Tonight
10pm, Solas
Musical pioneer Peter Hook was pivotal to many of the greatest moments in British music over the past 30 years, so the New Order bassist's DJ set in Central tonight will be a modern history lesson no fan or musicologist should miss.
Hook has just written a book about his career in the music business, which will be published this summer in conjunction with a Hacienda Classics album on the Ministry of Sound label and a Hacienda world tour. It should be some read.
He started out in the late 70s with Joy Division, the cult English post-punk band whose singer Ian Curtis hanged himself and was the subject of the recent bio-pic Control. The band morphed into New Order, which 25 years ago released the seminal electronic track Blue Monday, Britain's biggest-selling 12-inch single that changed the face of British music.
New Order's success enabled them to fund the Hacienda, the notorious club that was home to the late 80s Madchester scene that spawned Happy Mondays and Stone Roses, and DJs such as Mike Pickering, who helped launch rave culture in Britain.