I Can't Tell You Where We're Going

On Saturday there's a big gig taking place in Wythenshawe Park, a venue not very far from me at all. I keep swearing off big, outdoor, festival style gigs and then finding myself eating my words. The gig on Saturday is headlined by New Order. My first gig post- Covid was New Order at Heaton Park. I loved it. New Order are now an efficient hits machine with everything that entails. I would love it if Peter Hook was still the bass player. I would love it if they were they were still the temperamental mid- 80s band with unreliable equipment who refused to do encores but those days are gone, we are all much older and seeing New Order play Temptation and True Faith in a field not far from home. Yes, it's very tempting. See you there.

True Faith (12" Remix)

To make it even more tempting New Order are supported by Johnny Marr. Johnny grew up literally across the road from the park, it's as close to home for him as it could be. I saw Johnny Marr at the Ritz a few years ago and lots of people I know have seen him since. He plays Smiths songs and Electronic songs. He's one of the good guys. Johnny is a genuine hero- he has been since the mid- 80s but there is a much closer to home reason too. Back in the early 2010s, when Isaac attended a local SEN school, the then Tory council tried to take away the bus transport service for children with special needs- in the name of austerity. Some of the parents, us included, formed a group to protest and to keep this vital home- school transport service for children and families, who really needed it. We had a protest planned outside Trafford town hall when it was due to be debated, a dark night in February. We arrived with banners and placards. Not long after we arrived a familiar figure walked out of the car park. Johnny Marr turned up to support us (his niece attended the same school as Isaac). I had a chat with Johnny and let's be honest, he can spot a fan when he sees one. When the TV cameras arrived Johnny did his bit for the local news programme. We got ourselves in position on the steps, ready to be filmed protesting. I had a chant planned. I mentioned it to Johnny. He started it off and we all joined in- and that is as close to writing a song with Johnny Marr as I have got to date. Johnny then came into the council chambers with us all and sat through proceedings. For that reason, and a million others, Johnny Marr is a bit of a hero. 

We won by the way. Fuck the Tories. 

This is a dub mix of How Soon Is Now by Dubweiser, a beautifully clunky, totally unofficial, end of the night, smoke in your eyes and flashing lights dub mix of The Smiths finest B-side.

How Soon Is Now (Dub Mix)

If Johnny Marr and New Order weren't enough inducement to head to Wythenshawe Park on the bank holiday weekend, the third act on the bill is Roisin Murphy. Back in 2021 Crooked Man remixed all of Roisin's Machine album, bending an already dancefloor fixated record into completely new shapes. Sheffield, Manchester, Ireland and Ibiza, all locked into one big loop. 

Crooked Madame

You Took My Time And You Took My Money

New Order in the summer of 1987. I was seventeen and was listening to the True Faith single repeatedly that summer, thirty two years ago (Substance, the singles compilation came out in August 1987 too). The band played True Faith on Top Of The Pops and it rose into the top five the week after. They played live, as this clip shows, broadcast recently on BBC4's re-runs of Top Of The Pops. The re-runs are deep into 1987- and it has to be said it was a year of largely terrible music on the nation's favourite chart run down show- most of the episodes can skipped through in minutes with your finger on the fast forward button on the remote control. The week New Order appeared they shared the BBC canteen and dressing rooms with Sinitta and Spagna. This version is, as you'd expect, less sleek and produced than the Stephen Hague single with Hooky's clanging bass more prominent (glorious as the single is) and has a truncated guitar break. I've posted this clip before but watching them the other night I thought it was worth doing again. True Faith is a song I don't get bored of.



True Faith is a New Order tour de force, a single aimed at selling copies in large quantities- earworm keyboards and boom- bash metronomic drumming providing the rush, a song pitched in a sweet spot between pop, indie and dance. Hooky complains in his autobiography Substance that they'd left nowhere for his bass playing in the mix (but he found his way in) and that the only shot of him in the video is his left foot. Bernard was talked into changing a lyric to ensure radio play (altering 'now that we've grown up together/now they're taking drugs with me' to 'now that we've grown up together/ we're not afraid of what we see'). The song feels like a group effort whatever everyone's actual contributions were. I think I read somewhere that Deborah Curtis, Ian's widow, said she couldn't listen to New Order after Ceremony, it was too much following Ian's death, but with True Faith she could listen to them again and enjoy it- which tells you something about the way the song was received and something about the distance travelled from 1980 and Closer to 1987 and True Faith. I love it- partly because at seventeen years old you're so susceptible to these things and partly because it is in some way definitive New Order. It would make it onto any New Order compilation I'd put together.

Peter Saville created a beautiful sleeve, the falling leaf painted gold against the blue background, the leaf idea coming to him as he sat in his car and one fell onto his windscreen. The single was followed by a remix 12" with an alternative Saville sleeve, a remixed version of the song, a different mix of 1963 and also this Shep Pettibone dub.

True Dub

New Order toured in 1987 too, at home and through the USA (the US leg being the scene of much Hook and Sumner debauchery). The graphic on the tour t-shirt below is very 1987.

Last year Denise Johnson, backing singing extraordinaire, released her own, more emotional reading of the song, done acoustically.