New Order #1 1984 05 14 Royal Festival Hall

My first New Order gig, and only my third gig ever, was the Music for Miners Benefit on Monday 14 May 1984 at the Royal Festival Hall.

In those pre internet times, hearing of gigs was in the music press - I saw the ad in the NME only a few days before on May 3rd, and had to ring the box office to see if tickets were available by post. They duly arrived on the 9th (yes, I kept a diary in those days).

Tickets were a princely sum of £5, which according to https://inflation.iamkate.com/ equates to only just over £17 now. Pretty good value!

Although no official New Order merchandise was available at the RFH (times change...), I did manage to get a copy of Rorschach Testing there. I was also given a Music for Miners badge, which I still have (but had all but forgotten).

First up were Life. I saw them supporting New Order subsequently to this as well, and seeing as their entire Factory output consisted of fewer than half a dozen songs, I wonder whether tapes exist of any of the other songs played live. Rita (whose name I discovered from this interview) had a good voice and stage presence. Obviously we know what Andy is doing now!

Keith Allen was next. Some six years ahead of World in Motion! John Cooper Clarke (amongst others) gave us "I Married A Monster From Outer Space", "Twat", "Evidently Chickentown" and "Clint McCrocodile". He was followed by someone (possibly Allen again) in his pants complaining that pit closures would affect his homosexual activities.

Gillian Gilbert walked on stage about 9.20, soon followed by Stephen Morris. Hooky was third, and then Barney, making a comment about us not being able to call them late.

Face Up (afterwards said by Barney to be its first playing, but that seems to be incorrect as it had been played at Bradford a couple of months previously) was the opener. The lyrics still a work in progress, although the chorus stayed through to the recorded version.

There'd already been some use of echoes on Face Up, and these continued on a great rendition of Everything's Gone Green, which then segued into an equally good Temptation. The latter featured some yelling from Hooky at the bouncers' over enthusiasm to uphold GLC fire regulations.

Confusion was dedicated by Barney to all the "fat bastards in the audience", and the final line of Your Silent Face was altered to "So why don't you fuck off you bastards".

Leave Me Alone (which I've only seen twice since) was followed by Barney asking "why don't you all stand up? Is it only photographers that can stand up?" This lead to a massive surge to the front for Hurt.

Thieves Like Us was introduced by Barney as being a song about hate, and Hooky's introduction of Age of Consent (something about coals to Newcastle) was just bizarre. Barney obviously happy about his playing in the latter as he commented "Who said we were shit?" at its end.

The other song to make its live debut was The Perfect Kiss, although at this point it was called "I've got a cock like the M1". This was even more of a work in progress than Face Up (as the title would suggest), and no frogs at this point.

That ended the main set. Before the encore we were told by Hooky that the encore was costing them £400 - "a bit more than a fiver". Some initial drumbeats suggested the next song, but when the bass kicked in realisation dawned that they were playing Decades, which as far as I can see was its first live outing by them. Finally, Blue Monday featured a pretty noisy burp from Barney. 

Set and song timings
Face Up	8:04
Everything's Gone Green	4:35
Temptation	9:01
Confusion	6:13
Your Silent Face	7:16
Leave Me Alone	5:05
Hurt	6:58
Thieves Like Us	6:48
Age of Consent	5:54
The Perfect Kiss	9:06
Decades	7:38
Blue Monday	8:14

By coincidence, earlier this year, reading a review in When Saturday Comes of Pat Nevin's book The Accidental Footballer, I noticed reference to him forcing an early substitution so he could watch New Order on the South Bank....

More detail was to be found in this interview with Nevin, and a Chelsea FC Wiki does indeed show that evening Chelsea played Brentford that night in a high scoring friendly, with Nevin being substituted, so it all looks very plausible!

I didn't take a camera to the gig, but the pictures below were all posted on the @JDNOPICS Twitter account, credited to Peter Petrou

Melody Maker reviewed the concert...

In the image-conscious playground of pop, turning radical is as easy as quiff-combing, lip-pouting and mike-shouting.

Though sincerity is always a possibility, it's often a half-hearted variety. Mouthing off in interviews requires no commitment to anything other than a fleeting thought, no membership dues, no clearly thought-out philosophy or ideology and most importantly (and this is the crunch) no action. If money were put where mouths blabbed, the coffers of worthy causes would be bulging like Bunters.

New Order are different.

Without hyperbolic speeches or fuss, publicity or vacant braggadocio, New Order quietly decided there was something they couldn't ignore any longer and just got on with doing something about it. Monday's concert at the Royal Festival Hall was a fund-raiser for the Miners' strike.

The silence from their contemporaries has been deafening, if hardly surprising. While CND and seals remain fashionable causes, country fights for a future or allows itself to collapse into a pool of whimpering unemployed cap-doffers goes by with nary a comment, let alone a benefit.

Of course, that was until Red Monday.

At first it looked as if this would turn into one of those punctillious, morosely executed performances New Order tend to turn in when they can’t quite be bothered to work up the enthusiasm for the donning of the mantle of greatness. Heard through an initially stolid old sound system, the letter of their truth was to be plonked on the carpet before the audience's knees, the spirit left as memory or myth.

The nature of the audience doesn't help New Order, never has. Always there’s the feeling their miserable legions are suffering from gut-ache, their pants coated with Evo-stick. When there are seats in the venue, this can cause problems

Until it happened. Clearly pissed off at the lack of serious audience action [sitting resolutely down for a dance band, can you and instructed the audience to lay down their raincoats and groove. There were immediately armies of aisle-storming hedonists everywhere, so many that the security wallahs seemed to be taken over by panic.

So what, if visually New Order resemble the piled-up mounds of left-over washing down the local launderette? Who cares if "Thieves Like Us" is self-consciously soppy and plain banal? When New Order get serious, their moments of tension are worth a million minor errors.

Obviously they feel so confident about having thrown off all the "Joy Division" tag that they feel relaxed enough to dip into their previous repertoire. The first encore was "Decades" from "Closer".

Hook complained about the encore. Having passed the 10.30 barrier they'd have to forfeit a sum to the RFH. It's great that New Order can play a benefit but such a pity they then have to moan about the cost.

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Footnotes

Gig number one was Gary Numan at the Cliffs Pavilion in Southend on Sunday 30 October 1983. Set listing was:

1. Sister Surprise
2. Warriors
3. Remind Me to Smile
4. Metal
5. This Prison Moon
6. Down in the Park
7. Films
8. She's Got Claws
9. Love Needs No Disguise
10. I Die: You Die
11. Love Is Like Clock Law
12. The Iceman Comes
13. The Rhythm of the Evening
14. This Is My House
15. I Am Render
16. War Songs
17. My Centurion
18. The Tick Tock Man
19. We Take Mystery (to Bed)
20. Cars
21. Are 'Friends' Electric?
22. Tracks
23. We Are Glass

Gig number 2 was the Madness Christmas Party at the Lyceum in London on Wednesday 21 December 1983, support from Skiff Skats (no memory at all of them), Bonsai Forest (ditto) and Ian Dury and the Music Students (notable for a rendition of "Fuck off Noddy"). Madness set list was:

1. House of Fun
2. Disappear
3. Close Escape
4. Bed and Breakfast Man
5. My Girl
6. The Sun and the Rain
7. Keep Moving
8. Blue Skinned Beast
9. Tomorrow's (Just Another Day)
10. Take It or Leave It
11. Razor Blade Alley
12. Embarrassment
13. Grey Day
14. Tomorrow's Dream
15. Shut Up
16. Night Boat to Cairo
17. Madness
18. Baggy Trousers
19. Our House
20. Madness (Is All in the Mind)
21. It Must Be Love
22. The Prince
23. One Step Beyond

This was their last set with keyboardist Mike Barson until 1992.