1984 09 New Order Play At Home Review, Melody Maker

 

We perverts on TTT don't impress easily. Just ask the Kissogram girls. But hats off to New Order for their splendidly anarchic self-portrait on Channel 4's "Play At Home" series. Given their heads to make a programme about themselves, New Order wiped the floor with Big Country's earnest effort the previous week and emerged as a group with a nicely perverse sense of humour and magnificently wicked edge, in complete contrast to their popular image.

In Tact, it was a programme that told you more about the workings of Factory Records, and specifically fuehrer Tony Wilson, than it did about New Order. Gillian Order interviewed a highly immodest Wilson in his bath and was even persuaded to join him there, ruining her frock in the process (Tony had taken the precaution of removing his frock in advance).

"Being interviewed in a bath with a glass of champagne is politics." said Wilson, and we certainly wouldn't like to attend a board meeting with a loony like him. Wilson spent most of his time slagging off musicians, and New Order spent most of their time slagging off Wilson. Rob Gretton turned up to put the boot in at every available opportunity and Peter Hook spent the whole programme riding around on a motorcycle.

Much of the action centred on Saturday night drinkiepoos at the Hacienda where Wilson - happily no longer in the bath now and fully clothed - argued with his boys about his availability.

"When you want me I'm not there, when you need me I'll be there,” he said with startling profundity.

"The man knows too many quotes from too many tedious tomes for his own good," was one pertinent comment about Wilson, and the apt conclusion of one punkette was that "they've all got bad haircuts, that's the trouble with Factory".

The credits came up announcing: "As Trotsky once said .. end of part one .."

And while the TTT team freely admits to being slightly squiffy while we watched it, we reckon it was one of the most entertaining rock TV programmes ever screened...