Free Trade Hall
Sex Pistols at Lesser Free Trade Hall 1976 (BBC photo credit)
Manchester, England, was the world’s first industrial city, a beehive of canals, steam power, and mills from the late 1700s that drove global changes in economics, society, and music.
Manchester’s Free Trade Hall opened in 1856 as one of its leading venues. It has been the site of many Dwapara Yuga events and is today a hotel.
It was built on the site of the Peterloo massacre, 1848, the largest political demonstration of the first Industrial Revolution.
The massacre highlighted the plight of a then new category of people in society -- factory workers in mills, their poverty under the so-called Corn Laws, and lack of representation in Parliament.
The Mill workers were politically active, supported and corresponded with Abraham Lincoln over slavery, ushered in universal voting rights, and inspired the works of Marks and Engels.
The Hall itself celebrates the repeal of those Corn Laws. It was there that classical music was made available to the general public as were speakers from Winston Churchill to the Suffragette Movement.
In 1966, Bob Dylan was famously heckled there as a "Judas" for playing an electric set.
In1976, the Sex Pistols (pictured) played the “gig that changed the world.” It was attended by a tiny audience, who went on not just to consume music but to make it.
Bands formed from that one gig included the Buzzcocks, the Smiths, the Fall, and Joy Division/New Order. That last group formed Factory records and ushered in a new era of electronic dance music based on industrial sounds and rhythms that is heard around the world to this day.
Blue Monday (1980) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1GxjzHm5us&t=5s
Manchester, England, was the world’s first industrial city, a beehive of canals, steam power, and mills from the late 1700s that drove global changes in economics, society, and music.
Manchester’s Free Trade Hall opened in 1856 as one of its leading venues. It has been the site of many Dwapara Yuga events and is today a hotel.
It was built on the site of the Peterloo massacre, 1848, the largest political demonstration of the first Industrial Revolution.
The massacre highlighted the plight of a then new category of people in society -- factory workers in mills, their poverty under the so-called Corn Laws, and lack of representation in Parliament.
The Mill workers were politically active, supported and corresponded with Abraham Lincoln over slavery, ushered in universal voting rights, and inspired the works of Marks and Engels.
The Hall itself celebrates the repeal of those Corn Laws. It was there that classical music was made available to the general public as were speakers from Winston Churchill to the Suffragette Movement.
In 1966, Bob Dylan was famously heckled there as a "Judas" for playing an electric set.
In1976, the Sex Pistols (pictured) played the “gig that changed the world.” It was attended by a tiny audience, who went on not just to consume music but to make it.
Bands formed from that one gig included the Buzzcocks, the Smiths, the Fall, and Joy Division/New Order. That last group formed Factory records and ushered in a new era of electronic dance music based on industrial sounds and rhythms that is heard around the world to this day.
Blue Monday (1980) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1GxjzHm5us&t=5s