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There’s a blog full of downloadable Haçienda DJ sets. You’re welcome.
08.31.2016
09:27 am
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I have a friend, as big a music nut as I am, who was in school in Manchester while the Haçienda was still open, and he never went. I love the guy—he’s basically family—but that one fact about him makes me wonder how I understand him AT ALL.

The Haçienda was an epochally important nightclub opened by Factory Records and New Order in 1982, and it quickly became an important hub for Manchester’s already important music scene—the Smiths’ and Happy Mondays’ earliest gigs occurred there, as did Madonna’s UK debut. But within a few years, the importance of live concerts was eclipsed by the club’s global importance to the emergence of DJ culture. The Haçienda was a crucial incubator for the Rave scene, which led to packed houses just for DJs. This was both blessing and curse—the club had a huge audience, but that audience preferred ecstasy and LSD over alcohol as party-fuel, so while the bar went broke, the drug dealers cleaned up. With dealers come turf disputes, and with those come violence, and so security was as big a factor in the club’s 1997 closure as was financial failure.

Blog51 has amassed a huge collection of Haçienda DJ sets, all downloadable in MP3 format. I’m not sure how these all came to be preserved, or how the blogger (a frequent patron named Andrew Mckim) managed to collect them all, but it’s a pretty amazing document of a scene over time. Between November of 2012 and May of 2014, Mckim posted dozens of DJ sets spanning from ’83 to ’97. The majority of the sets are understandably from the club’s in-house guys Graeme Park and Mike Pickering, but there’s plenty more to find in there—as I write this I’m listening to a 1994 set from Chicago House Godhead Frankie Knuckles.

This short documentary on the Haçienda is hosted by Factory Records honcho Tony Wilson’s son Oliver, who as a small child had a front row seat for some of the most amazing developments in late 20th Century pop music. Enjoy.
 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Original DJ playlists from Manchester’s Haçienda glory days
The night The Smiths stole the show at The Hacienda and changed music
Divine takes the UK: Two Hacienda shows and ‘Top of the Pops’

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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08.31.2016
09:27 am
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Original DJ playlists from Manchester’s Haçienda glory days
07.15.2014
09:31 am
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Maybe you were born in the wrong decade or country to be part of the legendary Haçienda dance club (1982-1997) and its attendant “Madchester” scene in Manchester, England in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Our own Paul Gallagher described the much-missed club, owned by Factory Records and New Order, as the ”night club where you could see Madonna one night and William Burroughs the next…The mix of who played there reads like an A & R man’s wet dream and included, New Order, The Happy Mondays, The Smiths, OMD, The Birthday Party, Husker Du, The Stone Roses, Oasis, James, Echo and The Bunnymen, A Certain Ratio, and Divine, amongst others. Mike Pickering, Graeme Park and Dave Haslam were host DJ’s, and in the late 1980s and 1990s, the club was the catalyst for Madchester - the music and drug fueled Second Summer of Love.” 
 

 
Original photos and videos of that time period are somewhat rare and, well, hazy. Anyone who was even close to a regular there can be counted on for an arsenal of entertaining war stories. However, now original playlists from Hacienda DJ’s like Graeme Park, Daniele Davoli, Lil Louis, and Sasha are available at Mixcloud and, for now, Old Skool Raver’s YouTube Channel.
 

 
More DJ playlists from the legendary Haçienda after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Kimberly J. Bright
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07.15.2014
09:31 am
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Divine takes the UK: Two Hacienda shows and ‘Top of the Pops’
06.13.2014
01:02 pm
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Divine’s music career was perhaps less well-known than his career acting in John Waters’ films, but his discography contains plenty of music that’ll appeal to fans of Hi-NRG, ‘80s Eurodisco, and good old sleaze. In 1983, he appeared not once, but twice, in that ‘80s dance Mecca, Manchester’s Hacienda.

No expense was disbursed for these shows—Divine was clearly singing along with his records, like karaoke, but with the original vocals still present. I assume the idea must have been for Divine’s planet-sized personality to overcome the performances’ showmanship deficiencies. And such is the nature of Divine’s cult that even half-ass productions like that were recorded for release on CD as Born to Be Cheap, and on DVD as Live at the Hacienda/Shoot Your Shot. However, the between-song banter IS absolutely worthy of Divine’s trash-diva rep.

Here’s footage from both performances:
 

 
And in the spirit of trying to keep everyone happy, here’s a better, if mimed, performance, but what you gain in production value you lose in raunchy banter. It’s Divine on Top of the Pops, lip-synching what may be his best known single, “You Think You’re A Man.”
 

 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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06.13.2014
01:02 pm
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Violent Femmes, live at the Hacienda, 1983 and 1984
06.11.2014
10:48 am
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Cherry Red Records’ generous YouTube channel holds a lot of treasures, but the offerings that have been hogging my attention lately are the handful of Violent Femmes concert clips. Culled from two shows at the legendary Hacienda in Manchester UK, they capture the band at the early height of their powers, when they were touring the material from their first two albums, the immortal self-titled debut full of wrist-slitter singalongs, and the astonishing southern gothic masterpiece Hallowed Ground, which remains the best thing they’ve ever released.
 

 
Despite the austere shooting and thin sound, these clips still compellingly capture a lot of the band’s early angst, though as you’ll see, the ‘83 stuff (the first three seen here) is better than the ‘84. “Add it Up,” especially, absolutely kills. The two entire shows were released on the 2007 DVD Violent Femmes—Live at the Hacienda, but the Cherry Red web site no longer lists it.
 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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06.11.2014
10:48 am
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