new order's shell-shock

Like so many similar things* I am very interested (not obsessed) in/with New Order but I actually think they only ever really reached about 10% of their potential. I mean, yeah, 'Blue Monday' was pretty good, 'Temptation' was OK, I always had a soft spot for 'Procession' which was I have to say only heightened when I read in one of Peter Hook's memoirs that Bernard Sumner once had an angry outburst (did it get physical?) insisting that the single didn't exist. I'd like to get another copy of 'Procession' as I think I have mislaid the one I bought when it came out. 

Yeah, I know I'm talking about records of 40 years ago as if that's all NO ever did and of course they have made thousands of records since many all of them not as good, and as I have already pointed out, the good ones could have been better. If I'd made them they would have been much better, lol. Anyway the only reason I bring this up is I bought a 12" of 'Shell-shock' in Ballina (alongside the Cure's Pornography) and it's you know, really just OK isn't it. The A-side seems to just get tinnier and tinnier and the b-side tracks - a dub version of the A and I guess a kind of similarly dub version of 'Thieves Like Us' is a better side but I will never forget that, yes, when I saw them play the Palais in St Kilda in fuckknowswhen - um - 1983? they left the stage and the instruments carried on playing and at the time I thought that was amazing, I mean, it was amazing but now when I play their records I feel the way I feel when I read student work that's been flagged for AI - I'm reading this, did the person who submitted it read it? Did NO hang around for the whole recording or did they just set it to go in the studio and wait to get a call when it was done? It's kind of OK if they did, but it's kind of annoying as well. I guess the end of the 'Shell-shock' dub does have some funny rock out guitar so presumably a person did that. 

This is what you get when you search for 'New Order Shellshock Fan Art' on Etsy. 

*I hope to win an award for these five words, in the Most Fatuous Sentence category please

new order

There are a number of reasons to be interested in bands and a lot of them have nothing to do with music really. Bands are obviously soap operas whose lives are thrown into relief by the weirdness of their signposts/goals/success measures, albums and singles and shows and line up changes that show whether they're winning or losing at life. 

I decided this morning, god only knows where the idea came from, that I wanted to hear some New Order. TBH most of the time if I heard New Order for instance in the supermarket (which by the way I don't, whereas I do hear a lot of their contemporaries) I'd be as repelled as I am when I hear, you know, 'What About Me'. But I have long owned a copy of their first greatest hits album, no doubt squeezed out sometime around the time of their first or perhaps second financial crisis, and I particularly wanted to hear 'Bizarre Love Triangle', but it's in the middle of the side which also has 'State of the Nation' and, you know, some other song and so I listened to them too. 

The thing about New Order, and I don't think even their biggest fans would dispute this, is that once they used up all the Ian Curtis lyrics, which didn't take long, and in any case IC lyrics were naff in a different way a lot of the time but at least they held to some kind of set of ideals, schoolboy poetry usually to be accompanied by a margin sketch of a skull with a bloody dagger through it even though it's a skull, but as I was saying once they used up all the IC lyrics, they were left scratching around for what to do instead, and usually it would seem they got Bernard Sumner to write lyrics and sing them, and whatever the principles at play, let's be fair, his lyrics suck shit and his singing - well, he doesn't try, is the easiest way to put it but a better way to put it is, he tries to not try. He sing-speaks these completely schmetarded words that even when they aspire to something like poetry they are horrendously, face-burningly self consciously so. 

I mean they could almost have been better if he just made up a nonsense language and sang in that. Because clearly these lyrics are not meant to be meaningful, they're a version of 'Scrambled Eggs', but they just didn't bother writing better lyrics. But also, while they're terrible lyrics, they're also the best lyrics possible, because they take you away from focusing on the notion that Sumner has anything to say or even that he's feeling anything in particular that he wants to communicate in a song, and instead they make you notice the music. I read somewhere recently that the Smiths were rockabilly and I was like - oh shit, yeah actually they are often rockabilly, not always obviously, but that's often their default. But with The Smiths even knowing they're great players you often forget they're there because you think of everything in terms of Morrissey's extraordinary lyrics. Even 'Some Girls are Bigger Than Others' or whatever it's called, you're still mainly thinking, 'hush everyone Morrissey's got something to say'. Whereas with Bernard Sumner's lyrics for New Order you're mainly thinking, 'dufus'.

I appreciate it! And now, having played this side of the New Order greatest hits record, I will not play any of it again for 5-10 years. 

throw some records away

I feel a culling might be coming. I am presently going through records (mainly 12" singles) to find things to play on RRR on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, as Carmel Zappia and I have been entrusted with two hours either side of midnight then to entertain the masses. As usual I have no real idea what would entertain the masses but I am quite amused by extended versions of obscure releases by famous artists (so right now I am listening to 'God Tonight' by Real Life, which is their umpteenth single and was from their fourth album, way beyond their initial huge success with frankly their best records 'Catch Me I'm Falling' (and yes, yes 'Send Me an Angel' but I don't want to think about that). 'God Tonight' is a very New Order-y song and while I suppose you don't want to say things like 'anyone could do this', at least you know New Order could do this (it wouldn't be out of place in their canon) and you sort of feel, well I do, that David Sterry is actually dialling it back a bit to not-sing like whatsisname from New Order does not-sing. New Order's 'Confusion' came out in 1983, and seven years later, Real Life rolled out a sort of cod-'Confusion' to widespread yawns (OK I say that but in fact Wikipedia tells me that this record hit the 'US Dance' Top 10, which is unexpected). At least it doesn't sit on the fence like me (I don't know if I like it or not). Maybe I should just not worry. 

I am going to throw away a Barry Gibb 12" ('Shine, Shine') which I was astonished to read on Wikipedia was a top 40 hit in the US in 1984 (what were people thinking, doing, feeling then??!!) and a Blow Monkeys 12", though that's not because of its quality but because it is unplayable, a ridiculous amount of surface noise, would purchase a playable copy. Anyway I might find myself chucking out a few more things, don't worry I'll be sure to let you know.  

* 1/1/22 update - I just realised there is a very close similarity in smug expression between Barry above and my donkey rider in the picture from the last post. Btw this is not what my copy of 'Shine Shine' looks like, mine is a really dog's breakfast of a design. 

80s

I remember reading about one of the Futurama festivals, possibly the first, which I think had the Human League and Soft Cell at it, breaking out as it were. It might have been assumed by the Futurama organisers that the brand was the main thing and that the acts they presented would go on naturally to be the next new, um, wave. My lame comment on the above post by, I gather, the person who used to edit, run or own the magazine Flexipop was that I'd only want to see Dislocation Dance and the Icicle Works and then I'd be home by late evening (never miss a chance to give a backhander to New Order, etc)* although I would also be interested to see the Stockholm Monsters the next day. But when it comes down to it - my main thought here as always is - this is not about 'things were great then' but 'I was young then'. I see it all the time, people on fb (obviously I choose to be in these groups) lauding music of 30+  years ago when all they're really saying is, 'I was just out of short pants and what a time that is to be alive', whether it's 1210BC or 1983. 

I thought about this because I was playing the Summer Flake album that came out last year and thinking how not one track on it misses the mark. I saw Summer Flake, or at least Stephanie solo, last year and it was amazing. I wouldn't swap that for any of this bullshit. 

Incidentally I'm surprised that the Futurama festival doesn't have a wikipedia entry because it was quite a thing in its day but maybe it's better this way. 

* I have integrity on this, kind of. I saw New Order when they came to Australia for their first tour in 1983 or whenever. When they played G-Mex in 1986 for that 10 years of punk festival I left before they came on. 

I don't know what my problem is with New Order actually and it's petty because they had some pretty great songs, and were really innovative in lots of ways, and I admire many things about them, but I just can't. I guess I feel that deep in my heart they feel the same. It could have been so much better.