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A musical tour of Manchester: from the Hallé to the Happy Mondays

Every genre of music has made its mark on Manchester, including dialect ballads, classical, TV theme tunes and all the strands of post-punk. Welcome to the north-west sound

The Electric Circus hosted many seminal punk performances, including the first gig by Warsaw (Joy Division’s first name) Northern soul, which arrived via Liverpool docks and Burtonwood airbase, drew large followings in Stoke, Wigan, Blackpool and, before any of those, Manchester. The Pistols concert in 1976 made the Lesser Free Trade Hall a holy-of-holies in Manc muso circles, but the Electric Circus, in Collyhurst (birthplace of pianist and crooner Les Dawson), earned its credentials through many seminal punk performances, including the first gig by Warsaw(Joy Division’s first name), and shows by Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, the Fall, the Nosebleeds and Slaughter and the Dogs, among others. In 1978, Factory Records began as a WFH DIY disruptive startup at Alan Erasmus’s first-floor flat at 86 Palatine Road(now blue plaqued), only moving to a proper HQ on Charles Street in 1990 – where it was officially incorporated with the catalogue number FAC 251 (the name of a venue for cover bands on the site, part owned by Peter Hook).

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