In the heart of Middle England over the weekend, I killed time with my copy of Palatine, the mostly excellent and entirely out-of-print Factory Records compilation. That official site is in some kind of construction limbo, and this would appear to be a decent alternative resource, with a hell of a lot of content. It lists all of Factory’s famous foibles (Linder’s menstrual egg-timer, etc.) though whether the text can do justice to the bloodyminded Factory vision I’ve not lingered long enough yet to judge. The nay-sayers’ line on the label would be that without the Joy Division/New Order axis and latterly the Happy Mondays it would have been a complete white elephant, which is probably the case but seems somehow to miss the point.