By Hook Or By …?
A review of the website www.fac51thehacienda.com.
A good friend of mine suffered a psychotic episode in the late 1980s, during which he would ring up The Hacienda on the phone. He didn’t want to speak to anyone who worked there; he was interested in speaking to the club itself. He believed it was more than just a building… it was some kind of sentient entity. This seemed obvious to him on account of the spell it cast over so many people in Manchester at the time. I tried to persuade him that although he had a point, about The Hacienda having an unusual effect on people, it was just a building and it couldn’t possibly talk on the phone.
I find the website www.fac51thehacienda.com just as disconcerting as those conversations with my friend over twenty years ago. His conviction that The Hacienda was more than just a building is clearly shared by the owners of the website… and they seem equally confused about how this might work in practise.
What exactly is www.fac51thehacienda.com? Is it a virtual club, a company or a brand? Is it a website about the history of the club FAC51 The Hacienda? Is it a collection of projects run by people linked to the club? Or is it a collection of men with beards?
A (different) friend took one look at it and summed it up very simply: ‘They’re trying to sell you stuff.’
Under the heading ’25th April Hacienda Records - Fac51 The Hacienda’s new digital download label’ I found the following:
“Originally formed as an outlet for the work of Peter Hook and his various projects, the site brings together all the Man Ray and Freebass releases from 2010….tracks are available to preview and purchase here.”
So some explanation of the site is there, but it’s lurking inside a post under the wrong heading: Peter Hook is behind the website and my friend was right - it does seem to be a shop.
The website looks and feels nothing like a Factory-related production; the layout and appearance are standard, shared by thousands of other websites except that there is no ‘About’ page giving an explanation of what the website is.
Of course Factory people have always been notorious for being purposefully obscure and not explaining their actions or productions, but this site doesn’t fit that pattern at all - it’s chatty, newsy, full of wordy content but woolly-minded.
The site broadly covers three areas: the history of The Hacienda nightclub (1982-97) and associated merchandise; ‘Hacienda Nights’ held recently in various venues, and Peter Hook’s post-2005 music projects (on Hacienda Records) including downloads. I had to wade through most of the site content before I could make this statement with confidence because it isn’t obvious from the site structure.
(FAC251 The Factory, the club on Princess Street which is described (elsewhere) as a joint venture between Peter Hook and Tokyo Industries, seems to exist outside the FAC51 umbrella and has its own website at www.factorymanchester.com. )
New information and history are mixed up willy-nilly: ‘News’ contains current events and interviews about the past; ‘Hacienda Story’ is obviously historical (but mainly place-holders); the ‘Gallery’ and ‘Mixes’ sections contain historical and current content thrown in together and ‘Events and Tours’ contains nothing current but more history (unexpectedly) under the sub-heading ‘Tour Booking’.
Those purchasing T-shirts from the ‘Merchandise’ section will presumably be referencing the demolished club with their personal style, and not the on-line shop of the same name.
The central message seems to be that the website represents a ‘seamless progression’ of ideas from past to present; but the strategy used to deliver this message (throwing everything in together) often works against it, highlighting the differences and inconsistencies. There seems to be a naive assumption that if you put things next to each other, people will accept that they’re connected. There is also a gulf between Factory’s austere visual communication style and Peter Hook’s approach (embodied by the site) which hurls another insult at the ‘seamless progression’ concept. The overall effect is a mish-mash, which screams SELL OUT unfortunately.
Factory Records famously gave its products numbers: FAC1 was a poster, FAC2 was a record… and FAC51 was a building. Peter Hook has adopted a similar system to catalogue Hacienda Records’ digital downloads; each track is assigned a HAC number… HAC 001, HAC 002, etc. But there are no product numbers allocated to the DJ mixes which are also available to listen to through the site - maybe because they aren’t for sale.
I thought the website itself would have a HAC product number, assuming it’s owned outright by Peter Hook; the website could be a product of Hacienda Records just as The Hacienda club was a product of Factory Records. But instead the website is called by the old Factory number FAC51, which is a very odd decision, because a product number can’t be applied to two different products - otherwise the practise becomes meaningless.
It seems that Peter Hook owns ‘The Name’ and is determined to use it!
As an expression of Peter Hook and his associates’ ideas and business interests, the website is probably quite functional… but it would work better if it did not rely so heavily on a close association with a visual and communication style (the designs of Factory Records) which it does not share. It would also work better if it clearly stated what it is. The website name is unhelpful in this respect; whatever www.fac51thehacienda.com is or might be in the future, it definitely isn’t FAC51 The Hacienda. It would have been smarter to call the website something else.
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‘The venue was knocked down to make way for a block of lookalike flats also called The Hacienda. In 2002, Peter Hook did the honours and started the demolition live on Granada Reports.’
From ‘Tony Wilson You’re Entitled To An Opinion…’ by David Nolan, page 158.