New Order NEC March 1989 NME Review

NECTIQUE

NEW ORDER
HAPPY MONDAYS 

BIRMINGHAM NEC

THE CAFETERIA lady at the NEC takes a well-earned five minutes and joins me for a fag. “My son’s mad about Sonic Youth. Are this lot anything like Sonic Youth?” Oh no, said I. Much, much, more special.

How come? Because New Order have hits, get played on Grandstand, take billboard space in your town and generally play silly buggers with the self-adhesive labels of modern pop. Despite claims to the contrary, they really are The Smiths you can dance to.

They’re the trump card in every argument you’ll ever have with fans of The Godfathers and Michael Jackson. Living proof that truth and beauty need not be pimply and useless, snivelling in its bedroom with the Violent Femmes. Sometimes it must walk hand in hand with Timmy Mallet.

Faced with the cavernous expanse of the NEC, Happy Mondays huddle together protectively in the corner. Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that everyone knows how criminally trendy they are, the vast throng sip their collective Lilt (no bar! NO BASTARD BAR!) and tap their feet politely.

As usual Mondays were sulphurously great. Still, they’re better suited to the informality of a cheap and cheerful drinking club. Gigs like this are like exhibitions; you’re forced to sit/stand there being attentive and respectful. And that’s the last thing these scallies (oops!) need.

But it’s still fun with a capital ‘E’. ‘Mad Cyril’ is its usual bonkers self. Psycho-Disco smeared with greasy guitars. 'Wrote For Luck’ is as fatally infectious as ever. A listing plague ship with Donna Summer at the helm.

New Order saunter casually to their positions to be met with a full-throated salvo of unalloyed love, I feel genuinely gratified. It’s good to know that mass devotional fervour is not solely the province of Luther Vandross and some twerps in spandex keks. The arena is stuffed with frothing young things.. and for once, they have backed the right horse. Someone waves an inflatable banana over the bobbing heads of the crowd. You shall go to the ball!

Here then, are a group at the peak of their career. They have ridden the '80s like a breaker and left the shore littered with someofthemost awesome pop singles any of us will ever hear.

Visually they are a game of two halves. Stephen and Gillian remain largely industrious and diligent behind hideously complex machinery. Barney and Hookey are the groovers. The former shows off his new found dancing prowess while the latter prowls the stage in the now-legendary rock god spoof (It is a spoof, isn’t it?).

For hors d’oeuvres we are offered a choice selection from ‘Technique’. And very tasty it was to, but not quite Manna from heaven. Part of the problem is that New Order’s greatness often lies in their glacial distance. Their records are gleaming high-tech mosaics, which makes them well nigh impossible to realise acceptably in the flesh. Touched by the hand of god but untouched by human hand. This is precisely why world musos hate them... and why some of us know better.

But live there is the temptation to be that dumbest of things, the rock band. And the intoxicating sense of space is, obscured by unnecessary detail. ‘All The Way’, the crowning glory of ‘Technique’, is reduced to an ungainly bar-band romp. And then a brilliant thing happened.

‘True Faith’ extinguishes all smouldering doubts within 10 seconds, and from here on in New Order justify the torrent of superlatives that people like me have poured on them for a decade. ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ is sublime. The archetypal New Order single, a symphony you can dance to. ‘Ceremony’ is greeted with religious reverence, particularly the clanging riff, which has superceded ‘Smoke On The Water’ as the first thing all young bohemian males pick out on their hire-purchase
guitars. ‘Temptation’ is dragged gorgeously out beyond all reasonable length and no-one minds a bit. It was too late by then. We were all hopelessly smitten ... again.

Outside in the coach park an enterprising soul tries to flog me his T-shirt. ‘Have they learned to play yet?' he inquires.

Of course they haven’t. It’s all done with mirrors. That’s why we love them.

Stuart Maconie