Faber & Faber

Last Thursday Faber hosted a party at the soon-to-be re-housed (in Cecil Court) Amuti Gallery, to celebrate the publication of Kevin Cummins' incomparably beautiful photo-documentary trip through Manchester pop since 1976, Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain.

Rumours of the appearance of Manc royalty fuelled the evening's gossip. In the event 200 people crammed into a space the size of the old away team's dressing room at Maine Road and spilled out onto the street, listening to such Manchester classics as Northside's 'Shall We Take a Trip' and 'World of Twist's The Storm'.

Sadly neither Bez nor Shaun turned-up (but it's a long way from Derbyshire to London) and Mark E. Smith, Johnny Marr and Peter Hook, all of whom are extensively interviewed in the book, were clearly otherwise engaged - Hooky, perhaps, in promotion of his own memorial to Manchester madness, The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club.

But Paul Morley, whose 30,000 word liturgical essay on the very particular resonance of Manc bands, music and character through the ages was there, as was David Peace, who spent most of the evening trying to persuade Morley to write his very own Arcades Project on the city that has consumed and inspired his writing over the past three decades.

And as these pictures confirm, Noel Gallagher was good enough to come along and demonstrate his support for the book and his love of Kevin's photography.

Noel's quote perhaps best captures the mood and ambition of Cummins' unique book:

'Kevin's photographs have shaped the way fans perceive their idols. These images capture moments long forgotten. This iconic book ensures they will live forever.'

Live Forever indeed ... 5 years after I started a conversation with Kevin and we stated our joint intention to create a book which finally and definitively captured the essence of Buzzcocks, Joy Division, New Order, The Smiths, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, the Hacienda, Oasis and much more, I couldn't quite believe we were standing in our own little corner of Manchester (in Camden) reminiscing about a scene which hit its peak 'Twenty years ago today ...' with book in hand, a happy author, and Manc royalty in attendance.

Manchester has been so mythologized, repackaged, re-imagined (often falsely), and over-analysed. The extent to which it can lay claim to being England's Memphis (or perhaps, at the expense of alliterative grace, Chicago) is debatable.

But being a part of the publication of Cummins' epic lovesong to the Manchester music scene ('76-96 RIP) has been a privilege. As the title of Michael Azerrad's brilliant study of the American college indie-hardcore scene in the '80s attests, 'Our Band Could Be Your Life'.

Flicking through this book and during the making of it, I was constantly reminded of the truth of that statement. These bands, and these images, defined a generation and I've no doubt there are 15-year-olds now listening to the Mondays and feeling like I did in 1989 listening to the Velvet Uunderground, amazed that such great music could come out of such a dark and distant past.

Photography by Jack Delmonte / www.tedlemon.com / blog