New Order - "BBC Radio 1 Live In Concert" NME Review

NME - ERM, NEW ORDURE

NEW ORDER
BBC Radio 1, Live In Concert

LET IT be noted right from the start that this - the first New Order live album - is the brainchild of BBC Radio 1. It has not been released by Factory Records nor instigated by New Order themselves in any way whatsoever.

The reason this is so significant is that no-one, not even those New Order diehards who would see Barney knighted and Hookey's bollocks immortalised in bronze and displayed in the Tate, would argue that New Order's greatest moments have ever been within slashing distance of a stage. By and
large, and with only the odd exception (there will always be a lunatic fringe and it will always find a home at the NME office), New Order are accepted as being as integral to the creative welfare of the live circuit as Dennis Neilsen once was to the smooth running of the North London sewage system.

l stumbled upon this fundamental pop truth early in life. One of my first ever gigs was New Order headlining the Futurama Festival at Deeside ice-rink, and within minutes I'd fallen asleep on the frozen floor with only a thin strip of industrial carpet lying between me and a future as the first goth lollipop. Even now, over a decade later, I’m still suffering the consequences - I'm a martyr to arthritis and am forced to type delicately lest my still-thawing fingers snap in two. But I couldn't help it. I couldn’t stay awake. New Order were that boring.

Being considered crap live won't come as any kind of shock revelation to the band or their fans. Nor is it a malaise to be particularly ashamed of. Competent live acts have always been over eulogised when the fact remains that most gigs are a waste of everybody's time and even the good ones should be taken for what they are: nothing more or less than an opportunity for ordinary people to throw pints of lukewarm piss over conceited musicians. Similarly, New Order would probably be the first band to admit that their golden goose is cooked anywhere else but the studio kitchen.

So WHY? Why, Why, why, this ‘New Order Live Album', this aberration of vinyl, this chocolate kettle of a marketing idea? Presumably, somebody hiding under Auntie’s skirts got a bright idea in the canteen one day and it was all downhill from there. Whatever, with only a few hundred words left to play with I suppose I'd better get down to the task in hand, though if you're expecting a ‘track-by-track rundown' you'd be better off abandoning this review right now and subscribing in future to Muso-Wank Weekly; at best, ‘New Order Live' is a passable Comedy album and should thus be analysed briefly and with malice aforethought

Point One: New Order's gig at Glastonbury '87 is considered ‘legendary’ by all in attendance, a night of witchery and suspense and the turning point for a band who had too long hidden their light under a dead man’s bushel. Point Two: ‘New Order Live' has nine tracks including ‘Temptation', ‘Your Silent Face', 'Bizarre Love Triangle' and an even more bizarre version of ‘Sister Ray’. Point Three: it is such a load of old garbage that bin-liners stuffed with rotting banana-peel, mouldy milk cartons and dead pets are considering sueing for defamation of character. Point taken? Or must I go on?

(Sigh! . . .) OK then, to reprise Point One: Always be suspicious of those who brandish the word ‘legendary' about. Its only real translation is: "I was there and you weren't, so ner-rrrrr! . . ." Point Two, take two: introducing ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’, Chatterbox Barney says: “This is like playing at the British Legion in Salford." It is important you believe him. Barney's vocals, incidentally, are the only real reason anybody should want to own this album. Tuneless, agonised, at times Californian, delirious, droning and (quelle surprise!) just a tad off-key, they're the funniest thing to happen to pop since Philip Schofield got nutted. Imagine vocal gymnastics from a ‘singer' whose larynx was last seen entering the Wheelchair Olympics. Point Three, the ‘comeback': Ditto, ditto and again, ditto.

I like New Order. They have a sure touch and an open heart miserably lacking in most bands today. But if I were to be given the choice between listening to this album again and being burnt at the stake as a witch I would calmly mount the pyre, demanding as my last request that my ashes be mixed
with broken glass and sprinkled into the gaping mouth of whatever moron it was who decided to release it. Most live albums are just vinyl memories with the heart ripped out anyway, but this one gives nostalgia a bad name. (2)

Barbara Ellen