A Time and a Place
In my last year of high school, I had to take graduation photos. We were told to bring some props that showcased our interests. I loved playing music, so an instrument would be a natural choice. Being the cranky teenager I was, I thought the whole exercise was corny. Rather than my beloved black Fender Strat, I brought a toy keyboard I found at a thrift store. There was a questionnaire to fill out before the shoot. When asked to describe my personal style, I put: āManchester, 1980s.ā
When I wrote that answer, I was thinking of Factory Records and people like New Orderās bassist Peter Hook. Reading his book The HaƧienda: How Not to Run a Club, we get a front-row seat to the life of the club at the center of it all. I hadnāt read the book at the time, but I had a love for everything they were doing: the sounds, the looks, the graphics, the atmosphere.
Why did a suburban Chicago kid think post-industrial, austerity-era Northern England was the place to be? The eye-popping schedules provided by Hook are the strongest evidence. From Manchester alone: The Smiths, The Duratti Column, Pete Shelley, and (of course) New Order. From out-of-town: Tears for Fears, Alan Vega, Cocteau Twins, The Cramps, The Pogues. These musicians make up a sizable portion of my attention for the past 15 years and counting. To have them playing in once place, in such a small span of time, is astounding. Brian Eno coined āsceniusā to describe this phenomenon:
I became (and still am) more and more convinced that the important changes in cultural history were actually the product of very large numbers of people and circumstances conspiring to make something new. I call this āsceniusā ā it means āthe intelligence and intuition of a whole cultural sceneā. It is the communal form of the concept of genius.1
Factory Records and the broader Manchester scene fit this description perfectly, with the club becoming a physical locus for that collective energy.
The closest experience Iāve had to the HaƧienda is Knockdown Center in Brooklyn. I lived within walking distance most of my time in New York and it was one of the first places I went to. It has the cavernous, industrial setting and the wide array of musical styles. Over the years Iāve seen acts from Turnstile, to SOPHIE, to Godspeed You! Black Emperor there. Knockdown Center grew on me because it catered to a variety of artistic voices, just like the HaƧienda.
At the same time, it never felt like it was building a scene like the HaƧ. There were some NYC acts I saw, like Parquet Courts and Avalon Emerson, but it was more artists who had already honed their craft, rather than a primordial hot tub. It could be due to how differently scenes are shaped with the internet. Another point of contrast: Knockdown is very well run, and I always felt safe. In the end, the lengths the HaƧienda went to experiment were unsustainable, even if culturally valuable. Itās not surprising future club owners wouldnāt want to replicate its formula. Itās also possible I simply wasnāt paying enough attention during my time there to notice a developing network.
Looking back on when I took that graduation photo, I was being spiteful. After a couple of years, I felt bad about being such a brat. Now, I canāt help but laugh and appreciate the memory. If I had gotten what I wanted at the time, there wouldnāt be any photo. I wouldnāt have any story to tell. Whatever Iāve learned since then, I canāt go back to that period and do it differently. For that time, at that place, that was me, and anything else couldnāt have been.
Running the club took a huge toll on everyone involved, financially and personally. Despite all the suffering, I know why Hook is wistful. So much grew out of that club, even if it never went according to plan. They created a place so peculiar it inspired me across decades and across an ocean. It was messy, but a reflection of that time and place, and if it played out any other way it couldnāt have been the HaƧienda.
This was written for the IndieWeb Book Club, January 2026. Special thanks to Mark for hosting and bringing this book on my radar.
While I was reading, I broke out my copy of Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album by Matthew Robertson. It ended up being an excellent companion with plenty of HaƧienda ephemera to pore over with new insight.
References
Eno, Brian. A Year with Swollen Appendencies (Faber and Faber, 1996), 354ā©ļø