Sic perii omnes superbii, I guess: the proud collapse in a heap on the floors of their E-littered Manchester nightclubs. Whatever. So much English music was at any rate so horribly dull at that point in time that there were actually people who’d tell you that you couldn’t understand some of this stuff unless you’d danced to it while on Ecstasy, which sentiment is exactly zero degrees removed from “if you’d’ve tabbed acid and seen the Dead in Humboldt County around ‘83, man, you’d know why they’re so great.” Wherefore it was probably for the best that Factory went down rather than sully their reputation by putting out Happy Hardcore records or something. But when Factory Records ceased to be, they took with them your chances of ever hearing bands like Crispy Ambulance, the Wake, the Royal Family and the Poor, the unspeakably sublime Stockholm Monsters who are honest-to-God my favorite band of all time with the possible exception of Lifter Puller, and Section 25.