Admittedly, there are some images: the poster work of Happy Monday acolytes central Station, or the cold, oddly dislocated sleeve art of Brian Cannon’s ‘Microdot,’ who worked with Oasis, stand out.

Then thereare the lost heroes, such as Edward Barton, musician, video director and T shirt designer, who parodied the once ubiquitous portable manifestation of pop-art visual culture, the T. Shirt (Edward replaced “Cool as Fuck” with “Cool as Fridge”)

It’s not as if Mancunians didn’t try: Tony Wilson of Factory promoted and would have arm-wrestled to publicise the city’s Comme Ca Art prize, with contestants such as The Little Artists.

In truth, I can hear Elbow but I don’t really see them. The current crop of Sadchester artists are not as visually arresting, despite the excellent videos of The Soup Collective.

More than anything else, I have two visions in my mind, and they are both photographs by Kevin Cummins. One originates in the days when Manchester stuck two fingers up at the UK: it’s The Stone Roses, defiantly paint speckled after a session with Cummins, reflecting the work of Pollock parodist John Squire (himself an artist.)

The other is bleak, poignant and eerie: it is Joy Division, young and yet to be truly successful, standing on the thick snow of a bridge of a bridge in Hulme. And it’s beautiful.

Find out more about Penny Anderson here.

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.