It came as a shock… Just a few months ago, he was spry and wearing shorts (tans and hedonism were assuredly part of the ensemble, as well) as he introduced the Happy Mondays at Coachella. Today, the complicated, fascinating, and joyous Anthony Wilson passed away.

Everyone knows Tony Wilson as the father of Factory Records, the Hacienda, the man who signed some of the best and most influential bands of all time, but to me, he is the father of what it is that we do here at Res, and what so many others like us are doing all over the internet. In much the same accidental way he pioneered the structure of the independent record label, Tony pioneered music blogging. His shows on Granada television about bands he felt deserved exposure they weren’t getting was the forebear to what we internet audiophiles do today. He used the most current technology available to get what he loved to the masses.

Tony wasn’t a rock star. He wasn’t in a band, nor did he try to be. He was first and foremost a music lover, second, an impresario (and never a very financially successful one at that). Tony put other people in the spotlight, he wanted to be listened to not for what he made or did but for what he loved. He was, like all fanatical pop musicologists, a generous teacher, wanting nothing more than to share share share.

I’ll never quite understand his love for A Certain Ratio (if it was ever truly sincere) nor how he could consider Shaun Ryder to be the greatest poet of the 20th century, but without his extensive and tireless contribution to the world of popular music that there would be no …trixie, no Resonator, and no glorious, upstart, self-publishing and producing music scene that is blossoming so beautifully on the web today.

Thank you, Mr. Anthony Wilson for your innovations in the music industry, for demonstrating that love has a place in marketing, and for being a surrogate father to so many of us who found a home in the music you shared.

– …trixie (Period) Space-Space

Tony Wilson was, as those who knew him close were oft quoted as saying, a fucking twat. An egomaniacal wanker, so convinced of his good taste in music that he, in essence, put his entire personage up as wager on a bet to craft a lifestyle.

And damn if he didn’t come out ahead, and in spades at that.

There’s a scene at the beginning of the film version of 24 Hour Party People that has the group of pre-Happy Mondays Mondays watching on television as Karl Denver and his trio yodel and trill their way through “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. Half-cocked, Shaun (not yet “reverend” of anything) starts joking imitation of Denver’s then-trademark yodel, all the while proclaiming how absolutely awesome he thought ’s sound was.

The musical climate Tony Wilson unleashed Factory Records into can be summed up right there-the world was Karl Denver’s Trio, Factory Records, fittingly, The Mondays slumming their way half-smirking through a sound that existed but needed to be turned on its head.

The fact that Karl Denver would later sing on the Monday’s single “Lazyitis” could be seen of the unification of scenes the FAC sound united-punk, raver, rock, pop-or it could just throw a monkey wrench into my entire working metaphor here. Let’s play (and pray) for the former.

On the subject of monkey wrenches-something else that Wilson was. Refusing to operate by normal business means, constraints, laws or obligations (thusly and rightly leading to that “twat” label by many, most of whom were owed money), Wilson’s FAC numbers adorned the most important music to be released in the past half-century. Getting its’ hands (and label) around the highest-selling vinyl single of all time, “Blue Monday”, also cost the label a few pounds for every of the original pressing of the record that was sold. This, like everything else, is another working metaphor for the way Tony Wilson operated. This, like everything else that’s another working metaphor for the way Tony Wilson operated, is legendary.

Wilson was oft quoted as telling reporters, in regards to discerning fact from fiction, to “print the legend”. Fitting. The music that he dug from somewhere-the ground, the sky, a neighbor’s garage, anywhere-revolutionized the very way that I, personally heard rhythmic sounds. And I, certainly, am not the only one changed. I can tell you the first time I heard “Temptation”. I can count on many hands the amount of shaking, tears, cold-and-hot that’s gone through my body to “Atmosphere”. And the Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK” was like a gateway drug, making it ok for me to listen to things without synths for the first time-because of the snarl, sure, but also because of the utter self deprecating wit. Wilson may as well get wiki-ed right now as being the godfather of the Post Modern movement. Fully aware that he was utterly doubting his total genius, Tony was the only human being who was ever five steps ahead of Tony. Without Wilson, there’d be no Dave Eggers apologizing for his essential apology. Without Tony Wilson, half of what we right now come to hold as standard marketing and new media practices wouldn’t exist. Without Tony, it wouldn’t be apropos of everything to base an entire scene, and entire sound, on one figure. That figure, of slight, spry, quick-witted but just-as-often-stuttering Tony Wilson (always fully aware of which of his sides he was presenting), unified and polarized so many musical genres, so many ideas, so many people. He taught the ravers to rock. He taught the rockers to rave. Sheena was a punk rocker, sure, but I’ll bet you five fucking bucks that at the end of the night she was dancing to New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”.

Without Tony Wilson, always fucking being right and smug for it and aren’t we thankful right now that he was always right, things just wouldn’t be what they are. He put the e in dance music and instilled that same e in “love” as in “love of music” and that’s a fact. That’s a fac.

Fuck you for dying, Tony. Thank you for living, Tony. You were always right and you were always right and you were always right. And the legacy lives on, in the music, but more importantly in the happy, wasted smiles that come from those very same sounds.

What are we supposed to print now, Tony? All that’s left is your legend.

-Shaun

Hacks couldn’t be reached for comment… He’s probably out dancing to something at DSC. Let’s hope that it’s this:

We’re keeping the typos tonight… They express our sadness and anger and frustration at the passing of our hero. Deal with it.