Strike a light! It's the FAC51 Haçienda silver matchbox!

Excuse me, gotta light? Uffffffff, phoooow! Cheers, mate, cheers. Yeah, us heavy smokers need to stick together. And it's always great to get a light off a passing stranger. Someone who can handily whip out a well-stocked box of matches for you. Like this one ...

Bryant & May eat your heart out

Blimey. Yes, it's none other than a box of matches from/for The Haçienda. I found it among a few bits and bobs in my old bedroom at my mother's house at the weekend. Just this box. No other Factory stuff, and er, no other containers of incendiary devices. Well, well. As (ahem) regular Niluccio on noise readers will know, I'm quite prone to intemperate complaining over nearly all aspects of music marketing and the sainted Factory Records are not much different in my opinion. (I say not much because at least they started out with a defiantly oblique approach to promotion and weren't in it for the money, at least not at the beginning). Anyhow, I genuinely have no recollection of how I acquired this matchbox. I presume I casually picked it up during one of my Manchester student-era (1987-90) visits to Whitworth St West. In fact, I vaguely recall a big glass bowl of these at the club's front desk (maybe not, I'm a bit cloudy on the details, it's looooooong ago ...). So, a little souvenir from one of my sweaty (non-)E'd-up rave nights while out with my mates and semi-mates - a mix of the genuinely studious (my camp) and the going-a-bit-off-the-rails-with-drink-and-drugs (the semi-mates). It's odd, though, that I don't ever recall this particular matchbox. Not getting it or even possessing it. I must have just chucked it in a bag of stuff and brought it back to my parental home more than 30 years ago. And there, like a rare plant or rarely-seen creature, it stayed, undisturbed, hidden from the world. Last year I blogged about the Factory Records ruler and how a New Order merch collector from the Netherlands contacted me to see about buying it. A shaggy dog's tale if ever there was one. I've also scoffed at the preciousness of Factory Records types here and here - so ... I suppose I've got form. There's no doubt about it - I'm an utter bore when it comes to moaning about marketing, merchandise and the deep, dark compulsions of collecting. So what about the matchbox? Just how bad is it - on a scale of 1-10? Hmm, I'm unsure. It doesn't appear to have been official merchandise. There's no Factory Records catalogue number (the FAC51 is obviously the club/venue itself, a kind of generic signifier) and the Cerysmatic Factory site doesn't appear to mention it. (At which point I should come back out of this rabbit hole ...). No, I think it's just a bog-standard box of matches to rep a nightclub. There appear to have been others - eg this not-bad-looking black box which presumably was promoting Dry Bar (FAC 201). On the spine of my silvery box, in microscopic writing, it appears to say something like Matchbox Publicity with an "01" London telephone number (pre-May 1990-stylee). So yes, perhaps this was ordinary commerce camouflaged as Factory art/design (but then wasn't it all?). Anyway, given the non-pompous nature of this item, and - crucially - the fact that I can find little sign of these matchboxes being bought and sold by online dealers, I'm going to bestow on this artefact a comparatively lenient 3/10 Niluccio on noise badness rating. Phew! Now Peter Hook and the gang can stop stressing ...

Warning: 01 numbers are no longer operational

Now what? I can see three main options. One: swap it with someone in the Netherlands who will get me a secondhand copy of the Ceremony 12" in return. Two: put it on Ebay for £100 ono. Or three: er, use the matches to light some candles and then ... throw the box away (put it in the recycling)? Choices, choices. I know! I'll take three of the matches out, cut them into three different lengths and ... do a blind draw over which of these three options I'll follow. Can someone please come over to my flat and help me with this crucial Factory Records matchbox test ...?