In Manchester, we drank, we sung, we spouted poetic rants, all of us so pleased that we were on our way to see Joy Division perform at the pub down the road. Everyone was drunk. Jon the postman was there. It was rumored that Bowie would be giving an introduction at the performance—maybe even a song or two. It was late but never too late for the ruddy faced, lacquered and polished Irish in us, always ready to waltz in the moonlight if it meant a drink and a song at the end of the road.
We didn’t make it to the concert. Somewhere on the way in a heated spatter-spit wit match we decided that love had torn us apart. We had no need to see the show; we were the show. What was Joy Division if not a melancholy reverberation of our daily lives, an echo of our times.
At a party where it seemed the whole of Manchester was invited, we declared a new order of sound and experience. The only music now is improvised, from the moment and for the moment–never recorded because who would have time to listen when they would be making music of their own. Never again would we worship the dead, never again abandon our own creative impulses in reverence of another. And so it happened that on that one night all of Manchester sung as one, danced as many, and lived for the moment.