Categories: heritage-and-art, music
Date: 22 April 2010 05:15:50
As we entered the Gala for "an evening of unknown pleasures" with Peter Hook, compared by Howard Marks the stage was set with an exhibition of Hooky, New Order and Joy Division rarities; the odd leather jacket, award, picture of Ian Curtis and the centre piece a Hacienda sign.
As the predominantly male audience of 35-50 year olds took their seats the lights fell and we were treated to a montage of Joy Division and New Order clips, aswell as the odd clip from Twenty Four Hour Party People. The music, as one of the talky bits said, didn't age.
Then Howard Marks, our compare for the evening, walk on and in a slightly smashed Welsh drawl introduced Hooky before sitting down to start to enjoy the couple of pints by his chair. Peter Hook walked on and played a couple of New Order numbers, (one on a six string bass and one on a four string). Then it was into a Q&A time based on reminicing. Hooky talked about Tony Wilson and Mani from The Stone Roses with a particular fondness. He explained abit about why The Hacienda lost as much money as it did and how he'd got into DJing. Some bloke in the audience had asked, making reference to "True Faith" and "Touched By the Hand of God" about Hooky's views on religion. He answered he was into karma but not Eastern religion, (bless dear Howard Marks at this point who got Buddhism and Hinduism a little mixed up in his follow up question).
The interval gave the audience a chance to have a wander round the exhibition on the stage, which also included some vintage NME's I remembered reading. This was v. cool.
The second half began with more film footage including some clips of New Order at Glastonbury, which bought back memories. Then it was back into the Q&A / anacdote stuff. Great description of why Hooky thought Johnny Rotten was the biggest celebrity twat he'd met, aswell as one of the biggest influences. He also gave an anacdote about the time the two of them had gone to see the Orb and Rotten had literally got mobbed when they'd gone out to the bar. There was a classic description of Mick Hucknell getting chinned at the Hacienda by one of Hooky's mates which we all seemed to appreciate. I didn't seem to be alone in thinking Simply Red were probably the least wonderful band to come out of Manchester in the 80's.
Finally there was some discussion of his latest project Freebass before he played Dark Starr which has Howard Marks on vocals. This is from the Two Worlds Collide ep and involved Howard Marks reading some wierd poem whilst some really good music was played over the top.
Marks and Hooky were wonderful, it was just like sitting in some little artsy venue, or back stage area after a gig listening to a bloke holding court, whilst chatting to a friend who wanted him to tell him about it all. This really was an evening of unknown pleasures which was well worth the "oh shit! we're not selling enough tickets, we'll offer a huge discount to people on our e-mail list" price of a ticket I paid. Would it have been worth it full price, at £16? I'm not so sure...that's a sizeable proportion of the weeks shopping budget when you're skint. Also you have no guarentee that you won't be sat next to a tosser rather than, as I was, some bloke who was doing his own reminicing telling me all about how he and his mates had regularly blagged their way into The Tube when it was being recorded at Tyne Tees because the producer drank in the same pub as him in Easington. He also had some wonderful tales to tell about him and his mates jumping into a car every couple of weeks and driving over to the Hacienda, aswell his tales of Ibiza.
I leave you with a You Tube clip of Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, one of Hooky's earlier tracks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ii8m1jgn_M[/youtube]