City fun fan

A popular misconception about “Blue Monday” holds that the single’s die-cut sleeve, created by Factory designer Peter Saville, cost so much to produce that Factory Records actually lost money on each copy sold. It is unlikely that Factory Records could have sustained the losses implied, and the sleeve was soon changed to a similar non-die-cut design that would cost no more than a regular sleeve.^[6] It is, however, probably true that New Order saw little profit from the single’s success, since an investment in the Haçienda nightclub swallowed much of the money they made from their hit.

Another notable feature of the sleeve is that it does not display either the group name nor song title in plain English anywhere. Instead the legend “FAC 73 BLUE MONDAY AND THE BEACH NEW ORDER” is represented in code by a series of coloured blocks. The key enabling this to be deciphered was printed on the back sleeve of the album, Power, Corruption & Lies. “Blue Monday” is one of three New Order releases from this time period to employ the colour code. The sleeve’s spine simply reads “FAC SEVENTY THREE”.

(Source: sendmethepillow)

Amazingly you can find editions of City Fun on US publishing collectors sites selling for $45 a piece. It’s funny what time does to our perception of things.

As a brief post script, I would like to make particular reference to one of the most important visual artists in Manchester at the time. Linder Sterling.

I am Kloot
Three feet tall.

(Source: putshandsintoilets)

Most famous for her collaboration with Malcolm Garrett on this iconic Buzzcocks cover, Linder was also lead singer of the band Ludus ( who were managed by City Fun editors Liz Naylor and Cath Carroll. 

She sometimes contributed her art to City Fun and for me really captured the punk aesthetic of the time.

So for me this represents a time and place that wasn’t all about big shoulder pads and red braces. We weren’t all listening to Wham and for me and many like me, an interest in what I can best describe using a word I picked up from my kids ‘randomness’ was born.

And without necessarily realizing it, City Fun was part of (and many say partly responsible for) a ‘Manchester scene’ that would later culminate in the second summer of love.

Factory records was in the ascendance…

Manchester became an increasingly vibrant place during this time.

And the form as well as the function of these 20 page hand made pamphlets were therefore imbued with all the more potency as an outcome of that.

Politics was never far from the surface in City Fun, just as it was in the rest of ‘Youth culture’ at the time.

But it was the way fanzines like this encapsulated the ‘indie’ culture of the time, especially during those Thatcher years leading up to the miners strike in 1984.

There was a surreal quality to City Fun, which all added to the unconventional feel of the time.

But there was I think also something about the underground feel that came with the way this sort of publication was produced and distributed ie sold at gigs or on the counters of those long forgotten things called ‘independent record shop’.