed up and spat out by a DeLorean into the here and now. I know people compare them to Simple Minds, but this sounds more like Ghosts by Positive Noise to these refined ears. But better. After 40 million listens I still love this.

Thurston Moore: Benediction

It wasn’t just the youngsters making great music this year. Thurston made a beautifully chilled solo album, proving he was always the melodic foil to Lee Renaldo’s wall of sound in Sonic Youth. This is the stand-out track.

Jez Kerr: Play Something Fast

Another ageing gentleman makes a surprisingly good solo album. I don’t know why I should have been surprised as post Simon Topping ACR were as good, if not better, than when he was still blowing his own trumpet. Jez has made a very good album that sounds nothing at all like ACR. This is a great track and the video is shot at the best art exhibition of the year at YSP. Winner all round

Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs: Garden

Trance lives! Pity those advertising bastards have gotten hold of it.

And that’s about it. I’m sure there are others I’ve forgotten, but in all a great year. Biggest musical regret – not getting to see Belle and Sebastian at the Roundhouse. And biggest musical loss – Poly Styrene.

Have a great 2012 and lets hope we’re all doing this again same time next year (bloody Mayans)

It used to be a tired music press cliche that the rest of the Factory stable were pale JD/NO imitators. Having seen most of them live I never went along with this lazy journalism and listening to the retrospective box set what strikes me is the diversity on offer. Yes there’s some crud – Crawling Chaos and Royal Family and the Poor – but show me the record label that doesn’t have crud in its back catalogue. But most of the bands here deserved more than their indie obscurity that was guaranteed by Factory’s obtuse (lack of ) promotion. Durutti Column, ACR,  Stockholm Monsters, Section 25 all deserved more. James did get more but only by breaking away. Happy Mondays were the only other Factory band to make it big without leaving.

Most of it still sounds great and I hear echoes of Factory bands today in Belle and Sebastian, Delphic and Hurts. Here’s my 10 favourite non JD/NO Factory tracks in no particular order:

Flight – A Certain Ratio - music from another universe, sparse, atmospheric, nearly but not quite danceable.

My Country – Durutti Column - probably the Factory act I still listen to the most. I have dozens of favourite tracks, but this is todays – mainly because of the ace Monarchy remix that I can’t stop playing

Moves Like You (remix) – Cath Carroll – readers of this blog will know how I feel about Cath. BEST. SONG. EVER.

Brighter – The Railway Children Pure pop. Should have been a hit, but you can’t blame Factory. They left and still didn’t make it despite the lead singers pop star good looks. Shame.

The Presence – Crispy Ambulance. Surely the crappest name in the history of music. What did they do – stick a pin in a dictionary? Great track though – 10 glorious minutes of sublime Hannet production. I always used to fall asleep drunk to this and wake up with it still playing on a loop in the middle of the night.

Miss Moonlight – Stockholm Monsters best track from the best band to come out of Burnage. Haunting vocals and trumpet.

Inspiration – Section 25 Like New Order, Section 25 discovered dance and sequencers and made a great album (From the Hip). My favourite track.

Hymn From a Village – James. Not their best song, but their best on Factory.

Miaow – When it all Comes Down Purrfect pop from Cath again. Far too breezy to get lumped in with the C86 lot

Happy Mondays – Kuff Dam - Dam Kuff – genius

Their next live shows saw them ditch the long macs for a British 8th Army look – with whistles.  The long shorts slowly caught on with art students and trendies (to much ridicule). Then ever so slowly, long shorts crept into high street chains like Next and Top Shop. Until everyone was wearing them. They still are.  All thanks to some obscure northern funksters.

I could go on about how Simon Topping single handedly changed British men’s haircuts, but that’s another story. The whistles,though, never caught on – shame that.

And it’s Manchester where Factory’s legacy hit me. The Hacienda may be long gone, but the city itself has been transformed – from the grimy black and white streets Joy Division stalked , to, well, a British Manhattan . Who’d have thought that Rob Gretton’s plot, hatched in a NY nightclub, to bring a bit of the Big Apple to his hometown so he could drink past closing time, would have  started the  transformation that has resulted in today’s red brick and chrome megalopolis. Castlefields looks like TriBeCa; loft living is everywhere; chrome cafes and bars sparkle in the sun – yes there was even sun;  the Northern Quarter has become a northern SoHo and G-Mex has rebranded itself as (cheekily)  Manchester (Grand) Central.

The sheer chutzpah of the Factory collective, coupled with their stubborn civic pride and their  belief in themselves and their city, which in their eyes was the centre of the universe, made this possible.It may have only started the redevelopment ball rolling, but others were swept along in the crazy dream.  Art, not industry gave birth to this transformation (oh and maybe a bit if drug laundering money helped too).

The north has indeed risen again.

Now 1991 was my musical prime. I ate, slept and breathed music. Listened day and night to XFM, still devoured the NME, hung out with fellow music freaks. Yet this album had completely passed me by. Checking the NME End of Year List for 1991 I wasn’t the only one. Granted 1991 was a good year for the album, vintage some would say. It was the year of Nevermind, Screamadelica, Achtung Baby, Loveless and Blue Lines. But scrolling down the top 50 can anyone honestly say that God Fodder by Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Schubert Dip by EMF are remembered by anyone other than the band members themselves? But no Talk Talk. John Peel’s Festive 50 is the same – dominated by the usual suspects – Nirvana, Teenage Fanclub, The Fall and the Wedding Present.

So what of Talk Talk. According to Wiki, Laughing Stock was well received by critics, some comparing it to Miles’ In a Silent Way. I concur – to these ears it exists on the same spiritual plane.

Maybe, like me, everyone had written Talk Talk off in the early 80s as floppy haired Duran Duran wannabees; or had hated the anodyne synth pop of It’s My Life.

Not everyone was asleep though. Guy Garvey has said that he wants ‘New Grass’ playing at his funeral, and you can definitely see the influence on songs like ‘Scattered Black and Whites’

Listening to Laughing Stock now I’m glad I’ve only just discovered it. I wouldn’t have been ready in 1991, still high on pills and thrills. Now I can put it in the context of Miles Davis,John Coltrane, Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno and Nick Drake. Of English pastoral and American free jazz traditions.

Today I’m an evangelist – forcing it onto friends and strangers in a way I did with Unknown Pleasures thirty odd years ago.  If you too missed/dismissed it the first time round listen now and share my wonder.

My understairs cupboard, my den, my refuge, has a wall of vinyl. My shrine, my Buddha, my Mecca,  my Wailing Wall. Truth be told I visit it less to listen these, more to caress, to slip the vinyl worshipfully from battered sleeves. It is frozen in time – I stopped buying records years ago, yet it means more to me than all the CDs and MP3 downloads in the world. Like my DNA it carries my history, shaped who I am.

I’ve just sold a load of CDs and felt not a pang. Ugly plastic things that they are. But my vinyl I could never part with. Vinyl is artefact. Lose your tunes off your i-pod and it matters not, you can download them them again. But how could you replace those limited edition 12 inches, singles on coloured vinyl or long deleted LPs.

I always used to organise my record collection for the day some  girl would flick through it going “wow the first Throbbing Gristle album, and Joy Division live at the Electric Circus. Shack Up on Belgian import – you really are the guy for me”. It was years before I realised that the ability to reel off the first fifty Factory releases may not be the stuff that dreams are made on and that only boys like The Fall.

But lurking somewhere in my forever teenage mind is the nagging thought that there will still be a day of judgement, when my record collection will be the thing that really matters, will open the doors of heaven. That St. Peter, flicking his way casually through, will suddenly exclaim ” fuck me, Cabaret Voltaire Live at the YMCA – in you go mate”.

Then, as I worked my way through the most miserable pie imaginable, Nick Drakes’s beautiful Northern Sky drifted down, not from heaven, but from the tinny speakers in the corner of the room.  Oh the irony. Should I laugh or cry that  a man who sold less than 5000 records in his lifetime, who struggled to earn £20 a week from his music and whose lack of success led to his depression and ultimately his tragic suicide, is now condemned to an eternity of background music for an army of eat as much as you can for a fiver gluttons. It makes me weep that someone, somewhere is getting fat from the royalties poor Nick never earned.

Is there no end to this democratisation of our culture? What next – Throbbing Gristle’s Hamburger Lady in Macdonalds? Actually that I would like to hear.

Uncle John is still sorely missed, but I thought I’d fill the  void by polling the indieanorak household for their top tunes of 2010. I’ve edited it down to the best half dozen (kicking out anything Glee related). So here are the best tunes of 2011 – as voted by family anorak:

6. Crystal Castles - Celestia

5. Jonsi – Go Do

4. Delphic - Counterpoint

3. Beach House – Zebra

2.Gorillaz featuring Daley – Doncamatic

1. Swans – Reeling the Liars In

Now there have been allegations of vote rigging, but these have been looked into and the vote has been declared valid. (How can the best song from the first  album in 14 years from New York’s finest not be the best track of 2011?)

So happy Christmas from everyone at indieanorak. Take it away Michael…