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From: markburss
To: faclist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [faclist] Re: Crawling Chaos - The Gas Chair
> >>I remember reading (was it in Mark Johnson's book?) that at New Order's > debut gig, Bernard introduced themselves with: "We're the only surviving > members of Crawling Chaos".<<
Johnson's book nearly gets the quote right.
NO (who weren't called New Order at the time) played as late replacements for the Names, who were billed as support (ACR were headlining).
Barney's quote, as I recall (from a range of two feet and 23 years!) was:
"The Names couldn't make it, so we're playing instead. We're the last surviving members of Crawling Chaos."
The gig was a benefit for Printed Noise fanzine, which was run by a band called Action Holidays, fronted by Andrew Wilson, later of the Passage. Action Holidays played after New Order.
Mark
From: markbursa
To: faclist@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [faclist] New Order @ the Beach Club
Jan,
<< I think, upon reading your version of the quote, that Mark Johnson did get it right. My recollection was incomplete and slightly wrong.<<
Johnson's quote in full refers to "our mates couldn't make it" when what SBS said was "The Names couldn't make it". Johnson lifted the inaccurate quote from one of the very few reviews of the gig (from, IIRC, New Music News, the short-lived paper put out by NME staffers during an IPC strike).
>>So, you were there that night... wow, that must have been something special. Did you know the band were going to be on? How was the crowd's reaction? Care to share any thoughts/impressions?<<
Unless you were well plugged in to Factory, you'd have had no idea that NO (or Joy Division!) were going to play. They weren't billed. I'd recently got hold of The Graveyard & the Ballroom and fell in love with it, and ACR had recently played the Factory all-dayer at Blackpool Stanley Park (my home town). So I decided to go and see them again.
The Beach Club was in a small two-floor club called Oozits in Manchester, round the back of the Arndale Centre. It took a bit of finding, and as I didn't know where it was, I got there early. Good move, as it turned out.
The Beach Club format was bands upstairs, and films downstairs. The film showing that night was Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which fitted the ambience well. However rather thandiving in to see the film, I thought I'd check out the venue area - I could hear a band upstairs - turned out to be the end of ACR's soundcheck.
And this is where my brain started working overtime. At one side of the stage, there was Donald Johnson at his small, funky drum kit. On the other side of the stage (such that it was - I don't think there actually was a stage at all, just an area of floor) sat a much larger, black kiut. All around were flight cases stencilled with the words JOY DIVISION. Sitting casually on an amp, there's Bernard. I knew from talking to Tony Wilson at the Blackpool event that JD were continuing. You don't suppose....
To this day I've never seen Metropolis all the way through. I just got myself a beer, and waited by the stage.
About half an hour later, with the club half full, we were off. The stage is small enough to mask the big hole in the middle of the band - There goes the famous Crawling Chaos quote, and we're off on a 20-minute trip through a new set of Unknown Pleasures...
Nerves were masked by decibels - vocals scarcely audible. I guess they played Dreams Never End - Hooky singing over his shoulder, back to the crowd throughout. Certainly they played Homage, the first of the new songs to be discarded. And I guess they played Truth, with Barney's Melodica and Steve at the drums, with slightly wayward reel-to-reel rather than a drum machine. Five songs at most (Ceremony? Mesh? Guess so - as there was something that sounded a lot like Warsaw)
By the end of the set, the room is heaving as people abandon the cinema - they were still coming in as NO departed the stage. "Youve just missed Joy Division.."
Rough and ready, and more than a little bit angry. But you knew it'd be OK. Six weeks later, they played Blackpool, with a great deal more poise. Heck, you could even hear the vocals...
ACR, by the way, were sublime. First time I'd heard Shack Up.
BTW, I'm still a bit pissed off that the Names didn't show ... never did get to see them ;-)
Mark
And from TJ:
This is the set I was told years ago, no idea how reliable or accurate it is though. All instrumental apparently.
Dreams Never End
Ceremony
Homage
Sister Ray
In A Lonely Place
Truth
unknown jam track/cover
I don't even know if the source of this info was at the show, so I wouldn't hold out too much on it to be honest.
Gig was about 32 minutes long. According to "Erik", this was taped by Larry Cassidy of Section 25 fame.
Dreams_Never_End
BS: "Thank you for coming here tonight....the guitar. Through the foldback. And stop the Joy Division chanting."
While he's speaking, Stephen Morris talks!!
Truth
SM: "Terry(?)...a bit more vocals on my side."
TM: "Okay."
There is so much echo on his vocals that I'm amazed he even bothered to even sing.
lyrics: "Oh, fucking strange day...such a stupid day."
Mesh
PH: "A bit more light."
Homage
Bernard yells for "lights" during the middle of this.
Sister_Ray
Bernard plucks the guitar twice to get the attention of the crowd.
BS: "I like to explain this for the benefit of everyone who's paid to come here...the guitar...the bass amp has packed it, so... me and the drummer are going to improvise while we fix the bass amp...[few more words]."
Somebody else is talking at the same time, on-mic.
[Mark Johnson has "...to come in...The bass amp's packed in, so... me and the drummer are going to improvise--right, Steve?"]
They play an short instrumental version of the Velvets tune.
Cries_And_Whispers
BS: "Walk upright(?), cuz we got the bass amp back."
Ceremony
TM(?): "You ready, boys?"
PH: "Yeah."
BS: "That's why this one will knock the spots off of ya. This is our new single."
Hooky plays the intro notes on the wrong string!
PH: "Sorry about that."
A couple of volume drops/cutouts before the second verse of the song.
PH: (at 0:45) "Plug it down to the foldback."
Another fine Morris vocal.
From WIM forum:
setlist: "ialp - c&w - ? - procession - truth - mesh - ? dne - ceremony"
xx: "...featuring the only (known) performance of 'in a lonely place' using a drum machine (and presumably steve on synth)"
Some skepticism due to the bit in Mark Johnson's book saying Procession wasn't written until October 1980. The individual apparently stepped up to the plate and provided a snippet of Procession:
http://www.new-order.net/av/samples/1980-09-20_Maxwells_Hoboken_NJ/defiantpose/
There's also a question of whether this was the 20st or the 21st.
See http://members.aol.com/lwtua/cancel.htm#T3 for an eyewitness account confirming that NO opened with IALP.
A Youtube clip of a portion of Dreams_Never_End surfaced in early June 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S1LijhiJs4
As well as a medley of all the songs, establishing the setlist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_ku6X2-QOo (which appears to have been pulled for now)
All courtesy of Merrill Aldigheiri.
From tape seeded by 'snotters' to STG.
Sound is excellent, though generation isn't quite known.
Notes by 'snotters':
A couple of requests for this so as it's quite a small file (30 minute set) I'm letting it loose! Fascinating document in New Order's live history in many ways. To say they sounded raw and under-rehearsed here is an understatement! Still compelling listening at times, when you consider what they went through just months earlier, having to pick up the pieces etc.
IALP is played with a drum machine - due to the fact that it's said that Steve was singing. I'm not convinced myself. The shit really hits the fan when Hooky attempts to sing! Steve is also said to have sung Truth, but if this is the case he sounds a lot like Barney to me!
On this tour the band managed to have all their gear nicked! Imagine - some lucky bastard has all the original guitars, keyboards etc used by Joy Division!! So Hooky had to play on a borrowed 4 string songs which he would normally tackle on his Shergold 6 string. that's why Cries & Whispers and Dreams Never End sound so "odd".
Either way this show is essential for collectors and certainly worth a listen. The quality is pretty good, considering! I cleaned up a bit of high end hiss via soundforge too.
My writeup:
In_A_Lonely_Place
As advertised, it features a drum machine, but to me, it appears that Barney's singing this. Tempo is slower than on the release. Song ends with melodica.
Female audience member talking here.
Dreams_Never_End
PH: "1-2".
Has the cymbal shuffle intro as on Western Works, but the bass sounds different, as noted above, because Hooky's playing this on a four string. Brief dropout at 2:16.
Lots of chatter here, with somebody shouting, "Bring it together!" and somebody else (nearer the taper) saying "See anything?".
Cries_And_Whispers
Opens with bass throbs and a synth wash. Steve is singing! (Hooky did this one later, at least with this version of the song)
Truth
The Order are changing vocalists with each song. Barney's turn.
Ends with a bass riff, and a bit of tuning.
Mesh
Starts off with drums and Hooky's inimitatible bass riffing and vocals.
Homage
This still has the loping gait of melody. Steve's turn got skipped, so we have Barney singing again. Ends in bass feedback.
Ceremony
It appears that Steve and Barney just swapped places. Morris on vocals here. Brief dropout near the end (4:21).
I had two versions of this. The first is from NO Anthology Part Five at 128kbps, treated with somewhat annoying noise reduction, which has IALP labelled as "Dreams Never End" and both Dreams Never End and Truth as "Truth", and with "Cries And Whispers" and "Mesh" swapped. The second has MP3s at 192kbps, and is of unknown origin, with lots of tape hiss, but claiming to be better quality, which for the most part it is, but overall both are fairly poor-sounding. Both appear to originate from the same source.
Better sources have since shown up, though much of this account reflects the initial MP3 versions used for this writeup.
In_A_Lonely_Place
Intro is cymbals and melodica. Bernard's vocals sounds like it's a thousand miles away. Otherwise, this version sounds fairly faithful to the release.
A punter can be heard speaking between tracks.
Dreams_Never_End
Hooky complete butchers the opening bass riff, but they slough onward anyway. At about 34 seconds in on the 192k version, some weird backwards feedback-y sound can be heard running in parallel to the main track. This may be a fault of this particular source tape, and is most probably bleeding from the other side of the tape, because it doesn't appear on the the Anthology version, and it's only present a few minutes in, consistent with blank space at the end of the other side of the tape. The 128k version has a high-pitched whine throughout this and the remaining tracks.
Truth
The backwards playing is more audible through the opening, but thankfully stops at 27 seconds in (after pausing for a second after 0:14). A punter says something about "yelling" during the intro. Bernard says "promise of your lies" instead of "promise I made once".
Mesh
Hooky appears to be doing vocals. The lyrics for his version are completely different than the recorded version with Sumner's vox. It's too bad I can't make out any of it. The guitar work is pretty funky, probably because the guitarist is freed from having to sing.
Cries_And_Whispers
Opens with a synth wash and Hooky's galloping bass. I believe Hooky's doing vocals as well, which are also different than the release version, and the main guitar riff is slower.
Procession
More developed than the former two tracks.
Bernard says something about turning down the "fucking lights", at least twice.
Loud cheering at the end of this.
Ceremony
Hooky or somebody mutters at the start of this.
A rousing round of applause at the end.
BS: "Thank you all for coming, that's it. Thanks a lot."
Stamping and cries for "More!" as the recording fades out.
Local tape is decent quality for such an old gig.
No less than three songs debuted in this recording, assuming there weren't any gigs taped between the Squat, Manchester date, and this one.
The debut of ICB, as well as the debut of The_Him.
Bernard says something about the levels on his vocals and guitar before they perform Truth. Can't make it out much better than that.
Truth
BS: "We don't play any Joy Division...we're doing our own(?) stuff."
(can't entirely make this out, this is a blind guess really)
Bernard makes another statement to the crowd before the start of Cries_And_Whispers, barely intelligible:
BS: "Some of you are staying quiet...better than watch(ing?) us... better than..."
(soundchecking during his statement makes it very difficult to pick up...this is followed by a very interesting feedback effect)
The band then play the number.
Tape edit at this point.
Dreams_Never_End follows.
Ceremony
BS: "This song is for you."
Senses
BS: "We only want this fookin' drum machne...we really want to... now we're fucked playing."
(can't make out some of this)
The debut performance.
Sounds a bit different due to the drum machine intro.
New Order's third gig as a four-piece. The band seems to have a lot of monitor problems here, which makes for an unusually large number of speaking bits.
In_A_Lonely_Place
BS: "One, two. No foldback."
The_Him
Debut performance.
BS: "There's a section of foldback on this."
and right before the vocals...
BS: "The guitar through the foldback."
Mesh
(right after Hooky's done with singing)
PH: "One two. Turn the foldback on this, please. One two. One two, more if possible. One."
Procession is next.
Tape edit into Truth
BS: "How are we getting on? We want the drum machine through the foldback, we're not getting anything at all. All we're getting is feedback. Everyone, spread back! Turn it up a bit. Through the foldback. Still not getting it through the foldback."
A few seconds later, a higher pitched voice is heard (from the same location in the stereo field Bernard was coming from) saying, "Hi hat."
BS: "Turn the drum...back up." Synths at this point are low in the mix but are turned up to dominate it.
Some tuning between this and the next that.
Cries_And_Whispers
BS: "Sorry if you were expecting any, uh, Joy Division songs. Well, not really, I know we're not playing them."
[Mark Johnson gives 'really' instead of 'not really', and 'We're not going to be playing any.']
(afterwards)
BS: "Any requests? [silence] There's no fucking no one."
Dreams_Never_End, Ceremony, and Senses conclude the set.