What Do I Get Out Of This?

Wythenshawe Park, 70 acres of green, open space in South Manchester with a 16th century half- timbered hall and statue of Oliver Cromwell at its centre, played host to a 30, 000 capacity gig headlined by New Order on Saturday. Nadine Shah who kicked things off in fine style, her band playing repetitive, crunching post- punk/ indie rock with Nadine's theatrical, huge voice the c point.  Greatest Dancer from this year's Filthy Underneath was a highlight, booming out in the late afternoon sunshine. Having spoken passionately about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, she spends the last few minutes of the final song screaming the word 'ceasefire' into the mic as the band kicked up a glorious racket, before leaving the stage to squeals of feedback. 

Roisin Murphy is on shortly after, a singer with connections to Manchester- she lived here during the late 80s and early 90s. Her set is a well honed and highly entertaining forty minutes of dance music and costume changes, Roisin the queen of Wythenshawe Park. 

One outfit has her wearing a massive oversized, square biker jacket, another a black top hat and robes with a life size model of a baby on a necklace which she ignores until the instrumental break at which point she stands centre stage cuddling it. Later on she is bedecked in a giant, head- to - toe red frill. Her songs sound equally impressive, Moloko's The Time Is Now getting a rework and Incapable from 2020's Machine both stand out, the latter a long extended disco- house groove. Sing It Back is fused with Murphy's Law and she closes her set by sauntering through Can't Replicate and then having a huge amount of fun with an onstage camera that is feeding directly onto the big screen behind her, finishing with an extreme close up of the inside of her mouth.

Incapable

Local lad Johnny Marr takes the stage at 7.30, the venue filling up. Johnny grew up round here- 'Wythenshawe Park, Saturday night', he says between songs with a rueful grin. Johnny and his band are on it from the start, electrifying and plugged in to the crowd, playing eleven songs that span his career, from The Smiths to Electronic to his solo albums. Second song in he plays the clanging riff that intros Panic and we're putty in his hands. Generate is sparky post- punk pop. This Charming Man sends the crowd into a spin, dancing and singing the words from a song he wrote with a man from Stretford forty years ago back at him. 

In the middle of the set he switches to acoustic guitar and plays Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want, a long finger picking introduction before singing it very sweetly. I have a bit of a moment during this song, tears and everything, something that has been happening to me a gigs since Isaac died. He follows Please, Please, Please... by introducing another Wythenshawe lad, 'the king of the Wythenshawe guitarists' according to Johnny, Billy Duffy to the stage and they drive into How Soon Is Now, Billy finding space for a Cult- like guitar solo as Johnny and the band shimmer and surge through the song.

The final pair of songs are equally crowd pleasing- first Electronic's 1989 single, the sublime pop of Getting Away With It (Bernard doesn't appear to sing this with him alas) and then the mass singalong of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, a song that despite the doom- laden lyrics with death arriving by being crushed by ten ton trucks and double decker busses, is a song of optimism and survival, an anthem for the young and not- so- young everywhere. 

Getting Away With It

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Prior to New Order's appearance DJ Tin Tin raises the temperature with a set of songs, played from a table and decks set up at the front of the stage with A Certain Ratio's It All Comes Down To This sounding great as the sun went down. Then, five minutes of dry ice, films of gymnasts and divers and orchestral music pave the way for New Order. It's dark by now, the lights on, the stage dramatic and dark, as Bernard walks to the centre and straps on his guitar. The venue is rammed by now. We have a spot down the front to the right. They open with Academic from 2015's Music: Complete and then go into Crystal (the highlight of 2001's Get Ready, a post- reformation song that showed they still had what it takes). The crowd have come from near and far. Half of Manchester seems to be here, teenagers and sixty- somethings. The two young men next to us have flown in from Cologne specifically to see New Order who according to our new German friends 'never come to Germany'.

From there, the next run of songs is close to perfect. All the idiosyncrasies, fragilities and temperamental equipment of 1980s New Order are long gone- this is a fully fleshed out, massive sounding hits machine with backing projections, smoke and lasers. Regret. Age Of Consent. Ceremony with Gillian switching from keys to guitar. Isolation, a Joy Division song containing one of Ian Curtis' darkest lyrics set to urgent, pummeling electronic post- punk. Then, slowing things down slightly, Your Silent Face. They play a couple of recent songs (Be A Rebel, the song with the most un- New Order song title ever) and then a superb, sky- scraping Sub- culture, 1985's Lowlife song/ single, the instant hit of the keyboard line, Stephen's drums and Bernard's words about 'walking in the park when it gets late at night' and having to submit filling Wythenshawe's space completely. 

Sub- culture

Bizarre Love Triangle (possibly their greatest single) seguing into Vanishing Point (possibly their greatest album track) and True Faith (again, possibly their greatest single). Blue Monday. Temptation (possibly... oh you know). It's all about the songs and the feelings they provoke. 

The encore is a Joy Division mini- set, Ian's face projected onto the screen behind them, the presence that is always hovering somewhere around the band. Atmosphere. Transmission. Love Will Tear Us Apart. 

Transmission (Live at Les Bains Douche, December 1979)

They've come a very long way since crawling out of the wreckage of Joy Division, from their faltering debut as New Order at The Beach Club in Withy Grove to this massive gig at Wythenshawe Park. They've made groundbreaking records, done it their own way, survived record company collapses, bankruptcy, the demolition of nightclubs, deaths, break ups and fall outs. Tony Wilson once said that Joy Division/ New Order were 'the last true story in rock 'n' roll'. It felt that way on Saturday night in a way, more than just a big gig, a band and an audience who have grown up together, whose songs mean so much to each other and who had come home. 

Saturday Live

The New Order re- issue machine is in full flow, the third of a series of album boxed sets having just been released, this one tackling 1985's masterpiece Lowlife. I haven't bought any of them, the cost of living crisis, my recent reduction in income and what looks a little like poor value for money coming together to put me off. The three boxes- so far 1981's Movement, 1983's Power, Corruption And Lies and now Lowlife- cost over £100 each and come with what does indeed look like a beautiful hardback book, a remastered album, some extra tracks/ demos and some DVDs of live performances (of which more later). The 12" singles associated with the time period of each album are being re- issued separately, at £20 each. The extras/ demos confirm my belief that New Order don't have a great deal of unreleased material sitting in the vaults. It seems that what they wrote they worked up in full and released and many of the extras such as the full seventeen minute version of Elegia saw the light of day previously in the 2002 Retro boxed set. Other non- Factory songs like Skullcrusher and Let's Go (from soundtracks) have been fairly widely available too. Some people I know have bought the album boxed sets, and fair enough, but not for me at the price they're offered at right now. 

Grumble over. In 1985 New Order were doing something no one else was, their marriage of unreliable synths and drum machines with live guitars and drums, marrying dance and rock, was/ is unique. The Cure went on to borrow their bass lines and shiny c1987 sound, but largely they really were out on their own, making pop music/ art for a record label who allowed them the freedom to do what they liked, when they liked, with a groundbreaking visual designer. Bernard's vocals, untutored and unbothered, with Hooky's frequently soaring, gorgeous basslines and the rhythmic punch Stephen brought, the choppy, distorted guitars, Gillian's one fingered keyboard playing, the frog chorus and synth drums- all of this made them outstanding in a field of one. Their live performances were notoriously shonky, drunken and short affairs, with equipment breaking down and Mancunian truculence as standard. These for me are the draws of the boxed sets, mid 80s gigs in full on an archaic and outdated format, Ye Olde Digital Versatile Disc. 

In December 1985 New Order played Rotterdam, an eventful couple of days away I would imagine with Rotterdam's reputation for edginess and New Order's for partying. There was a gig in Belgium and they'd been in Japan earlier that year (a gig released on video as Pumped Full of Drugs, catalogue number FAC 177- medical ones funnily enough, they all had flu) and played the Hacienda too, promoting Lowlife in all it's shiny, state of the art glory. Lowlife, catalogue number FAC 100, is perfect mid- 80s New Order, from the opening crash of the snare and country and western / Vietnam lyrics of Love Vigilantes to the gargantuan dance- pop of The Perfect Kiss (in edited form), Sunrise and Elegia's glorious synthscapes, Sub- cultures towering dance music with masturbation lyrics and the thumping ending of Face Up, with its corny lyrics, yelps and everything. Even the two songs that are most clearly the 'album tracks', Sooner Than You Think and This Time Of Night, are miles ahead of their contemporaries. If New Order had contemporaries in 1985. The footage of the Rotterdam gig is superb, and some of it is on Youtube thankfully, though not the whole gig as one document- hopefully sooner or later someone will upload this. As it is here are a few highlights of Bernard, Peter, Stephen and Gillian in 1985.

As It Is When It Was at The Hacienda, filmed for the Whistle Test, Hooky's Love Will Tear Us Apart teasing bassline at the fore and Barney crooning, 'well I always thought we'd get along like a house on fire' and Velvet Underground chicken scratch guitars. The shot from the balcony at three minutes, the crowd tightly packed and swaying like the Stretford End behind Ron Atkinson's mid 80s team.

Sunrise, also from the Hacienda, with a birthday shout out for Gary, nineteen today.

Over at the Rotterdam Arena now, The Perfect Kiss introduced by Hooky, nine minutes of widescreen, dance- pop brilliance, under bright white lights with Morris and Gilbert prodding synths while Barney and Peter bring the guitars. Bernard's guitar solo as Hooky bashes the synth drums and then the drop out at around five minutes is a blast. Cue the frogs. 

Opinion I'd like to present as fact- Bernard was a better vocalist when he wasn't able to sing and play at the same time.

To Japan now and the Koseinenkin Hall, and Sub- culture. There are times when I think Sub- culture may be their best song, their finest moment. 'In the end you will submit/ It's got to hurt you a little bit'.

Love Vigilantes in Tokyo, Barney's melodica making its wheezy appearance. Not a euphemism. 

Back to Rotterdam now. The setlist for Rotterdam is stunning- As It Was When It Was/ Everything's Gone Green/ Sub- culture/ Ceremony/ Let's Go/ This Time Of Night/ The Village/ The Perfect Kiss/ Age Of Consent/ Sunrise. Amazingly they played an encore too, not something they were much up for at the time and not something they tended to do without leaving the machines playing Blue Monday. At Rotterdam Arena the encore was Temptation and Face Up. 

Face Up is absurdly good and so typically New Order, everything great about them piled into six minutes of exhilaration. Here Barney fumbles the words occasionally, the sound is distorted, the bass pulverising, the synths overloaded, the drums crashing and crunchy, a white knuckle ride a week before Christmas 1985. 'Oh how I cannot bear the thought of you/ We were young and we were pure/ And life was just an open door' Bernard sings, lines I assume that must be about Ian and Joy Division, as the song tears towards its conclusion leaving Hooky, shirtless, not wanting to leave the stage.