Happy Mondays - Performance - The Other Side of Midnight. UK TV late 1980s.

What's a Manchester-based blog without even a token nod in the direction of 'Madchester'? Incomplete, that's what. So, from that weird period when a Manchester postcode or 061 STD code had A&R men swarming round dull, talentless copycat bands like flies buzzing round Asia Fields, here are the only truly great band to emerge from that period.

This performance of Performance is from an episode of The Other Side of Midnight, at the point when Tony Wilson morphed into Anthony H. Wilson. An arts and culture programme which featured local and international musicians and artists; can you imagine Granada TV commissioning something like that these days?

James - If Things Were Perfect - Live in 1985

Just to remind myself how good James once were in a low-budget Indie, hi-life guitar, singing like a little kid trying to sing like a big kid kind of way. How tight. Pre-Ja t-shirts, pre-major label, pre-strident, pounding stadium rockers. Sit down and admire that knitware.