“Martin...what are you doing?”
“Recording, SILENCE”
“You’re recording silence?”
“Now I am recording Tony F*cking Wilson”
24 Hour Party People, which takes place in the mid-1970s and early 1990s, chronicles Tony Wilson's career as he transitions to managing Factory Records—which housed some of the biggest musical performers in the UK at the time—from being a television presenter for Grenada TV. The focus of the show is Manchester's music scene as a whole, and it follows Factory's highs and lows along with Wilson's own journey as the label's manager.
Tony Wilson -who once forced a bartender to put Mozart on, against public opinion -was a moneyless entrepreneur who journeyed to become a ‘cultural catalyst’. In the late 1970s he created the F word. Factory Records, the renaissance of Manchester’s music mayhem. It was a spectacular space to live in, people who watch cinematic adaptations of those times in punk documentaries or Winterbottom’s this, cannot help but mourn the impassable temporal distance from their local music centre Hacienda. Wilson also vehicles their post-punk music on his work channel Grenada TV - he was committed to the art scene, not for money - but the vibes. He recalled the work they did in Factory Records as sacred, and not just privilege. It was bigger than making a bar full of drunks listen to Mozart, it was like making Mozart listen to Joy Division or Happy Mondays.
Happiness is a disputable concept and that is what we learn from the emerging scene of rave in Manchester, accessible to us through the sad boy hedonist hours in 24 hour party people, the best mind of music can be buried in cocaine and their sex-filled dreamscapes become our cinema. It is hard to grasp in its rush, the culture complexities are ironically displaced by the acting performances of Danny Cunningham, Sean Harris, Steve Coogan and the music, the music is well “If you get it, great. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter.”
Payal Srivastava
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