1986 06 28 Melody Maker New Order Sheffield

RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE

New Order/Billy Bragg/The Inspirational Choir/ Cabaret Voltaire, artists against apartheid

Sheffield City Hall

SATURDAY Night Fever for Anti-Apartheid Rock. Two days from a decade of Soweto fire, on one of the warmest nights of the year, the City Hall is packed to sweltering capacity. This is a celebration, not only a condemnation and The Inspirational Choir pick up on that charge.

They swing into their performance with the fervour of a Biblical Kop and the wails come a tumbling down. These are the traditional rhythms of resistance, no less valid for their seeming indifference to the urgency of our secular world. The voices rise and dip on a surge of corporate emotion and there's no denying the strange power which holds both crowd and choir together during those split second silences at the close of each song. Music to light the darkest hour. Solid as a rock.

Welcome the diminutive mid-field schemer and friend of Mr Kinnock, Billy Bragg. Here stands a man with a great deal to say but too little with which to say it. His brand of DIY guitar rock more than crawls home in these sympathetic surroundings but for how much longer can the spartan entertainer bank on the sympathy vote? I've seen this act too many times before and now I want something different The validity of the statements made is unquestionable, but Bragg desperately needs new vehicles of communication if he is to retain his audience in the long term. Billy, where's the beef?

Meanwhile, away from the Main Hall, in the bowels of the ballroom below, Mallinder and Kirk, phantoms of the pop-era in this city, prepare to strike. Cabaret Voltaire otter what sound like symphonies for a thousand television screens but it all lacks that crucial immediacy and edge evident in the Chakk-attack sounds to be heard on the streets of Sheffield today. The ghouls in Ray-Bans lurking in every corner loved it of course, but for me this C.V. was just not up to scratch.

And so from last to first. Mine host and local hero, Martin Fry makes the necessary announcements and at 8.15 New Order take the stage. No place for follow-my-leader ego mania tonight, running orders are rendered irrelevant and in 45 minutes of musical excellence, the band create and cement an atmosphere of good-humoured unity which prevails for the rest of the night, "Same old boring bastards," jibes Hook after one particularly emotive response to an intro.

Hook continues to live out what appears to be a latent Suzi Quatro fantasy on stage, lodging the bass firmly between his legs from the outset and the whole band now appear to have dispensed with the self-doubt which marred live performances during the early days of their renaissance. The majority of the material tonight is taken from "Lowlife" with a particularly stunning "Perfect Kiss", Albrecht flailing at the guitar, Hook anchoring the song at his side, the two coming on for all the world like a Rossi-Parfitt partnership. A word of thanks and they're gone, sensibly ignoring inevitable calls for an encore. The job has been done. That's it. Saturday night starts here.

But later, much later, as the short-sleeved, elated crowd dispersed into the clean streets of this formerly filthy city, a dark cloud clogged with evil and ignorance drifted a little nearer the South African mainland. Amen.

BILLY SMITH