The Power of Independent Trucking : Best Of (so far...)

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, even before recent debacles have caused me to re-evaluate the blog. I know every post gains at least a new reader or two, and sometimes it's too much effort to browse through history and see what stuff you've missed. I know this from my own experience as a blog reader myself.

So I put together a "Best, so far..." post. And being me, I couldn't really edit down from my super list of tracks. So I figured who *doesn't* want 7+ hours of wonderful music to listen to, courtesy of your humble blogger? I would gather this would be roughly 5 CD-Rs worth of material, an even 100 songs from throughout the course of this blog's history.

Every track here I've posted at one time or another previously, so faithful readers from the beginning - assuming they pull down everything I post - will have all this material. If that faithful reader is you, I applaud you. And ask you to start your own blog too, because anybody who likes everything I post obviously is my kind of person.

Even I - the blogger with far too much attention to detail - couldn't fathom how to assemble 100 tracks into 5 (give or take) seamlessly-flowing CDs. So I lazied out and went alphabetically, by artist, and then chronologically by release when more than one track is featured from an artist. And you know what? Barring the occasional odd junctures as we leap styles now and then, it actually works as an easy listen! Only the very first, and very last, tracks are out of sequence: 1 because it gave the blog its name, and 100 because when I put it on a compilation, it *always* ends the comp.

As comprehensive as this compendium is, obviously this just touches the iceberg of material I like. There are easily 50 artists I love that haven't blogged, and obviously aren't in this compilation (hello Pavement, Guided by Voices, Yo La Tengo, and the like). So with that said, consider this my musical journey, in a nutshell.

I'm too lazy to post the relevant links-to-the-original-post in the below tracklist, but if you click the artist name on the sidebar -> over there, you'll eventually find the original post.

Enjoy!

- - - - -

The Power of Independent Trucking : Best Of (so far...)



01 BIG BLACK The Power Of Independent Trucking
02 A CERTAIN RATIO Flight
03 ARCWELDER Raleigh
04 BEDHEAD Parade
05 BHOPAL STIFFS Bottle It Up
06 BIG BLACK Passing Complexion
07 BIG BLACK Kerosene
08 BITCH MAGNET Americruiser
09 BITCH MAGNET Mesentery
10 BITCH MAGNET Crescent
11 THE BOMB Never Want To See You Again
12 THE BOO RADLEYS Does This Hurt?
13 THE CHARLATANS Between 10th and 11th
14 THE CONNELLS Darker Days
15 DIDJITS Joliet
16 DURUTTI COLUMN (MARTIN HANNETT) First Aspect of the Same Thing
17 the FEELIES Raised Eyebrows
18 the FEELIES Slipping (Into Something)
19 the FEELIES Away
20 the FEELIES Invitation
21 fIREHOSE Brave Captain
22 fIREHOSE In Memory of Elizabeth Cotton
23 HAPPY MONDAYS WFL (Think about the future)
24 HÜSKER DÜ The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
25 HÜSKER DÜ Flip Your Wig
26 the JESUS LIZARD Mouth Breather
27 the JESUS LIZARD Dancing Naked Ladies
28 JOY DIVISION No Love Lost (pitch corrected)
29 JOY DIVISION Dead Souls (pitch corrected)
30 JOY DIVISION Colony (pitch corrected)
31 LOW Immune
32 LOW Dinosaur Act
33 MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO Northstar Blues
34 MINUTEMEN The Anchor
35 MINUTEMEN Corona (1987 mix)
36 MINUTEMEN History Lesson, Part II
37 BOB MOULD Paralyzed
38 BOB MOULD I Am Vision, I Am Sound
39 NAKED RAYGUN Managua
40 NAKED RAYGUN Soldiers Requiem
41 NINA NASTASIA Superstar
42 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Big (single version)
43 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Stockholm
44 NEW ORDER Homage (7 September 1980 Western Works)
45 NEW ORDER Ceremony (September 1980 E.A.R.S. New Jersey)
46 NEW ORDER Temptation (7 inch version)
47 NEW ORDER Lonesome Tonight
48 NEW ORDER Let's Go (unreleased original 1985 vocal)
49 NEW ORDER When I'm With You (22 June 1982 Milan)
50 NEW ORDER Your Silent Face (16 June 1989 Irvine Meadows)
51 NEW ORDER Runwild (mix 3) [Primitive Notion]
52 NEW ORDER Shipwreck Of A Broken Man ["Turn My Way", no Billy Corgan]
53 NEW ORDER Run 2 (26 June 1989 unedited old arrangement)
54 THE NEW YEAR Folios
55 NORTHSIDE Moody Places (12" version)
56 THE OTHER TWO Selfish (unreleased mix from 1992 advance promo)
57 PARIS ANGELS Perfume
58 PEGBOY Through My Fingers
59 PEGBOY Strong Reaction
60 PEGBOY You
61 JOEL RL PHELPS Counsel
62 JOEL RL PHELPS & THE DOWNER TRIO Then Slowly Turn
63 POSTER CHILDREN Question
64 POSTER CHILDREN Water
65 R.E.M. Seven Chinese Brothers (9 July 1983 Toronto)
66 R.E.M. With The People -> King Of Birds (Tourfilm 2.0)
67 R.E.M. Kohoutek
68 RAPEMAN Marmoset
69 RED HOUSE PAINTERS Song For A Blue Guitar
70 RIFLE SPORT Exploding Man
71 RODAN Bible Silver Corner
72 SEAM Sweet Pea
73 SEAM Port of Charleston
74 SEBADOH Soul and Fire
75 SEBADOH Cliche
76 SEBADOH Mystery Man
77 SECTION 25 New Horizon (edit)
78 SHELLAC Canada
79 SILKWORM Couldn't You Wait?
80 SILKWORM That's Entertainment
81 SLINT Ron
82 SLINT Washer
83 SLINT Rhoda (re-recorded version)
84 SONGS: OHIA The Old Black Hen
85 THE STONE ROSES Elephant Stone (original Peter Hook mix)
86 BERNARD SUMNER Getting Away With It (March 2009 Songbook)
87 TAR Mel's
88 TAR Short Trades
89 TAR Barry White
90 TEENAGE FANCLUB Star Sign (edit)
91 JEFF TWEEDY & JAY BENNETT Via Chicago (25 July 1999 Chicago)
92 THE WEDDING PRESENT Crawl
93 THE WEDDING PRESENT Suck
94 WILCO Someone Else's Song
95 WILCO & BILLY BRAGG California Stars
96 WILCO Ashes of American Flags (album track)
97 WILCO Sunken Treasure (2 November 2002 Tampa)
98 WILCO At Least That's What You Said (28 June 2003 Philadelphia)
99 SHANNON WRIGHT Black Little Stray
100 NAKED RAYGUN New Dreams

- - - - -

Whew.... Grab the 10 RAR files comprising the set here.

Maybe in another year we'll have a Part II of this... Or not!

New material coming up soon - I do have several items in the pipeline.

homage: New Order - Western Works 9/80

Today was going to feature my favorite live Joy Division tracks. But, as you should be expecting by now if you're a loyal PoIT reader, we're detouring yet again.

Why?

Because picking my favorite live JD tracks is proving harder than I thought. That and it takes a lot of time that I've not had lately. So instead, I've got a better treat for the loyalists.



As you know (or should know), Joy Division ceased as a living, breathing entity when singer Ian Curtis removed himself from existence early in the morning on May 18, 1980 - the day before the band was to fly to New York to start their first US tour. Having long had an internal pact to cease trading under the Joy Division name if any member was to leave the band (probably not expecting the harsh finality of Ian's leaving, but there you go), the band found themselves in another "having to change the name again" situation.

So after an appropriately short mourning period, the survivors regrouped and punched the big red RESET button. Finding themselves bereft of Ian-less material, they wrote a few new songs, tightened up a couple new "unrecorded" Joy Division tracks that had just been written in the weeks prior to Ian's death as "bridge" tracks, and played a few mostly-unannounced gigs in July/September 1980, prior to flying to the US for a very brief East Coast tour and recording session in late September.

As Joy Division, they were close with Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire, having shared several gigs and compilation records with the Cabs. At some point, JD was going to work with the Cabs in the Cabs' own Western Works Studio in Sheffield, but this opportunity had not yet come to pass at the time of Ian's death.

Suddenly with no lead singer and a wide-open new beginning, the survivors (now known as New Order) took the Cabs up on their offer and decamped to Western Works on 7 September 1980, just two days after their third gig post-Ian. Safely away from the spotlight, and with no Martin Hannett to impose his will on the session, the band laid down several tracks with the Cabs' Chris Watson engineering.

(Due to a date mixup dating back to the early 1980s, this session had long been thought to have taken place in early July 1980. It was only with the release of Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton's notebooks in 2008 that we learn this happened on 7 September 1980, and not July as previously thought. Which makes sense in a way, these are a lot of tracks to write from scratch in the few short weeks between Ian's death and early July.)

These tracks show the band's emotions - both musical and lyrical - laid out to bare themselves to the world. Hesitant yet brave, restrained yet oddly forward-looking, New Order find themselves seeking the path at this very early stage - a path that would not be truly explored publicly for at least another 12 months - that would lead them out of the Joy Divsion shadow into completely new realms of songcraft.

This material has been circulating amongst New Order fans since the early 1980s but never before heard by the general public in this release-ready quality.

Kind souls, who wish to remain anonymous rescued this material from a 1/4" reel of tape that was up for auction on eBay, advertised as something else, and it was only in the reel transfer that it was discovered what this reel actually contained. It's been theorized that if this is not the master reel itself from the studio mixdown sessions, it's at the very least a direct, professional copy of it. The band could release this today, as-is. So I am honored to present it here.

First we have two different mixes - but the same base recording - of "Dreams Never End". The first version is the common version that had already circulated - albeit in much poorer quality - amongst the fans. The second version, however, is a heretofore-unknown alternate mix featuring much louder guitars than the original take - but besides that, it's identical to the first take. Both takes slower than the version eventually recorded for the debut LP in 1981, this track even moreso sounds like bassist (and singer on this track) Peter Hook's own little memorial to Ian. "A long farewell to your love and soul" indeed.

Then we have the musically very JD-like "Homage", with Bernard Sumner on hesitant vocals, laying bare his emotions for all to see. It's blatantly obvious why this track didn't survive past September 1980 - all you have to do is listen to the very bare, emotional lyrics. Notably, you can understand them for the first time ever:

This smile the unborn child reaction's taken, forsaken
These scenes pervaded me in a way that
People seldom see

This is the only time that I thought I had
Seen the signs and I wait, I'll never know

In this room
The blind pass through
In this room
I think of you
In this room

In this room

Darkness will vanish soon
I awake, always in this room
All days will fall and rise
Helplessly, I watch these figures cry

This sense of needless rejection
Always the sense of reason
Carelessly lead me astray

In this room
The blind pass through
In this room
I think of you
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room

People always ask for dreams
Revelation in a dream

A life that is so scared

This is the only time that I
Thought I had seen the signs
Well, I did... I'll never know

In this room
I think of you
In this room
I think of you
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now
In this room
Father, please don't forsake me now

The next track is drummer Steve Morris' turn on lead vocals with a very interesting take on "Ceremony", one of the last two Joy Division tracks written just prior to Ian's death. Famously having no written lyrics they could use (if Ian wrote them down, they weren't available to the survivors at the time), New Order had to run the Joy Division rehearsal recording of this track (which you can hear in the previous post on the blog) through an equalizer to attempt to pick out Ian's lyrics. Considering that even with modern audio software it's nearly impossible to extract Ian's vocals, or at least make them clearer, it's impressive what they were able to pull out of it. Steve sings lead on the verses, with Hooky taking over a chorus as well. Interestingly enough, when the time came three weeks later to record this track "officially" in New Jersey's Eastern Artists Recording Studio with producer Martin Hannett, the lyrics Bernard Sumner sang started off markedly different - which makes one wonder if they were rewritten by New Order.

Steve continues on with the lead vocals on "Truth" which, even at this early stage, is remarkably similar to what they'd end up doing with the track when recording it for their debut LP in 1981 (except with Bernard on vocals). I particularly like this version though, it's much more poignant, fragile and spacious - as it should be - than the released variant.

And then we have the biggest revelation of the reel: A heretofore-unknown new New Order track, or rather, a collaboration with the Cabs and New Order, featuring none other than NO manager Rob Gretton on lead vocals! This has been confirmed by a New Order member directly to your humble blogger, and furthermore, this same member revealed that it was entitled "Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This?" and was just one of two collaborations they recorded with the Cabs, with the other (still unknown) sounding much more New Order-ry than this track. What is special about "Are You Ready" though is that, Rob's vocals aside, musically it shows the band taking great liberties with the established Joy Division sound - and the early New Order sound - and is very much so a signpost to the musical path the band would further explore starting with fall 1981's "Everything's Gone Green".

I feel this material is too important to release as MP3 so please enjoy it lossless as FLAC (two RAR files as usual).

01 Dreams Never End (mix 1, quieter guitars)
02 Dreams Never End (mix 2, louder guitars)
03 Homage
04 Ceremony
05 Truth
06 Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This?

Files here (2012 version; see neworderarchive.blogspot.com for details.

edit: 8 May 2009 followup

enjoy!

New Order "stash" tapes, 2012 mastering: 13 Dec 1985 Orleans

New Order
Salle du Baron, Orleans, France
13 December 1985

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
1st generation dub of cassette master (if not *the* master...)
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of New Order tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  A musician friend of Hooky, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, then rescued the tapes and sold them to an infamous collector in Florida, who is known for not sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained 1st-generation dubs of these tapes before they were shipped off to Florida.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so. 

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)

This is the second of two French gigs sourced from the Stash.  The first being Rennes; it's not the first to be posted here because Rennes needs quite a bit more TLC than most of these sets.  Regardless, this Orleans set is easily one hour of my favorite New Order, ever.

Here, the band visits two songs that were not long for this world; "Hurt" only saw one more airing after this, and "ICB" went to its lonely place forevermore after this night.  Which is a shame; I love "ICB" and until Hooky's bass packs it in midway, it's well on its way to "classic track" status.

The rest of the gig is no shambles either, though there are a few whoppers in "She's Lost Control" and it's no wonder they don't revisit this song again until New Order Mk. III in 2001/2002.  "In A Lonely Place" cuts where the soundboard tape ran out / at the tape flip spot.  Which is a shame, it was going to be brilliant based on the 1:15 that made it.

"Elegia" sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.  This is easily the best live version I've ever heard.

The original unmastered version of this gig has been spread pretty far and wide since 2004.  Trust me when I say you will want to bin it immediately upon hearing this 2012 mastering - it crushes it like a grape.  This version here is truly spectacular, and could be released tomorrow by Warners.

enjoy!

01 - Elegia
02 - The Perfect Kiss
03 - Weirdo
04 - Love Vigilantes
05 - Hurt
06 - Sooner Than You Think
07 - ICB
08 - This Time Of Night
09 - In A Lonely Place (detail)
10 - She's Lost Control
11 - Blue Monday

FLACs here.

Second of a series...

New Order "stash" tapes, 2012 mastering: 7 Dec 1985 Slough

New Order
Fulcrum Centre, Slough
7 December 1985

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
1st generation dub of cassette master
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of New Order tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  A musician friend of Hooky, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, then rescued the tapes and sold them to an infamous collector in Florida, who is known for not sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained 1st-generation dubs of these tapes before they were shipped off to Florida.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so. 

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)

With this set, we see the band in fine form in metropolitan London.  Two notables about this gig:

1) "This Time Of Night" from this gig was shortlisted for the live CD in the Retro box set, and this version (unmastered, presumably) appeared on very early track sheets (and working CD-Rs during compilation).  Bobby Gillespie loved it but Bernard had it binned for another track instead (I forget which).

2) "She's Lost Control" is debuted by New Order.  This period of New Order gigging is weird; it's obvious they were in a bit of a state because they played a handful of Joy Division tracks here in December 1985 to the extent they'd never done before, and wouldn't do so again until 1998.  They unearthed "She's Lost Control", "Atmosphere", and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" during this period.

The original unmastered version has been spread pretty far and wide since 2004.  Trust me when I say you will want to bin it immediately upon hearing this 2012 mastering - it crushes it like a grape.  This set here is easily a candidate for official release (barring the fades/cuts on the original cassette board master), should the band re-activate their once-planned-subsequently-binned live album project.

enjoy!

01 State Of The Nation (fades in)
02 Blue Monday
03 The Village
04 This Time Of Night
05 Subculture
06 Thieves Like Us
07 Confusion
08 Weirdo
09 Ceremony (cuts in)
10 Temptation
11 She's Lost Control
12 The Perfect Kiss

FLACs here.

First of a series...

NEW ORDER 30 June 1983 Cabaret Metro, Chicago

(peeks out from under the covers, sees a world still there, spews out a blog post, and crawls back in...)

I was in Chicago two weekends ago and had one of the most wonderful weekends I've had in many years.  I saw 12 hours of excellent music, including two sets each from Poster Children and Tar, made many new friends, met up in person with some existing friends for the first time ever, and just had a blast.  Having dinner with Tar two nights in a row was only some of the fun to be had.

But this post has nothing to do with aluminum guitars, noisy punk rock, etc.

Several months ago, I had gotten into a discussion via a Facebook comment thread with a Chicago person who claimed to have a tape of New Order's debut Chicago gig June 30, 1983 at the legendary Cabaret Metro.  For background, there are two New Order sets which have long been held up as the Holy Grails of New Order tapes - this show, and their debut Beach Club performance from 1980.  For 34 years, no known tape of this Chicago set had been known to exist and all discussion was essentially conjecture and long-diminished memories from club owners and punters who attended.  As I had already made arrangements to be in Chicago for the weekend described up top, I made separate arrangements to meet up with this person and pick up a copy of this set.  If I'm to be honest, I didn't expect it to be much of anything.  So, that Saturday two weeks ago, I did.  Turns out to have been with a lovely fellow who had several entertaining stories to share about gigs and particularly this recording.

The minute I put the CD-R into the rental car's CD player, I knew it was special.

I put this on Dime, but decided to also put it up here.  The WeTransfer link expires in 7 days - I would ask that any requests after 7 days be met by folks who downloaded it, by re-upping it to WeTransfer and putting the fresh link in the comments.  Pay it forward, etc.

So onward.

NEW ORDER
June 30, 1983
Cabaret Metro, Chicago IL USA

Equipment/lineage:  who the hell knows -> space aliens -> A. -> CD-R -> Analog Loyalist mastering -> you

It’s not often something like this sort of falls in your lap.

June 30, 1983 was the hottest day of the year to date in Chicago.  The now-legendary venue Metro - then known as Cabaret Metro - had been open for roughly a year.  While I was just an 11 year old kid cavorting on a beach across Lake Michigan from Chicago that day - or most likely asleep in the summer cottage, considering the time - New Order finally made their debut appearance in Chicago.  Attendees say it was unbearably hot inside the Metro that night.  And allegedly even hotter on the stage.  That day, the high temperature reached near 100° F in Chicago and it had barely cooled as the evening went on.  Making matters worse, the band took nearly two hours to get on stage after the opening act, which made an uncomfortable and stinky audience even more strident.

The set starts out as your typical New Order set of the era would.  Things seem OK, maybe a bit rowdier crowd than normal, until late in the fourth song “Truth” when the sequencer starts to act up.  They launch straight into “Leave Me Alone” which ends uneventfully.  Then, the power goes out (as you’d have it).  A restless crowd begins complaining amongst itself, with audible complaints about sweat dripping into eyes, another mentioning rubbing ice all over their face, and vocalized thankfulness that they brought paper towels in.  Random sequencer bleats punctuate the rumbling crowd, as the roadies and venue staff try to get the power sorted.  Hooky mentions needing a shower.  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.

For the past 34 years, this set has been legendary in the New Order community due to the circumstances which befell it.  And a tape was never known to exist, nor a setlist for that matter.  With the 1980 Beach Club set, it was part of the Holy Grail pair of lost New Order sets.  That changes today.  The story of how this tape ultimately came to me is nearly as good as the story behind the gig, but to protect privacy I shall simply thank A. for this.  I believe this is from a 1st generation dub of the master, and whomever the actual taper is remains a complete mystery.

Setlist:

Confusion
Chosen Time
The Village
Truth
Leave Me Alone
Your Silent Face
Denial
Age Of Consent
Ceremony
In A Lonely Place

WeTransfer link - expires in 7 days.  FLACs.

New Order "stash" tapes, 2012 mastering: 7 July 1984 Barcelona

New Order
Studio 54, Barcelona, Spain
7 July 1984

source: Hooky's rubbish bin (the "stash" tapes)
lineage: Master soundboard recording cassette
analogloyalist mastering August 2012

At long last I'm starting to fix up and free a stash of gigs - which first saw the light (heh) in 2004 on the long-defunct Sharing The Groove, but were essentially untouched beyond basic cleanup - that really show how brilliant New Order were in their prime in the mid-'80s.

The quick-and-dirty background:  Whilst cleaning house, a set of master New Order soundboard tapes (various mid-80s live gigs, some rehearsals, and a DAT or two from the band's 1989 US tour) was found by Hooky under the floorboards at his studio Suite 16 in Rochdale, England.  A musician friend of Hooky, who was in his employ for a duration in the early 90s, then rescued the tapes and sold them to an infamous collector in Florida, a collector not known for sharing the wealth.  In the interim, ATR (sometimes called Stash) obtained digital transfers of these tapes before they were shipped off to Florida.  ATR then shared them amongst the New Order cognoscenti, and then in 2004 we fed them to the world via Sharing The Groove.

All these gigs had their various problems as-received from the source in between Hooky and us, the least of which were sector boundary errors (which means, if burned as-is to CD, there are audible "pops" in between tracks) and all off-pitch by varying degrees.  Some were extremely muddy, and others were far too bright.  None of them were just right, but my aim is to make them so.

(The New Order "stash" gigs that were on Sharing The Groove, and various other torrent sites and blogs from 2004 onward, are all from those original 2004 releases and have not been formally mastered since, until now.)



This is easily one of my all-time favorite New Order sets.  Generally fantastic, crystalline sound; great setlist; unique segues; sequencer cockups.  It's all here.

"Ceremony" on the Retro box set live CD was sourced from this very transfer via one of the Stash transfer recipients, though obviously without my mastering (the Retro version is inexplicably slowed down, and has been "muddified" for lack of a better term).  It truly shines here and is one of my favorite performances ever of this track.  Don't let the sound quality of the Retro version scare you, at all - this completely shatters Retro's version and beats it to a bloody pulp.

"Skullcrusher" - enough said.  One of the few performances with "lyrics" - and I put that in quotes because it's basically Barney ad-libbing a lyric.  And it's wonderful, in its absurdity.  The performance is, simply, out of this world.  And "Lonesome Tonight"!  Easily a top 5 New Order track for me.

Throughout the sequenced tracks ("The Village" / "Confusion" / "Hurt" / "Blue Monday" / "Everything's Gone Green" / "Temptation") you can audibly hear problems with the sequencer.  It's cutting in and out (it's actually mostly in, it's only dropping out in a few places) of the board feed; I have no idea if this was a problem with the on-stage equipment or simply the feed into the PA.  It makes for some unique versions, and I absolutely love it.

There's a wonderful problem with the sequencer kicking off "Everything's Gone Green" in that it bleats "Blue Monday" in perfect sync with "Everything's Gone Green" until Gillian sets things right.  And the perfect segue between "EGG" and "Temptation" is done perfectly, the sequencer going for a full 12 minutes straight between the two songs.  Love it!

The original unmastered version of this gig has been spread pretty far and wide since 2004.  Trust me when I say you will want to bin it immediately upon hearing this 2012 mastering - it crushes it like a grape.  This version here is truly spectacular, and could be released tomorrow by Warners.

enjoy!

01 Your Silent Face
02 The Village
03 Ceremony
04 Skullcrusher
05 We All Stand
06 Lonesome Tonight
07 Confusion
08 Hurt
09 Age Of Consent
10 Blue Monday
11 Bernard and Hooky riffing
12 Everything's Gone Green ---->
13 Temptation

FLACs here.

Third of a series...

New Order - Western Works demos followup

Now that the dust has settled a bit from this blog's freeing of the Western Works demos taken from the master reel, I thought it appropriate to discuss this a bit further.

There were quite a few fans who made this possible - I can't thank them all, because of course everybody wishes to remain anonymous, but were it not for the generosity of many, this would likely have ended up in the hands of a notorious bootlegger who would not have seen to it's proper care and feeding.

It's been quite apparent from my logs that this post has been shared worldwide. While I'm grateful for the exposure, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!

The band is aware of this material's existence in the wild.

Those who doubted about New Order's involvement in the NO/Cabs jam "Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This?" - doubt no further. A member of New Order - who was of course there at the time, he was in the band! - was the direct, to me, source of this information, not secondhand or thirdhand.

When this bunch of fans obtained the reel, this track was completely unknown and it was just pure speculation at the time that it was a Cabs/NO jam. I had this New Order member identify it for me - it was he who revealed its title to me - and this same member also confirmed the instrumentation:

Hooky - bass
Bernard - guitar (and "whooping" in the background)
Steve - Simmons drums, and the same Dr Rhythm drum machine used on Truth
Rob Gretton - vocals
various Cabs - sonic alterations

This member also stated there was another collaboration recorded at the time, which was a bit more classic New Order-y in sound, but alas this appears to have been lost in the mists of time. It was not on the reel as purchased off eBay.

You may be of course asking how the auction win came about.

The reel was advertised as being rescued in a Chorlton charity shop, and was described as containing "unreleased" Joy Division mixes, specifically "She's Lost Control" and "Atmosphere". Alas, neither are unreleased mixes - the reel contained test pressing vinyl captures of the FACUS2 "She's Lost Control" b/w "Atmosphere" 12" single, and a transfer of the Sordide Sentimental 7" "Atmosphere", presumably for comparison sake. Nothing JD on the reel was unreleased, and in fact both were of fairly poor quality for a vinyl transfer to reel. Not listed on the reel, and not mentioned in the auction description, was the New Order material.

On the reverse side of the reel - labeled "!SBAC" - are 4 Cabaret Voltaire tracks that eventually saw release in the early 1980s. You would have needed a 4-track reel-to-reel machine to play these properly, it's obvious that neither New Order nor the eBay seller didn't have such a machine, at least at the time.

Here are photos of the reel itself...

Side 1



(detail)



and Side 2



(detail)



Note how Side 1 starts with "Cabaret Volt. Demos" - I'm wondering if this was New Order's shorthand for the Western Works session.

And here's some detail on the Cabs material on Side 2, the "!SBAC"-labeled side:

I have identified the 4 Cabs tracks on the reel.

They are:
1. Doubled Delivery
2. Venusian Animals
3. The Outer Limits
4. She Loved You

These are the B side of the Industrial Records cassette, IRC-35 Cabaret Voltaire 1974-1976. There is also a later Mute Grey Area CD release.

The original cassette was released by Industrial in early 1981, so this fits into the time frame and seems to point to Chris Watson as the original source.

Please be advised we've no info if Watson was indeed the source or not, that was just pure speculation.

If you only had a 2-track reel machine and attempted to play Side 2, it would play backwards - hence the label being backwards. The labeler knew it was Cabs material but couldn't play it back properly.

So please discuss!

variations on a theme: Martin Hannett part II, the music

As promised, some works that honor the legacy, genius and talent of the legendary Manchester producer Martin Hannett....



Martin piddled around in Manchester with several acts, helped establish the Manchester Musicians Collective in the late 1970s, did some booking and engineering, until falling in with Factory Records impresarios Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus in 1978. Martin was considered one of the label's co-founders, and envisioned himself becoming the house engineer and chief A&R man. He worked with most of the Factory roster until he left the label's employ in 1982, suing the label over lost royalties (and he was convinced Factory wasted everything opening the Hacienda, his idea was to spend it all on a Fairlight instead).

Martin was lost in the wilderness during the mid-80s, lost in a sea of drink and drug. Only occasionally did he pop up, most notably with the Stone Roses (complete nobodies at the time) to record a debut album which finally saw the "official" light of day in the late 90s as a semi-official release entitled Garage Flower. His work with the Roses was largely ignored/forgotten for two reasons: 1) it wasn't very good, frankly, and 2) the Roses were quickly moving on into a more melodic realm that dated even further what they were doing with Martin.

Surprisingly coming back into the Factory family via his work with Happy Mondays, Martin enjoyed a sudden resurgence of work and popularity, if you will, in the late 1980s/early 90s. Starting with the Mondays, Martin then produced several other acts that were drawn to him for his legend and genius, culminating with two Manchester acts New Fast Automatic Daffodils and The High, the last two acts he worked with until his sudden untimely death via heart attack in April 1991.

Martin was a genius. His legendary use of digital delay, coming milliseconds after the initial snare hit, has influenced hundreds of recording engineers to this day (see the entire Joy Division catalog for an example). An autocrat, he nevertheless encouraged the best work out of the acts he worked with (bar the Stone Roses as above), and his imprint on music, on Manchester, on a generation of music fans, will continue forever.

Onward to the music - that's what we're here for, right?

MARTIN: The work of record producer Martin Hannett
FACD 325
1991 Factory Communications Ltd.



01 BUZZCOCKS / Breakdown
02 SLAUGHTER AND THE DOGS / Cranked Up Really High
03 JOHN COOPER CLARKE / Suspended Sentence
04 JOY DIVISION / She's Lost Control
05 JILTED JOHN / Jilted John
06 A CERTAIN RATIO / Do The Do
07 ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK / Almost
08 U2 / 11 O'Clock Tick Tock
09 NEW ORDER / Everything's Gone Green
10 HAPPY MONDAYS / Lazyitis
11 WORLD OF TWIST / She's A Rainbow
12 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS / Get Better
13 THE HIGH / More

Released in 1991, this album was Factory's celebration of his life and work. All proceeds went to his family - and if this album were still in print, I wouldn't have it here to download because of that.

-------------- analog loyalist's compilation ---------------

I was going to do the list-each-song-and-download-separately bit but I know how annoying RapidShare is so I made my own compilation instead. Single download gets it all!

"Produced by Martin Hannett"
compiled by the Analog Loyalist

01 JOY DIVISION / Digital (1978)
Side 1, track 1 of the Factory Sample FAC2. Martin finds it here.

02 A CERTAIN RATIO / All Night Party (1979)
Funky even without the original funky drummer DoJo.

03 DURUTTI COLUMN / Sketch For Summer (1979)
04 DURUTTI COLUMN / First Aspect Of The Same Thing (1979)
"Sketch" finds Martin inventing bird noises with various electronica, and "First Aspect" is Martin flying solo - he wrote it and performed it entirely alone.

05 A CERTAIN RATIO / Flight (1979)
I'm not certain the Joy Division comparisons aren't entirely due to Martin's signature production work here...

06 JOY DIVISION / Atmosphere (1979)
The first genuine classic here, the band thought this was the best job Martin had ever done for them. Beautiful, beautiful.

07 KEVIN HEWICK with NEW ORDER / Haystack (1980)
Factory sends the surviving Joy Division members into the studio shortly after Ian Curtis' death, to back fledgling Factory artist Kevin Hewick on a couple tracks. An audition, perhaps, for the vocal spot vacated by Ian and soon filled by Bernard Sumner? One never knows... New Order's first studio effort after Ian's death.

08 NEW ORDER / Ceremony (1980)
09 NEW ORDER / In A Lonely Place (1980)
Both sides of FAC33 straight from mint vinyl, New Order recording in New Jersey with Martin, before Gillian joined. Classics both, IALP is less thunderclappy compared to the remixed version on Substance.

10 SECTION 25 / New Horizon (edit) (1981)
Factory's Blackpool contingent, obviously JD influenced (or is it that Hannett sound?). I edited down the interminably long intro.

11 THE STONE ROSES / I Wanna Be Adored (1985)
Martin's lost years, the Madchester classic in its original form - Leckie's 1988 re-recording obviously perfected it.

12 HAPPY MONDAYS / WFL (Think About The Future) (1988)
Remixed by Paul Oakenfold, pure utter genius this track. Welcome back, Martin.

13 THE HIGH / Up & Down (1989)
Part of a series of demos The High recorded with Martin in fall 1989, this band was the last band Martin recorded before his April 1991 death. Nice jangly song, Andy Couzens presented this song to the Stone Roses while he was still a member.

tO2: The Other Two 1992 advance promo

When New Order went to ground after 1989's Technique and the tour that followed, the band famously split into three camps: Bernard Sumner hooked with Johnny Marr (and occasionally Neil Tennant) to make Electronic; Peter Hook started Revenge, and the other two Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert formed, well, The Other Two.



Bernard's project scored the greatest acclaim (well, you would, if you featured the greatest UK indie guitarist in Johnny Marr paired up with Barney) and fame, Hooky's gig earned laughter (and a few points), while Steve and Gillian were basically ignored - and left to churn out perhaps the least-known, best-written, most New Order-ish material of the bunch.

Debuting on Factory in 1991 with the instantly-catchy single "Tasty Fish" (a track Factory boss Tony Wilson despised due to it's obscene poppiness), the Other Two then went on to record tracks for their as-then-untitled debut - which eventually received a Factory catalog number, FACT330, and saw at least several test pressings run off in September 1992. Prior to the LP being issued, Factory went bust in December 1992.

In the meantime New Order had regrouped and recorded Republic - an LP that divided fans' opinion of the band, and an LP that ended with a New Order track in name only, "Avalanche" - which was purely an Other Two contribution.

Though the Other Two's LP was technically ready for release, the re-activated New Order took all attention and focus. Meantime, US record company Qwest circulated at least a handful of promo cassettes of the Other Two's LP as well - at least six months prior to the record's eventual release, and David Sultan of www.worldinmotion.net states this promo cassette actually was run off in 1992. I remember listening to a dub of this Qwest promo, and the then-new New Order LP Republic, at roughly the same time in late spring/early summer 1993 - so it's entirely possible it existed in 1992.

The LP eventually saw release in October 1993 on Centredate/London Records in the UK, and Qwest in the US, entitled The Other Two & You.

Presented here is a very clean recent transfer of an actual Qwest promo cassette, the cassette itself dating from 1992 or early 1993. The tracks are mostly the same as the released version, but there are some significant differences in "Selfish" and the variant here is not available on any other release. There may be minor differences in the other tracks as well, but I've not given it a close A/B comparison.

So enjoy - in lossless FLAC too!


THE OTHER TWO The Other Two & You.
Qwest advance promo cassette, 1992/1993

01 Tasty Fish
02 The Greatest Thing
03 Selfish
04 Movin' On
05 Ninth Configuration

- - - A / B split here - - -

06 Feel This Love
07 Spirit Level
08 Night Voice
09 Innocence
10 Loved It (the Other Track)

The cassette originally featured a minute-long period of silence at the end of "Innocence" to give the appearance of "Loved It" being a hidden track, which I've preserved here.

Part I /// Part II /// Part III (three RAR files as usual, lossless FLAC)

enjoy! Links should all work out-of-the-box this time.

unplugged: New Order's Bernard Sumner

In 2007 legendary bassist Peter Hook announced he was leaving New Order, leaving singer/guitarist Bernard Sumner and drummer Steve Morris in the lurch. No reason ever was given.

After some hemming-and-hawing over the New Order name, word escaped that Sumner and Morris had a new project called Bad Lieutenant and would be writing/releasing new music under that name. People said "ummm, OK".

In March 2009 Sky Arts in the UK featured Bernard Sumner on their recurring series "Songbook" that blends MTV/VH1's "Storytellers" and "Unplugged" series into a narrative interview with several acoustic performances interspersed.



Bernard, backed by guitarists Phil Cunningham and Jake Evans, performed 4 tracks "unplugged" - just acoustic guitars and Bernard's legendary voice.

That's not that impressive in and of itself - the thought of New Order tracks unplugged just doesn't really jibe, if you know what I mean - but it turns out Bernard turned in one of his most inspired performances ever.

Not only that, but it was the first public airing of a Bad Lieutenant track, which I'll get to shortly.

What was played? Well, you've come to the right place!

1) "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (Joy Division, 1979)
High-bitrate, high-quality mp3

Three acoustic guitars, no "whooping" from Bernard. Perhaps the best non-Joy Division performance of this song, ever. Really really good performance, perfectly suited for Bernard in this interpretation.

High-quality YouTube footage

- - -

2) "Bizarre Love Triangle" (New Order, 1986)
High-bitrate, high-quality mp3

Oddly I'd never imagined this song in an acoustic setting, but it works, and it's fantastic. Of course I'm discounting Frente!'s version but I don't really count that....

High-quality YouTube footage

- - -

3) "Getting Away With It" (Electronic, 1989)
High-bitrate, high-quality mp3

The debut Electronic single (the side project that Bernard started with Johnny Marr in the late 1980s), never before heard in an acoustic setting. Again, a stellar performance, and it really gets to the root of the melody. And when Jake comes in with a fairly spot-on Johnny Marr imitation in the solo, it's really something else.... I would have to say this is the best version of this song I've EVER heard, no question.

High-quality YouTube footage

- - -

4) "Sink Or Swim" (Bad Lieutenant, 2009)
High-bitrate, high-quality mp3

The first public airing of this brand-new Bad Lieutenant track, this is REALLY good. Interestingly, the main guitar motif suggests a possible Peter Hook bassline, which makes this even more poignant. Stellar, stellar stuff, and a fantastic teaser for any further upcoming efforts....

High-quality YouTube footage

- - -

On YouTube you can also find the interview segments, but I'll leave that for you guys to get. I just wanted to feature the music... ;)

enjoy!

New Order: Part 2 of a series, 1985-1989

Last week we gave ourselves a good hit of early New Order, finding the band transitioning from the shadows of Joy Division to electro-indie- rock trendsetters.

This week, Part II of the PoIT's New Order MegaSubstance MegaSpectacular, we become megastars.



Bernard Sumner realized he didn't have to be so dramatic and Peter Hook started getting even more creative and melodic on bass. Steve Morris became the human drum machine and Gillian Gilbert brought even more electro flourishes to the mix.

They also didn't forget their roots as a guitar band.

We start the proceedings with a song that probably should have gone in last week's batch (a stunning "Skullcrusher" live from Barcelona, Spain in July 1984) but for two reasons it's here in this batch: 1) I forgot to put it in last week, and 2) the song did end up seeing release as an instrumental track in 1987.

Many of the following have either never been released officially on CD or have found themselves bastardized in order to fit on existing compilations (hello "The Perfect Kiss" and shouts to "Shellshock"). Other tracks ("Let's Go") have NEVER been heard in this form except on bootleg, and yet others ("The Happy One") exist in snippet-form only.

So onward we proceed from 1985 through 1989, the last year New Order could safely call themselves a true indie band.

NEW ORDER "I'm not grown up and I'm not a boy..." 1985-1989, anthologized

01 Skullcrusher (with lyrics, 7 Jul 1984 Studio 54, Barcelona, Spain)
02 Let's Go (unreleased original 1985 vocal)
03 The Perfect Kiss (12 inch complete version)
04 Love Vigilantes
05 This Time Of Night
06 Sunrise
07 Elegia
08 Sooner Than You Think
09 Shellshock (12 inch complete version)
10 Weirdo
11 As It Is When It Was
12 Broken Promise
13 Way Of Life
14 Bizarre Love Triangle
15 All Day Long
16 Every Little Counts
17 True Faith (The Morning Sun extended remix)
18 1963
19 Paradise (remix) ***** see below!
19 Temptation '87
20 Salvation Theme
21 Touched By The Hand Of God (early version)
22 Sputnik
23 Don't Do It
24 Fine Time
25 All The Way
26 Love Less
27 Guilty Partner
28 Run
29 Vanishing Point
30 Dream Attack
31 Round & Round (7 inch mix)
32 Run² (unreleased instrumental mix)
33 MTO
34 MTO minus mix
35 The Happy One (full version re-assembly)

Four RAR files this time, as usual, you must download each one!

Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV

***** I forgot to include 19 Paradise (remix) in the fileset so please grab it here. It should still sort correctly but yes, there will be two Track 19's. I think everyone will be OK with this ;)

(note - if having trouble extracting "Temptation '87", download that track only here .... and if you're having problems with "Guilty Partner" that can be downloaded here.)

enjoy!

dub: New Order 22 June 1982 Milan (2010 remaster)

And the gravy train continues.

As I clean up my hard drives, and poke through the big pile of CD/DVD-R's, I come across stuff. Sometimes I refile it, sometimes I put it in the "interesting, needs further thought" pile, and sometimes it goes straight into the blogpile, occasionally after some further audio mastering work.

Of late New Order soundboards keep edgeing their way into the blogpile. I push them out but you know, they're persistent little fuckers.

Perhaps it's to counterbalance Steve Albini. Hey! Albini's first real band recorded a session with legendary Joy Division and early New Order producer Martin Hannett, so the connection's not that far removed (although it has to be said that Hannett recorded Stations, Albini's band before Big Black, shortly after Albini left the band....).



Like an earworm, this particular gig featured today can't get out of my head.

One of the band's most legendary bootlegs, this June 22, 1982 soundboard recording from the Rolling Stone in Milan, Italy finds the band at perhaps their dubbiest (if that's a word, if not, I'm inventing it!). The dub effects are all over the map here, as if their sound guy had Lee "Scratch" Perry in one ear and the band's output in another - while on a load of draw on top of it all. About the only thing missing is Jah Wobble's throbbing deep lowfield bass. It's simply incredible. Not to mention the song selection is nothing short of stellar as well.

The highlight is their only known take on Sparks' "When I'm With You", featuring sequencers going haywire at the end (and more dub!) and Bernard moaning about their choice of encores.

Lyrical highlights: 2:04 "Thought this was in C!"; 2:20 "Never feel like feedback when I'm with you" to the sounds of howling feedback in the mix; 3:37 "This is why we don't do encores"; 3:55 "This is a bad idea". Then we get sequenced snippets of "The Village" and, at 10:45 as things drunkenly stumble to a close, a blast of Hooky playing the "Ceremony" bassline.

This also features one of the band's rare three-song segues, a stunning electroacoustic workout through 586->Temptation->Everything's Gone Green lasting nearly 18:35, all nonstop. Amazing.

Punters out there who have this gig may recall that "Everything's Gone Green" has a dropout at around 2:30 or thereabouts, losing nearly an entire vocal line (which would be about where the tape flip would be if it were recorded on a C-90 cassette). That has been fixed on this version. Punters may also recall that "When I'm With You" was missing the first couple seconds at the intro, which has also been fixed here.

This is the definitive version of this gig, so I highly suggest everyone - even if you only remotely care for New Order - download it. It's probably my favorite gig of this era as it's so transitional and clearly the band is struggling with their direction (do we continue the Joy Division sound, or branch out even further into this 586/Temptation/Everything's Gone Green electro motif, or scratch it all and listen to PiL's Metal Box for inspiration?). Of course we know how it would resolve, but it's a fascinating document of a band clearly struggling with their identity.

And as is becoming our trademark, it's featured in lossless FLAC for her pleasure ;)

NEW ORDER
22 June 1982
The Rolling Stone, Milan, Italy
special to thepowerofindependenttrucking.blogspot.com

01 Truth (fades in)
02 Dreams Never End
03 Chosen Time
04 ICB
05 Leave Me Alone
06 Denial
07 Procession
08 586 ->
09 <- Temptation ->
10 <- Everything's Gone Green
11 When I'm With You

Grab it here!

credit for artwork: Species

The New Order Archives: a new blog.

With the huge amount of exposure these "stash" tapes have received, and the large number of downloads the files have seen, clearly there is an interest in something more.

So, I've started a new blog, The New Order Archives.  The first post explains the mission statement and what to expect.  Please update your bookmarks, and keep both TPoIT and TNOA on your RSS feeds ;)

For a duration, I will crosspost new entries on TNOA over here, but only links to the posts over on TNOA.  But ultimately all "stash"-type material will only be on TNOA, with my normal non-New Order postings continuing here.

Speaking of New Order.... IFPI/Warners DMCA'ed the Run 2 unreleased mixes post.  I didn't complain this time as in this case it clearly was something the label had rights to and I had squat; I had just hoped that 20+ year old mixes, never released, would escape anyone's attention.  Then again, 6,000 downloads later since they were posted in 2009, there clearly was interest.  Ah well.

Enjoy TNOA!  I think my first post there will be new-ish masterings of the Western Works demos, hugely improved from the version I posted a million years ago.  Watch that space...

- Analog Loyalist

concert: New Order 16 June 1989 Irvine, CA *remastered*

So the internets are abuzz lately with talk of a newly-discovered Joy Division rehearsal tape floating around, featuring not one but five full-length takes on "In A Lonely Place" - the last song written by the band prior to Ian's suicide, and closing with the verse beginning with "Hangman looks round as he waits / Cord stretches tight, then it breaks...". In 1997 this song was released on the Heart and Soul box set, but ending just prior to the final verse (sensitivity reasons to his surviving family, perhaps?). So it would be great to finally hear the long-rumored full-length variant, alas the set has yet to surface publicly on the internets so we will just have to wait.



In the meantime, we move forward. 10 years from last week's post, and 20 years in the past. According to New Order bassist Hooky, the band first died in the afternoon of today's featured gig, when Bernard announced to the group that he was starting Electronic (his project with Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr) and no longer wished to carry on with New Order. Seeing as how this was at the near beginning of that summer's American tour on the back of their 5th LP Technique, the band's sets from this point forward were those of a group in their death throes - and nobody outside the band knew it.

Which may account for the unique setlist of this June 16, 1989 Irvine Meadows Ampitheatre, Irvine, CA gig. "Age of Consent" and "All Day Long" see rare airings - it was the next-to-last-ever "Age of Consent", and the last-ever "All Day Long". Maybe Bernard was throwing Hooky a bone with "Age of Consent"?

This actual recording, the mastered version presented here, was considered for release recently by the band and ultimately rejected for feelings of sounding too "clinical" - it's too much of a pristine, sterile soundboard or something like that. Which is why I love it so - it's perhaps the best pure soundboard recording of this band I've ever heard, with a stunning clarity and depth that's got to be heard. It's also got perhaps my favorite live versions of "Your Silent Face" and "Temptation", at least for modern-day performances.

Sadly Bernard introduces the gig dedicating the set to Echo and the Bunnymen drummer Pete deFreitas, who died the day before. The two bands were good friends with each other and they toured the States in summer 1987 as co-headliners.

This gig was ultimately sourced from a DAT liberated from the band's archives by persons affiliated with Hooky. Interestingly enough, the same DAT liberated from Hooky shows signs of editing the between-song bits, perhaps to make the gig fit on a 74-minute CD? So this either was considered for release way back in the day, as well as more recently, or perhaps Hooky just wanted it edited down so he could throw it in his car/Discman for private listening? We'll never know.

This was available on various filesharing sites, but not in the mastering you find here. So if you had a previous copy of this gig, I'd still suggest grabbing this version. It's that much better.

NEW ORDER
16 June 1989 Irvine Meadows Ampitheatre, Irvine, CA
remastered and EQ'ed from the band's leaked master soundboard DAT



01 intro, dedication to Pete deFreitas
02 Ceremony
03 True Faith
04 Age of Consent
05 Dream Attack
06 All The Way
07 Mr Disco
08 Your Silent Face
09 Vanishing Point
10 Round & Round
11 Temptation
12 Bizarre Love Triangle
13 The Perfect Kiss
14 All Day Long
15 Bernard jamming
16 Fine Time

Grab it here, lossless FLAC split across 5 RAR files

New Order: Part 1 of a series, 1980-1984

New Order has - for over 20 years - been amongst my most favorite groups ever. For 15 or so years they made music that served as the soundtrack to my life, more often than not reaching perfection (or pretty damn close to it) with everything they did.

They had a few clunkers ("Sub-Culture" 12-inch mix, anyone?) but the true best of New Order is among the best music EVER from ANY artist ANY era. Not bad for a bunch of self-taught Salford/Macclesfield, UK misfits.



The history of the band can be found all over the internets so I shall not rehash it here. What I will be doing, however, over a series of posts, is compile my favorite tracks into the SuperFan's MegaSubstance MegaBest Of or what-have-you. The band has been anthologized over a ridiculous number of compilations and quite a few tracks are repeated across releases, while deep catalog tracks - as good as any single they released - are continuously ignored.

Our first selection features their best works from the 1980-1984 era - the era that served as the "hey, we used to be Joy Division" bridging to the "hey, I think we're onto something with this weird dance/rock/indie hybrid thing" timeframe, before they became megastars. This era saw the band creep ever so hesitantly out of the Joy Division shadow, suddenly becoming trendsetters in discos, and then rediscovering guitars again.

So onward.

NEW ORDER "Seems like I've been here before..."
1980-1984, anthologized

01 Ceremony (original 3-piece version, recorded Sept. 1980)
02 In A Lonely Place (7-inch edit, different from Substance version)
03 Ceremony (re-recorded late 1980 with Gillian Gilbert on board)
04 Procession
05 Everything's Gone Green (7-inch version)
06 Dreams Never End (Jan. 1981 Peel Session)
07 ICB (Jan. 1981 Peel Session)
08 Cries and Whispers
09 Mesh
10 Truth (mix candidate #1, Hannett)
11 Doubts Even Here
12 Denial
13 Temptation (7-inch version)
14 Hurt (7-inch version)
15 Temptation (12-inch version)
16 586 (June 1982 Peel Session)
17 Too Late
18 Blue Monday (rare 7-inch edit)
19 Age of Consent
20 The Village
21 Your Silent Face
22 Ultraviolence
23 Ecstasy
24 Leave Me Alone
25 Confusion (7-inch promo edit)
26 Thieves Like Us (7-inch promo edit)
27 Lonesome Tonight
28 Murder

Nothing whatsoever taken from the abysmally-mastered 2005 compilation Singles, and many taken from mint vinyl copies.

Three RAR's as usual, gotta grab 'em all of course...

Part I / Part II / Part III

enjoy!

halcyon days: Alternative Music Night (a mix)

We're going to indulge your humble blogger's memories here and step back to his university days.

In the early 1990s, I DJ'ed at a weekly event on my college campus that we so uniquely called Alternative Music Night.



You see, this was back in the immediate post-Nirvana timeframe, before the alternative became the mainstream (and later became the alternative again).

Besides MTV's 120 Minutes, and the here-today-gone-tomorrow commercial alternative radio stations that sprouted like weeds in Nirvana's jetstream (and often disappeared just as quickly), the outlets for "alternative" music were slim. True alternative, that is.

So an enlightened group of people took over the lounge in my college's student center one night a week and played the cool music. I took over from the founder due to my stellar musical tastes, hehe. We usually drew a fairly decent crowd, no doubt helped by the free beer and great music.

So in memory of those days, and because while cleaning the house I ran across a flyer from one of those long-gone nights, I'm going to feature the idealized playlist from one of these evenings. Of course it's not exact - I didn't keep records of what I played, and I also know there are some tracks that I no longer own (or even remember for that matter) - but on any given Wednesday night during the 1992/1993 and 1993/1994 school years, you were bound to hear these tracks at least once. The only certainties were two tracks that I played every damn night - Fugazi's "Merchandise" and the closer, R.E.M.'s Lou Reed cover "After Hours" as it was a great closer to the evening's festivities.

As I put this together, I realized I have way too much music to fit in one of those timeslots (typically, each night was 2 hours or so). So pretend this is two nights worth. I did attempt to group songs together as I would have during the DJ set, but due to the mists of time obviously it's idealized. Finally, there's no true mixing - I don't have my DJ equipment anymore - so deal with it.

A few observations... You can see where my head was at this era, there are quite a few Wax Trax!-ish tracks (Ministry/1000 Homo DJ's/etc) as well as quite a few ravers. Some of these I no longer own - I've moved on - but thanks to the magic Internets we can enjoy them yet again.

My average set was good enough for me to be recruited to DJ - for pay - at a local club in the city I went to college in, but alas the guy I was to replace begged for his job back (he was fired, I was to replace him) so I didn't get beyond a one-night stand at the club. The club owners had heard thru the grapevine about my DJ sets, and they sent spies to observe.....

N.B. The guy in the flyer above was designed by a pre-fame Liz Phair, as cover art for a friend's band. This would have been 1992 or so...

Onward we go....

Split into six RAR files, you gotta pull all 6 down before you can extract... links at the end. This time I'm also using a different hosting service, I believe you can download simultaneously, and it's hyperspeed compared to rapidshare...

01 1000 HOMO DJ'S Supernaut
02 PUBLIC IMAGE LTD Public Image
03 SUGAR A Good Idea
04 JOY DIVISION Love Will Tear Us Apart
05 NEW ORDER Regret
06 MINISTRY Stigmata
07 PIXIES Bone Machine
08 LUSH Nothing Natural
09 THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN Reverence
10 PIGFACE Suck
11 NEW ORDER Blue Monday
12 R.E.M. Finest Worksong (Lengthy Club Mix)
13 PETER MURPHY Cuts You Up
14 HÜSKER DÜ Makes No Sense At All
15 JANE'S ADDICTION Mountain Song
16 SONIC YOUTH Kool Thing
17 BEASTIE BOYS So What'Cha Want
18 REVOLTING COCKS Beers, Steers & Queers
19 MINISTRY Jesus Built My Hotrod
20 808 STATE Cübik
21 HAPPY MONDAYS Step On
22 BILLY BRAGG Sexuality (London remix)
23 PARIS ANGELS Perfume
24 SAINT ETIENNE Only Love Can Break Your Heart
25 NEW ORDER Ceremony
26 CATHERINE WHEEL Black Metallic
27 CHAPTERHOUSE Pearl
28 RIDE Taste
29 THE BOO RADLEYS Does This Hurt?
30 TEENAGE FANCLUB Star Sign (edit)
31 MY BLOODY VALENTINE Soon
32 THE CHARLATANS The Only One I Know
33 INSPIRAL CARPETS Commercial Reign
34 THE STONE ROSES Fools Gold
35 NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS Big
36 JAMES Sit Down
37 SPIRITUALIZED Run
38 JOY DIVISION Transmission
39 MATTHEW SWEET Girlfriend
40 R.E.M. Superman (edit)
41 ELECTRONIC Get The Message
42 PIXIES Debaser
43 DEAD KENNEDYS Holiday In Cambodia
44 FUGAZI Merchandise
45 DESCENDENTS Silly Girl
46 BUZZCOCKS Ever Fallen In Love?
47 BAUHAUS She's In Parties
48 THE CHAMELEONS Swamp Thing
49 THE CURE A Forest (full version)
50 THE SMITHS How Soon Is Now
51 SECTION 25 Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
52 NEW ORDER Temptation
53 WARLOCK PINCHERS Morrissey Rides A Cockhorse
54 MORRISSEY Suedehead
55 JOY DIVISION She's Lost Control
56 FLOWERED UP It's On
57 QUADROPHONIA Quadrophonia
58 FRONT 242 Tragedy > For You <
59 HAPPY MONDAYS WFL (Think about the future)
60 PRIMAL SCREAM Loaded
61 R.E.M. After Hours

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4 / part 5 / part 6
(100mb per file or thereabouts)

enjoy!