V.A. Saturday

Be Music was the name used by members of New Order when they undertook production work outside the band. Peter Hook used it first when producing what became a Stockholm Monsters B-side in 1982. After that all four members used it at one time or another. Bernard's interest in synths, production and the studio meant that in the period 1983- 85 he used it often, co- producing and/ or programming on some groundbreaking singles and tracks by a raft of Manchester and Factory acts, often with ACR's Dojo (Donald Johnson) alongside him- their work on 52nd Street's Cool As Ice, Section 25's From A Hilltop and Marcel King's Reach For  should be lauded from the hilltops, sung from the rooves of the tower blocks, but these are songs largely unknown. Tony Wilson said Marcel King's Reach For Love should have been Factory's biggest hit single. Unfortunately in 1984 for ideological reasons Factory eschewed things such as promotion and pluggers and so hardly anyone got to hear it. 

Reach For Love

In 2003 LTM compiled an album of Be Music tracks, all from the period 1983 to 1985, called Cool As Ice: The Be Music Productions. Reach For Love is on it, as the other two I mentioned above. The compilation has twelve tracks on it, a selection of the Be Music catalogue. Every single one is streets ahead of the competition. Here's a handful of them.

Quando Quango were Mike Pickering's band, formed in The Netherlands and then relocating to Manchester. Mike and Hillegonda Rietveld were electronic/ electro pioneers making two ahead of their time singles and an album (Pigs And Battleships). One of those singles was Love Tempo. The other was Atom Rock which featured not just Mike and Hillegonda but also ex- ACR singer/ percussionist Simon Topping and a moonlighting Johnny Marr with Bernard and Dojo producing (recorded in Cheadle Hulme south Manchester suburb/ geography fans!) and released on Factory as Fac 102. Futuristic Manc- funk. 

Atom Rock

Far more obscure are/were Nyam Nyam, a band from Hull discovered by Hooky. He produced a single, released on Factory Benelux in 1984, recorded at Strawberry Studios, Stockport. Factory- esque, flat northern vocals with rippling Moroder synths and that grey sheen of Be Music production. 

Fate/ Hate

Section 25 were from Blackpool. They released several records on Factory, albums and singles. All are worthy of investigation. Looking From A Hilltop uses an 808 and as as innovative as anything else anyone was doing in 1983. Bernard also produced Beating Heart, a 1983 single on Factory (Fac 68), dance gloom, synths and very Sumner sounding guitars and more lovely northern singing, 'My beating heart/ Beats for you/ Only you'.

Beating Heart

Be Music Theme was recorded by Hooky in 1983, designed as intro music for Stockholm Monsters gigs (Peter often mixed their sound live). It is I suppose the first solo New Order track, years ahead of Electronic, Revenge and The Other Two. It came out on a 1986 compilation, The Quick Neat Job (out on Crepescule, a French label Factory had links with). Otherwise, Cool As Ice is the only place its ever been released. 

Be Music Theme 

Moments

This song came my way again at the weekend, on Sunday night as I was getting my head around work the day after I think, a very welcome postcard from 1989 courtesy of J.T. And The Big Family. It led to a train of music in my head, one song leading to another, all links in a late 80s/ early 90s musical chain.

J.T. And The Big Family's Moments In Soul was created and mixed at Strawberry Studios in Stockport, one of many records passing through that studio in the 1980s, the state of the art desk and facilities paid for by 10cc's hit singles and desire to have a good studio to record in close to home and not have to go to London to make records. J.T. And The Big Family were Italian and created Moments In Soul largely from samples- the two you'll pick up on straight away are the synth stabs from The Art Of Noise's ambient classic Moments In Love and the summer  of '89/ '90 shuffle of Soul II Soul's Keep On Movin', plus the very familiar, 'ah yeah' vocal sample, and vocals by an uncredited Susy del Gesso. 

Moments In Soul 

Here's the two main source samples, Art Of Noise and their 1986 masterpiece, a song that in 12" form is one the 1980s best moments.

Moments In Love

Keep On Movin' was a March 1989 single for Soul II Soul, the second single from Club Classics Vol. One, with Caron Wheeler's vocal and Nellee Hooper and Jazzie B's production. One of those songs from a year when great singles seemed to be released on a weekly basis. 

Keep On Movin'

Moments In Soul was a top ten hit and a summer of '89 classic, a slowed down chugger giving dancers a few minutes of respite from the higher bpm tracks. The provenance of all those samples and their sources takes in a list of artists including Biz Markie, Toots And The Maytals, The O'Jays, Bobby Byrd, Foxy Brown and Grand Central Station (whose The Jam provided Soul II Soul with their drum break). 

Moments In Soul fits perfectly with many other dance records from the period not least this one, another chart smash. Tom's Diner was a 1990 hit for DNA and Suzanne Vega, with a Soul II Soul drum break, this time from Back To Life, with an a capella vocal from 1981 laid over the top. It was done originally without Suzanne's knowledge or permission, Tom and Neal from DNA chopping the vocal up into little bits, sampling it and then re- assembling it with drums, bass, some string stabs and piano. 

Tom's Diner

In 1991 Electronic, Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr's band that was something of a bid to break out of the shadows of their two bigger bands, released Feel Every Beat, a single from their debut, self- titled album. DNA remixed it for the CD single- there are lots of guitars courtesy of Mr Marr, some big piano house chords, another shuffling DNA drum beat and Bernard's rather sweetly sung vocals, 'we don't need to argue/ we just need each other'. Bernard also raps (and gets away with I think), a vaguely coded response to the criminalisation of rave culture and free parties.   

Feel Every Beat (DNA Mix)

Forty Minutes Of Fac

In the 1980s Factory Records was the best record label in the world. Based on Palatine Road, a stone's throw from where I grew up, managed as a Marxist art project, bankrolled by New Order and home to a bunch of sullen, wilful experimental artists who famously signed no contracts and owned all their music, it put out record after record, almost none of which were hits. Today's mix is a small selection of the magnificence that came out of Factory in the mid- 80s (deliberately leaving out New Order), a period where the combined talents clustered around the table at 86 Palatine Road produced such life affirming and ground breaking music. 

Forty Minutes Of Fac

• Cabaret Voltaire: Yashar (John Robie Remix)
• Quando Quango: Genius
• Stockholm Monsters: All At Once
• Section 25: Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
• Marcel King: Reach For Love
• A Certain Ratio: Mickey Way (The Candy Bar)
• Durutti Column: For Belgian Friends

Yashar (John Robie Remix) by Cabaret Voltaire is Fac 82. Cabaret Voltaire released just this single 12" for Factory. 

Genius by Quando Quango is Fact 137. Quando Quango were formed in Rotterdam by Mike Pickering with Hillegonda Rietveld and Reinier Rietveld with former ACR singer Simon Topping joining on percussion. 

All At Once by Stockholm Monsters is Fac 107. Stockholm Monsters are the best band to come out of Burnage. 

Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix) by Section 25 is Fac 108, released in 1984, and still sounds like the future. It was produced by Donald Johnson of ACR and Bernard Sumner of New Order as Be Music. 

Reach For Love by Marcel King is FBN 43, released in 1985, and should have been number one in every country in the world. Also produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson. 

Mickey Way (The Candy Bar) by A Certain Ratio is Fac 168 from 1986. It was also on the album Force, ACR's last album for Factory (Fact 166). 

For Belgian Friends is by Durutti Column and first appeared on A Factory Quartet, Fact 24, in 1980 and then on Valuable Passages, a Durutti Column compilation from 1986 Fac 164. Donald Johnson plays drums. Vini Reilly is one of the true geniuses to be found on Palatine Road during the period. He still lives nearby. 

Fifty Minutes Of ACR

In 1987 a friend made me a compilation tape which included two songs by Mancunian band A Certain Ratio- Shack Up and Do The Du. I've been listening to ACR ever since. They released their latest album, 1982, last Friday and it's fair to say the group have been re- energised in recent years, the result partly of a deal with Mute to re- issue all their albums. I'd been thinking of an ACR Sunday mix for some time and just as I ended up doing a pair of One Dove mixes a while back, I think I may need to come back to ACR for a second go. The mix here contains none of the punk- funk sound of their releases on Factory, the nervous, minimal, scratchy, demob suits and army shorts songs that made their reputation. Instead I've gone for a mix of dancefloor oriented songs spanning three decades.  The core trio of Jez Kerr, Martin Moscrop and Donald Johnson have regrouped several times since 1979, not least following the deaths of Rob Gretton in 1999 and singer Denise Johnson in 2020, but they're still creating and producing new music and are getting stronger and stronger. If they're playing near you, go and see them. ACR are a good night out guaranteed. 

Fifty Minutes Of ACR

• Dirty Boy
• Music Control
• Mello
• Be What You Wanna Be
• Night People
• Wedge (ACR Rework)
• Emperor Machine
• Taxi Guy
• Won't Stop Loving You (Bernard Sumner Remix)

Dirty Boy came out in 2018 ahead of the group's acr:set compilation, with vocals from Barry Adamson and the sampled voice of one- time mentor, manager and label boss Tony Wilson.

Music Control was a collaboration between ACR's alter ego Sir Horatio and Chris Massey, DJ, producer and promoter from Stretford, a squelchy collision of punk- funk, acid house and mutant disco.

Mello came out in 1992 on Rob Gretton's new label Rob's Records, a slice of loved up Mancunian house.  

Be What You Wanna Be is from 1990's acr: mcr, a renewal of the group's sound and fortunes. They left Factory for A&M but 1989's Good Together failed to shift many copies  (a shame as it's an album with much going for it). acr: mcr is wall to wall brilliance, from Spirit Dance to Good Together to Tribecca, rhythms and pianos inspired by the records playing in the Hacienda. Personnel changes at A&M saw them leave not long after for Rob's Records. I saw them at Manchester Academy in autumn 1991, a gig packed to the rafters and with a crowd up for it from the moment ACR appeared on stage. A few songs in my then girlfriend decided this was the ideal opportunity to have an argument and walk out of the venue.  

Night People was on one of three EPs ACR released in 2021, thirteen tracks, with no filler, following the comeback album Loco, on Mute, from the year before. Night People was on the third of the three, ACR: EPR, and has a swampy Bowie/ Iggy in Berlin groove. 

Wedge is by Number, Ali Friend and Rich Thair's spin off from Red Snapper, a 2020 punk funk trip. The two bands swapped remixes, this being ACR's remix of Number. Number's Binary album came out in April 2020 and probably got a little overlooked with everything else that was going on in spring 2020.

Emperor Machine was a collaboration between ACR and Emperor Machine (Andy Meacham, who found fame first time around in Bizarre Inc). The self- titled track was on EPC in 2021 and is supercharged mutant disco/ punk funk. 

Taxi Guy is the closing song on 2020's Loco album, an album that showed they were right back on it and fired up. Jazzy, samba grooves and a mass drumming finale. Their vie gigs over the last decade have sometimes finished with the group ending up leaving the stage and walking into the audience, drumming and blowing whistles, as happened at Gorilla in early 2020.

Won't Stop Loving You is a remix of a song from acr: mcr by Bernard Sumner from 1990. Sumner stripped the song back to Jez and Denise's vocals, whipcrack 808 drums and house piano. Something of a desert island disc for me. 

Twenty Three

Back in November last year, a week or two before Isaac died, I started reading a book about The KLF by John Higgs titled 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned A Million Pounds'. It is not a conventional band biography- Higgs supplies two different endings (read both, decide which one you prefer) and as someone somewhere quipped, at times the book is more a history of Discordianism with appearances by The KLF as much as the story of Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty and their adventures in the music industry. 

Discordianism is/ was one of the foundation stones of Drummond and Cauty's world, the modern day religion of chaos and irreverence dreamed up by Greg Hill and Kerry Wendall Thornley in 1963. Higgs brings in much more as well and branches off all over the place- Situationism, Dr Who, punk, rave, Carl Jung and Dada all show up. It's difficult to tell at times, and I think this is one of Higgs' key points, whether Drummond and Cauty know what they are doing and whether they are in control of what they unleash or whether the magical forces of Discordia and the Illuminati have taken over completely. I've always found it difficult to tell whether Drummond and Cauty are deadly serious or playing with it. Either way, it leads them to The Brits in February 1992 where they machine gunned the audience while Extreme Noise Terror thrashed away behind them, to having to be talked out of dumping a dead sheep on the steps of the venue and then to the Isle of Jura where they burned a million quid. Something they've been unable to explain (to themselves or others) ever since. 

The KLF v Extreme Noise Terror 3 A.M. Eternal (Top Mix)

When Isaac got taken into hospital with Covid I was a few chapters in. I didn't pick the book up for a while after all of that but at some point went back to it and almost immediately found myself in the chapter on Discordianism and specifically the number twenty three. Discordianism a parody religion. Probably. One of it's central practices is/ was Operation Mindfuck, an attempt to undermine all conspiracy theories by publicly attributing major events (wars, assassinations etc) to the Illuminati, thereby demonstrating how ridiculous conspiracy theories are- while also contributing to paranoia and creating more conspiracy theories. 

For Discordians the number twenty three is everything, the secret behind it all. The number five is also important because two and three make five and two and three are twenty three. William Burroughs cited the so called 23 Enigma to Robert Anton Wilson in an interview (Wilson wrote the Illuminatus! Trilogy). Drummond and Cauty took their name The JAMMs from the books and twenty three is littered through The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and The KLF's works. Drummond and Cauty burned the money on the twenty third of August and then agreed to not discuss it for twenty three years. This is where you suspect they're playing with it- except burning a million pounds is not playing. 

In a normal frame of mind all of this would have been amusing and interesting but in my raw and grief stricken state it fully freaked me out. Isaac was twenty three when he died and his birthday is on the twenty third of November. One of his birthday presents we'd given to him a week earlier, on the twenty third, was a United shirt with his name on the back and the number twenty three beneath it. The shirt was already with him, in his coffin. I put the book down and the day after- I don't remember exactly when this was but I think it was some time in December. The day after I picked the book up and read the chapter again and it disturbed me again. Moreso when I looked at my phone to see what time it was and it was, of course, 23.23pm. It disturbed me for some time afterwards- but then I was already very disturbed and it didn't take much to tip me over. There were a couple of other Isaac numerological coincidences around the same time which added to it all. 

Robert Anton Wilson, the writer and philosopher recognised in Discordianism as a saint, has since said that the mystery around the number twenty three is self- fulfilling, proof that the mind can find meaning or truth in anything. 'When you start looking for something, you tend to find it' he said, 'it is all selective perception'. I'm sure he's right. 

This is the twenty third record in my record collection. A Certain Ratio in 1990, remixed by Bernard Sumner. 

Won't Stop Loving You

Fifty Two

A few people have said that the first anniversaries are the toughest following a death- memorably a friend with experience of this wrote in a card to us 'the first everything fucks'. Today is my birthday, my 52nd, and the first in our household since Isaac died. I haven't really been looking forward to it, it feels like it will bring a lot up. Isaac loved a birthday, he always had a list of activities which had to be observed. He insisted on any of our birthdays that the Happy Birthday banner being hung up in the kitchen, that presents be placed in a pile on the kitchen table, that there must be a card with a monkey on it (always, every time) and cake and candles at tea. Having my first birthday without him feels very sad, another reminder of his absence and our loss. It's another thing we have to go through though, there's no avoiding it and I guess there will come a time when it feels less painful.

Today is also the day of two other significant birthdays shared with friends, one (Daisy) turning eighteen and the other (Sophie) turning fifty. Happy birthday to you both (although I'd be surprised if either of them read this). 

52nd Street were a jazz/ funk/ r 'n' b band who signed to Factory, active around Manchester when the 70s turned into the 80s. Bassist Derek Johnson is the brother of A Certain Ratio's drummer Donald and after being seen at Band On The Wall by Rob Gretton they became a Factory act. Tony Wilson had them on Granada Reports twice, they recorded at Strawberry Studios and eventually, as major label A&M came sniffing around the group, they were managed by Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson's wife/ ex- wife and one of the unsung women at the Factory HQ on Palatine Road). In 1983 they released one of Factory's bona fide classic singles of the period, Cool As Ice (although strictly speaking it didn't come out in the UK, being released on Factory Benelux in Europe and the USA). Produced by Donald Johnson with Bernard Sumner programming the synth (and under the name Be Music, the catch all production title for any New Order productions of other groups whether it was Bernard, Stephen, Gillian or Hooky individually or collectively, often with Donald at the desk as well). Cool As Ice is  uptempo, dancefloor heaven, synths bubbling away and plenty of '83 electro energy. It's easy to imagine Madonna covering it a few years later. Play it back to back with the other great Factory singles from 1983 and 1984- Marcel King's Reach For Love, Section 25's Looking From A Hilltop, Quando Quango's Love Tempo- and its clear that New Order isn't the only story being written at Palatine Road and on Whitworth Street. 

Cool As Ice

This Is Your Life

A rewind to 1991 today and to a song I posted back in 2010 when this blog was still in its first year. Banderas were a duo- Sally Herbert and Caroline Buckley- who were part of Jimmy Somerville's Communards band. They formed Banderas as a side project, signed to London Records and put this song out as a single. It went top twenty hit in March 1991. Built on one of those chunky early 90s rhythm tracks and containing a sample from Grace Jones' Crack Attack, This Is Your Life also featured guest spots from both Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner on guitar and backing vox, moonlighting from Electronic. Johnny's funky wah wah licks are easy to identify and the swelling strings and keyboards add some drama while Caroline sings, 'This is not a story/ This is not a book/ This is your life'. One of those songs that sounds like a postcard from the past, pinning a sound and a time onto a noticeboard as surely as photograph from 1991 could. 

This Is Not Your Life

I Want A Place To Stay

Back to 1989 and 1990 today and the sound of young Belgium. People get a bit sneery about the rave- pop/ dance pop singles that sold in enormous quantities from 1990 onwards but the truth is many of the same songs were club hits first, danced to through the night. In lots of ways these early 90s rave hits are the equivalent of the classic 60s pop singles and the 1970s- The Monkees say or T-Rex. Massive chart topping songs, cutting edge production coupled with song writing skills for that time and place, designed to hit you quickly, make you shimmy and then move on to the next one. 

Technotronic came from Belgium, the project of Jo Bagaert who had come up through the New Beat scene. Hooking up with rapper Ya Kid K they found a formula of stunningly effective, catchy, dance music that took on a much more visual element when they got Congolese model Felly Kilingi to front it. Pump Up The Jam, released in November 1989, was a massive single, selling in vast quantities in the UK and the USA, a club- radio crossover built on a thumping and Ya Kid K's rap. Crisp, to the point, in your face, confusing to middle aged people, ridiculously infectious. The video is a perfect slice of 1989 too, rave psychedelic graphics, cycling shorts, acid print, dayglo hooded tops and manic dance moves. 

Felly it later turned out was just miming. Did it matter? It did not. 

Pump Up The Jam (Edit)

Technotronic became a hit machine, single after single. In 1990 they released Rockin' Over The Beat, a song about dancing with a lovely piano riff that to me has the slightest tinge of melancholy in it, the comedown just evident in the grooves. The drums thump, the synths blare, Ya Kid K's rap is great (her delivery of the word 'mel-o-dee' is a joy). It was remixed by Bernard Sumner, New Order's frontman putting those hours spent in the Hacienda to good use. 

Rockin' Over The Beat (Rockin' Over Manchester Hacienda Mix)

I Just Want To See Your Face

Section 25, from Poulton- le- Fylde near Blackpool, formed in 1977, enthused by punk and its possibilities. In 1979 they shared a stage with Joy Division at Blackpool's Imperial Hotel and from there were invited by Rob Gretton to play at the Russell Club in Hulme and then on to signing to Factory. By 1983 an expanded line up were heading towards the future, away from post punk guitars and into electronic dance music. Their 1984 single Looking From A Hilltop, produced by Bernard Sumner and ACR's Donald Johnson under their Be Music name, is one of the best records Factory released, a proto- techno/electro masterpiece, dark synth- pop, Moroder on the Golden Mile, with whip crack backwards drums, low slung bass and an icy vocal from Jenny Ross.

The album From The Hip, has one of Peter Saville's most beautiful sleeves- the poles on the front cover use the same colour wheel code he'd used on the Power, Corruption And Lies and Blue Monday sleeves. The Megamix version of Looking From A Hilltop on the 12" made it's way to New York's clubs and to the early Chicago house scene. Along with Marcel King's Reach For Love and 52nd Street's Cool As Ice, Looking From A Hilltop proves that it wasn't all just about New Order at Palatine Road in 1984. The version I'm posting here is from a session Section 25 did for David Kid Jenson at the BBC, 10th May 1984.

Looking From A Hilltop (BBC session)

Reach For Love

One of the best things about Factory Records was that in the early years of its existence the label put no pressure on artists to conform or play the industry game. Commercial considerations were way down the list of essential requirements for a release. Art came first. Not to say they didn't want a hit every now and then to pay the bills but the musicians were more or less given the freedom to record anything they wanted to, to experiment and to explore.

The other side of this, which was probably just as important as the one above theoretically (and Factory's directors especially Tony Wilson were very into their theory), is that in attempting to prove that an independent record label could stand alone outside the majors, they also refused to play the game. To Wilson this meant, certainly in the first half of the 80s, that there would be no promotion, no pluggers, no advertising (apart from bill posters). The records would sell themselves because they were brilliant and because they packaged inside beautiful sleeves.

This worked fine for New Order. New Order could release a single, a work of art on 12 inches of vinyl housed in a Peter Saville sleeve, and know that a fanbase of  60- 80, 000 people would buy it within a week of it being released. However, as Stephen Morris pointed out to Wilson in what became a heated debate 'while sitting in the studio for hours waiting for Bernard to redo his guitar for the umpteenth time', this policy of no promotion (or anti-promotion) was letting the bands down. Wilson replied that 'the trouble with you is that you're too money- minded'.

If ever there was a record that came out on Factory that should have been a massive hit and wasn't it was Reach For Love by Marcel King. It was produced by Be Music, the catch all name for New Order band members producing other artists. In this case, the producer was Bernard Sumner along with ACR's Donald Johnson (who played many of the instruments as well). Released in 1984 Reach For Love is a fantastic piece of dancefloor soul, a tough, urban sounding record packed with electronic rhythms and a pulsing bassline and topped with a beautiful vocal from Marcel. It should have been number 1. It wasn't. Marcel had been at the top of the charts ten years earlier with the group Sweet Sensation and according to legend was found by Rob Gretton sleeping in a car and offered the opportunity to make a record on the spot. He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1995 aged just 38. Factory made many of the greatest pieces of pop culture of the late 20th century but they also fucked it up many times. Maybe they fucked it up for the right reasons but not selling a million copies of this single is a fuck up however you slice it. Your Monday however will be immeasurably improved by pressing play.

Reach For Love 

Pretenders Of Love

That was a tough week just gone and probably one to come (for various reasons but y'know, onwards and upwards- we still have music to keep us going). Shark Vegas were a Berlin based band, containing Mark Reeder, who was the Factory Records man in Germany. He put together Shark Vegas, and went through some line up changes including a drummer, Tommy Wiedler, who went on to The Bad Seeds. They supported New Order in 1984 and had a song (You Hurt Me) that was produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson (as Be Music). Bernard wanted to release as a single and played guitar over the end section. In 1987 a compilation called Young, Popular And Sexy (FAC US 17) was released in the US and Australia. On it was this long forgotten song, a bit of a lost electro-pop classic- yes, there are bits of it where it sounds massively like New Order.

Pretenders Of Love

I don't have a MP3 of You Hurt Me but here's the 12" version from Youtube (FAC 111 and recorded at Conny Plank's studio in 1984).

Oh I Don't Know Why People Lie

Day 4 of New Order week and I've got two live performances for you and some discussion of related recorded work. First up is this, sometimes described as one of the two Holy Grails of NO live bootlegs (the other is the debut performance at The Beach Club in Shudehill, Manchester, 1980).

On June 30th 1983 New Order played a gig at Cabaret Metro in Chicago. It was a blisteringly hot day, temperatures in the club reaching the high 90s. New order were famously hit and miss during this period, partly due to their own approach to playing and partly due to having equipment that was totally unsuited to live performance, sequencers and synths and drum machines. In Chicago the crowd were already a bit irate and not just due to the heat. The support act had finished over two hours before New Order took the stage. The gear makes it through the first four songs and then during Truth the sequencer starts to misbehave. The y make it through Leave Me Alone with no problems but the long gap between the end of that song and the start of Your Silent Face is punctuated by bleeps and bursts from the sequencer and audience members and bass players complaining about the heat. From here on in it's a kind of NO unplugged gig. The tape of this gig recently found its way into the hands of blogger and New order enthusiast The Power Of Independent Trucking and he has presented it for our enjoyment here with a FLAC download. These are his words about the rest of the gig...

 Eventually, “Your Silent Face” starts.  It devolves into a unique and fascinating exposition on what a sequencer-using band does when the sequencers are failing mid song - Steve Morris jumps behind the drum kit far earlier than usual, and essentially drives the song to its skittering end as the sequencers never recover.  I think this take is spectacular and I think you’ll agree.

Barney then makes reference on stage to equipment and power problems, mentions the band’s just going to jam, and Steve then pounds out the drum riff for “Denial”.  Instead of jamming, the band then finishes the set with four straight sequencer-free tracks, ending on the majestic “In A Lonely Place” well into the wee hours of the morning.

There is no jamming, no acoustic “Blue Monday” despite the venue owner’s misremembered statements made over the years since.  It’s possible of course at some point these did exist and were edited out from this tape upstream, but I doubt it and all other recollections of this gig fail to mention any acoustic “Blue Monday” performances.



While listening to this on Youtube the other night a link in the sidebar caught my eye which was this one, a gig from 1986 at the Spectrum Arena in Birchwood, Warrington. The venue no longer exists but there is a large Ikea near where it was. There's progress for you. This is a soundboard recording opening with stand alone single State Of The Nation and then taking in songs from the previous six years.

State of the Nation
The Village
Broken Promise
As It Is When It Was
Your Silent Face
Confusion
Age of Consent
Temptation
Sunrise (cut short)
Blue Monday
Shellshock 

Sunrise is cut short due to the tape running out and according to some of those that were there the group did return for an encore, long after the lights had gone up and half the audience had left, running through Love Will Tear Us Apart but this hasn't been recorded. This is a good quality recording and the band sound on fire, a slightly misfiring Confusion aside.



The Warrington gig was a few months before the release of Brotherhood. Brotherhood is a funny record. I listened to it the other day. It doesn't have the great leap forward of Power, Corruption And Lies nor the newly found confidence of Lowlife and lacks the skyscraping quality of Technique's songs. It's a bunch of songs plus Bizarre Love Triangle. It's is divided into side 1 (rockier songs) and side 2 (dancier songs) and side 2 is the clear winner. Bizarre Love Triangle is arguably their greatest song and the three that follow are all top notch (All Day Long, Angel Dust, Every Second Counts). Side 1 is five songs that are all good album tracks but together they seem to lose something. Maybe it is the division into two separate sides that doesn't work and sequenced differently they'd stand out more. The five are Paradise, Weirdo, As It Is When It Was, Broken Promise and Way Of Life. Broken Promise is reminiscent of early NO, powerful, stacked full of guitars and churning lyrics.  As It Is When It Was is a hidden beauty, starting slow and sparse but gaining in pace and urgency, the Love Will Tear Us Apart bass riff reappearing, a song that would make a top ten of New Order non-single songs. As would Way Of Life which burns and fizzes with some great guitar-bass interaction, Hooky reversing the Age Of Consent bassline. Paradise and Weirdo are decent songs but definitely album tracks- Paradise a bit lightweight and an odd opener to these ears. Weirdo is stronger, pumping bass and drums but a bit tinny maybe. If you go to Youtube you'll find people saying that these two are their favourite NO songs. I wouldn't go that far but I've been re-listening to side 1 this week and found a lot in these songs to enjoy. Maybe it's just that I don't listen to them that often and the novelty gives them freshness. It's hard to get away from the feeling though that overall as an album, in some ways, it hasn't got the same magic that Power, Corruption And Lies, Lowlife or Technique have.

Barney blames the overdubbing, too much of it, too many instruments layered on top of each other. Brotherhood was surrounded by some of New Order's best singles too- True Faith and Touched By The Hand Of God both came out within the following year and Shellshock and State Of The Nation preceded it (Ok, maybe neither of the 1986 pair is quite as good as the 1987 pair).  It just goes to show that, despite all the tensions within the group (and according to both Hook and Sumner there were many by this point), they were still capable of making truly great songs but their insistence on dividing songs into singles and albums (which I applaud on the whole) meant that the album got shortchanged a bit. Stephen Morris has said that dividing Brotherhood into rock and dance sides didn't quite work and I think I'd agree. On the other hand Hooky likes the five rockier songs together, showing, as he sees it, 'what the band was all about'. So it goes.

Broken Promise

I've Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice For Too Long Now

By 1985 New Order were well into their stride, the faltering, unsure, step-by-step progress of the early years well in the past. 1983's album Power, Corruption And Lies more or less invented electronic indie and contained at least two career high points (Age Of Consent and Your Silent Face) as well as the blueprint for Blue Monday. The run of singles from 1982 to 1985 takes in Temptation, Blue Monday, Confusion, the peerless Thieves Like Us plus its B-side Lonesome Tonight. Then they put out another album, recorded in 1984 and released in May '85- Lowlife.

Lowlife only has eight songs on it but almost every one is a winner, disco and rock seamlessly intertwined. The sound combines full on synths and sequencers with Hooky's distorted bass providing the rock ballast. Stephen's drumming, with plenty of digital delay, is crisp and loud. The guitars are trebly and choppy, like Velvets era Lou Reed on acid. Lowlife is the first New Order album to contain singles and the first to feature band photographs on the cover (which Peter Saville then obscured by wrapping in tracing paper). From opener the Salford country & western of Love Vigilantes with Barney's enigmatic Vietnam War lyric to the magnificent closer Face Up this is a record I never get bored of. Face Up is huge, a glorious synth and bass intro, sampled choral voices, synth drum pads and then ... whoosh, we bounce along in NO disco heaven. The lyrics contain the usual mix of clunkers and the perfect skewering of life (see 'your hair was blonde, your eyes were blue, guess what I'm gonna do to you' and 'we were young and we were pure and life was just an open door'). Up until 1989 the lyrics were usually a group effort. For Technique Barney took over lyrics and vocals completely, something else Hooky rues as a nail in the coffin.

Sub-culture is here too, another disco-rock peak, Barney's vocals sounding like a guide vocal that he never bothered to redo (and all the better for it). That one fingered synth intro, followed by the drum machine and then the dark lyrics about walking in the park late at night and shafting on your own. Sub-culture is a close cousin of The Perfect Kiss and builds similarly, synth drums and bass riffs piling on top of each other. It was later released as a single in remixed form (by John Robie, an inferior version really with backing vox and synth stabs. Peter Saville was so disappointed he refused to design a sleeve for it). Hooky points to Robie's influence as being one of the turning points that ruined the group. Before Robie they didn't write songs following any rules- after Robie Bernard insisted on all the songs being in his key and eventually they became verse-chorus- middle eight formulaic. But let's leave the blame game aside and stick to the songs. Elegia is their intense instrumental tribute to their former, deceased frontman. I posted the unedited fifteen minute version last autumn and if you haven't heard it you should seek it out. The Perfect Kiss is inserted as track two, a peak among peaks (although it's an edited version on Lowlife. You need the full-on 12" version, a single for which the 12" format might have been invented). The Perfect Kiss has peaks and troughs, bass playing that is something else entirely, and several climaxes. This Time Of Night and Sooner Than You Think are both good album tracks. If pushed I could live without Sooner.... I suppose. But today's song is this one, closing side one, Sunrise. Possibly the rockiest song on Lowlife it opens with descending synth chords before being joined by a superb bass riff -then the whole band join in, pronto. The guitars rattle, bottle tops on the strings to get a Morricone sound and Bernard's vocal is straining, at the top of his register. The synths continue to wash away. The guitar, bass and drums drive away. At the end Bernard thrashes the toggle switch on his guitar. Done.

Sunrise

Alarm Clock

This is the tune I was looking for before getting distracted by West India Company, a 1990 offering from German DJ West Bam (Maximillian Lenz). Offering doesn't really do this speaker shaking 12" justice. It's a slap in the face and a shiver down the spine with a juddering riff (sampled from Gang Of Four apparently and then borrowed from this by Weatherall for his legendary My Bloody Valentine remix) and a Tutonic breakbeat. Wakey wakey!

Alarm Clock

In 2013 West Bam released a new album which had this song on it, She Wants, with vocals by Bernhard Sumner (sic) and a slightly disturbing, NSFW video. If last year's new New Order album had been more like this, I'd have liked it more.

I Just Want To See Your Face

In the early 80s Factory signed lots of bands who sounded very Factory. Many of them struggled to escape from the long shadow cast by Joy Division and New Order. Occasionally someone would produce something that stepped forward from those shadows. Section 25's Looking From A Hilltop, from 1984, is one of those records. The single release had this version on the B-side, produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson from ACR (as Be Music), it is years ahead of itself. A pulsing bassline, percussion and drum machine way up front, with layers of synths, guitars and noises and hard to hear vocals. It is one of Factory's most startling moments and despite being eight minutes long it never feels like it. Various underground djs and left of the dial radio stations in the States picked up on it pushing it further onwards. From Blackpool too. Kiss me quick.

Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)

I Don't Know Where To Begin

As you probably know Johnny Marr's autobiography, Set The Boy Free, came out recently. I was in a shop and had just picked it up when my phone rang. Mrs Swiss said her Mother had just phoned saying she'd found a Christmas present for me and she was really excited because I'm 'difficult to buy for'.

'So whatever you do, don't buy the Johnny Marr book'.

I put it back, sighing slightly as I'd have to wait until the end of December to read it.

Electronic was a bolt hole for both Marr and Bernard Sumner and the original intention was to put out club inspired music with a variety of guests. First single Getting Away With It was a big hit in December 1989 so the idea of releasing things quietly and anonymously was shot to pieces there and then. Follow up Get the Message in 1991 was a brilliant piece of pop. It was followed by a remix 12" where the song structure was stretched into a dancier groove.

Get the Message (DNA Groove Remix)

Haze

I'd forgotten about this one and found it while wasting time on Youtube recently. 1999's Electronic album Twisted Tenderness didn't exactly set the world alight and Sumner and Marr moved onto different and separate things afterwards. Track 2 is a little gem though, a highlight in either man's back catalogue outside their main bands. Johnny Marr had got back into playing distorted guitar and the whole thing has menace and convincing swagger.

Haze

This live version done for Jo Whiley's Channel 4 music show is even heavier.

This Time I'm Not Wrong

I've posted this before but thought it might be worth looking at again. Bernard Sumner's got a very distinctive voice, not a great voice maybe, but it's very recognisable. He's popped up on guest vocals in various places, with 808 State and The Chemical Brothers most famously. In 1997 he sang on a song with Sub Sub, not long before they mutated into Doves. The song- This Time I'm Not Wrong- came out on 12", the last release ever on Rob's Records (Rob Gretton's label, New Order manager). It sounds much more like Doves than Sub Sub and when their studio/rehearsal room burned down the Williams bros and Jimi Goodwin took it as a sign to move on. Listening to this, it's pretty clearly where early Doves song Catch The Sun came from.

This Time I'm Not Wrong

The 12" also has an early version of Firesuite.

Firesuite

Electronic Factory

When Electronic released their first two masterful singles (1989's Getting Away With It and 1991's Get The Message) they seemed to have the future in their palms. They talked of collaborating with a variety of people all based around the core of the pair. Bernard wanted a break from New Order. Johnny had left The Smiths. Both wanted to do new things and break new ground. I always imagined this would lead to something a little different than just the song-based tracks that made up the first album (which I love by the way and many of the songs on it are first rate). The other stuff ended up on B-sides but I always thought they should have pursued this and made an instrumental, dance music album as well as the dance influenced pop. Lucky Bag was on the flipside of Get The Message, Hacienda house with Italo piano. Lean To The Inside was a classy, more chilled piece which came out on the Feel Every Beat 12". A whole album of this kind of thing could have worked really well.

Lucky Bag (Miami Edit)

Lean To The Inside

Ceremony

On July 19th 1986 New Order headlined a show at GMEX (formerly Manchester's Central railway station, for much of the 70s and early 80s a derelict carpark. We used to park there when shopping in town and my Mum and Dad got all of us kids back in the car on one occasion and drove off, leaving one of my brothers standing forlornly where the car had been, aged only three or four. Don't worry- they realised before leaving the carpark). The show was the highlight of the Festival of the Tenth Summer,a Factory organised event celebrating ten years since punk and the show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall where the Sex Pistols set into motion everything that has happened to Manchester since. The Lesser Free Trade Hall, also the venue where Bob Dylan was accused of being Judas, is now a swish hotel. The Festival of the Tenth Summer had its own Factory catalogue number (FAC 151) and had nine other events including a fashion show, a book, a Peter Saville installation, an exhibition of Kevin Cummins photographs and so on. Very Factory. Support for New Order at the gig included The Smiths (billed as co-headliners), The Fall, A Certain Ratio, Cabaret Voltaire, OMD, John Cale, John Cooper Clarke and Buzzcocks. Not a bad line up really.

During their set New Order were joined on stage by Ian McCulloch who sang Ceremony with them. This clip shows that meeting, the only drawback being it's less than a minute long.



There's an audio only version of the whole song here. Ian sings in a register closer to Ian Curtis' and certainly gives it his best shot. The bit where Hooky joins Mac at the mic is great.

Ceremony was Ian Curtis' last song, intended for Joy Division but recorded and released as the first New Order record. The first two New Order records actually- it was released in March 1981 by the three piece New Order and produced by Martin Hannett. It was then re-released in September 1981 in a newer, slightly longer version with Gillian Gilbert on board and with a different Saville sleeve. If you want to get really trainspottery about it, the run out groove on the first version says 'watching love grow forever', while on the second version it has 'this is why events unnerve me'.

New Order and Echo And The Bunnymen toured the USA together along with Public Image Ltd throughout 1987, billed as The Monsters Of Alternative Rock. The Melody Maker reported from it as the picture up top shows. According to Lydon's autobiography 'Bernard Sumner was having problems emotionally and looked a bit the worse for wear' and describes him being tied to a trolley to sing at one gig as he was unable to stand. 'Nice fella' though says Lydon. Bernard's favourite tipple was 'a pint of headache' (Pernod and blackcurrant).