In the beginning there was

Trevor Wishart

I’ve got to that age where memory is beginning to be something of a problem.

What I do remember is that I was interested in establishing a musician’s collective in Manchester because I’d been involved in collectives in York and in attempts to set up a national musicians collective.

What was interesting for me is that the previous collectives had always been an attraction largely for the free improvisation scene, whereas the establishment of the Manchester collective coincided with the newly emerging band scene in Manchester, so there were lots of people from the band scene, many with virtually no place to rehearse. I remember Mark E. Smith turning up to one of the evenings in the North West Arts basement, and I’ve always been impressed by his commitment to what he does, and his anti-celebrity stance. I also remember putting on ‘Menagerie’ (photo-slides of montages by various performance artists, with my accompanying soundtracks) at a Jazz venue in Manchester around the same time, and have a vague memory (you can probably correct me) of running a musical games session in the collective space. Since then life has gone off in entirely other directions, but I’m still involved in vocal free improvisation at various sound-poetry festivals around Europe. I never did make it into a band!!

TREVOR WISHART

The Collective

The Manchester Musicians Collective was formed in April 1977, inspired in part, by Dick Witt’s involvement with musicians of the London Musicians Collective and Trevor’s involvement with collectives in York and attempts to set up a national collective. However, from its conception, the Manchester Collective took a very different musical direction. The first membership included Trevor Wisheart, who was composer in residence for North West Arts and members of Dick's NorMedia group; Louise Alderman and Chris Griffin. 

With the arrival of Mark E. Smith of The Fall and Frank Ewart from The Manchester Mekon, things changed forever. The groups had arrived. Frank, because of his technical knowledge, immediately became a central figure. The Fall played their first gig at North West Arts basement in King Street West, where the original MMC meetings were held.

It soon became apparent that another venue was needed and The Band on the Wall had a free night. A pilot scheme was suggested to the owners Steve Morris and his partner and they agreed to a few trial Sunday nights to see what would happen.

It was a brave move as Steve played clarinet in trad jazz style and he found the music of the late 70’s difficult to comprehend. However, he was a keen Musicians’ Union man and believed in encouraging young artists, whatever the musical genre.The first few gigs were very mixed: different performance artists as well as bands and individual musicians.

Dick Witts, Louise Alderman, Chris Griffin and David Pimlott, formed as an improvisational group called The Toy Town Symphony Orchestra. They played a variety of instruments and wore frog masks. Gradually, the bands took over, though there was still sometimes an appearance by a Collective orchestra of some kind.

It was very exciting time musically, the mix of musicians brought something to each camp giving everything an edge somehow previously lacking and the gigs proved to be very popular too.

As word spread more bands became members of the Collective; some for a short while, some for longer. A Certain Ratio, Fast Cars, The Not Sensible, The Elite/Slight Seconds, Spherical Objects, Passage, Warsaw/Joy Division, Frantic Elevators were all Collective members. All the bands were friendly and there was a rota of whose turn it was to play a gig and who would headline. Everything was organized by the Collective: members, printing, publicity (fly posting!). The press regularly reviewed the gigs and although this made them popular with musicians looking for recognition it was never the driving force behind any event. People went to listen to the music, share ideas and to help each other.

A year on, the idea of a Collective album was talked about. Steve Solamar, of Spherical Objects, had his own record label, Object Music and, as a Collective member seemed the obvious choice to ask and he was happy to facilitate this. He was given full artistic control to choose the line up for the album and to that end, attended many of the Band on the Wall gigs to see the bands performing live.

The first Collective album ‘A Manchester Collection’ was released in 1979.

The second Unzipping The Abstract a year later in 1980, on the Collectives own label

 

To correspond with the re release of the Collectives Music we are putting together a History or “memory collage” of its members recollections.

If you were a member of the Manchester Musicians Collective please contribute by sending in your bands story or memories of the Collective.  

manchester.musicians-collective@ntlworld.com