The reprieved (hurrah) 6Music had a 'Shadowplayers' afternoon recently, dredging up plenty of Factory tracks. Sadly, The Distractions didn't feature although a few days later the recent Distraction, Nick Halliwell, and his Granite Shore, did, with the single Flood of Fortune receiving its first national airtime on Mark Riley's show (listen again here (12:50), should be on for a few days yet). Here's another couple of Distractions snippets from James Nice's essential read, Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records.
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[After Linder had decided not to record for Factory…] Factory also missed out on Manicured Noise, now shifting from avant-garde abstraction towards a more accessible sound, and who seem to have considered Wilson's untried label too provincial. Wilson was also fond of The Distractions, a more traditional guitar pop quartet, who chose instead to release You're Not Going Out Like That through TJM in February (1979), earning them single of the week in NME.
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Factory contributed six groups to the bill [of the Leigh Rock and Music Festival, 27 August 1979]: Joy Division, A Certain Ratio, Orchestral Manoeuvres and X-O-Dus, as well as reserved guitar pop quartet The Distractions and a bizarre trio from Tyneside called Crawling Chaos. Neither seemed a typical choice for Factory, and both betrayed Wilson's marked disinclination towards orthodox A&R. Talented but unglamorous, The Distractions had already issued a pleasing EP through TJM, and in lining up Time Goes By So Slow as FAC 12 hoped to emulate the success of OMD, with all concerned regarding the single merely as a stepping stone to a major deal.
(c) James Nice, 2010.
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