New Order #3 1985 01 27 Tiffanys Leeds

Tiffany's, no longer around, was at the end of the Merrion Shopping Centre in Leeds city centre. Not a particularly auspicious location, but was the venue for one of my favourite New Order gigs that was also a massive step up from my previous show in Margate.

It was a bitterly cold night, with a fair bit of snow around too. Not so good for the 3½ mile walk back to Armley afterwards.

In retrospect, I see that Happy Mondays were the support, though I didn't realise that at the time and it seems I wasn't too impressed by them either (".. a bit derivative").

There's a video of the show, although the one I found on YouTube is longer than the copy I have (some of the comments say similar). The tape bootleg is of very good quality, which probably adds to being able to listen back to it compared to the afore-mentioned Margate.

By now, the songs that had been in experimental stages at earlier shows were now fully formed, but of course the names were still a bit of a mystery, it still being a few months until Low Life would be released. So I wrote down that the first song was "I've got a cock like.." (with different lyrics) and later in the set referenced "Know What I Mean", "Without You" and "Cannot Bear Thought".

In actual fact, when they came on around 10.15 they opened with a cracking rendition of The Perfect Kiss, complete with extra keyboard noodling at the beginning. The frogs were in full chorus and the cowbell made its customary appearance.

Love Vigilantes (introduced as being in a slightly different vein to the previous song) and Sunrise were both new to me, although Sooner Than You Think (even though I wasn't sure of its name) was familiar from Rock Around the Clock. 

Lonesome Tonight was a more familiar song, although there were some variants in lyrics in place, and a strange part where the bass seemed to slow down. From there it was straight into two more songs that would feature on Low Life. In fact the only song from that album not to appear was Elegia (as it's my favourite album, maybe this is why I like this gig so much).

Before Subculture Barney announced it was Gillian's birthday, leading to a chorus of Happy Birthday. He added it was Steve's birthday the next day. Funnily enough, on the bootleg of the Michael Sobell Centre show the following night (another great gig), I'm pretty sure he again announced Gillian's birthday!

Barney responded mockingly to the crowd calls after Subculture, saying he was fucking sick of Temptation and "we'll play what we fucking want", even though it followed 5-8-6 in any case. In the instrumental break he said he was "going to do a bit of dancing at this point, but I'll save it for Temptation".

When it did come, Temptation suffered from some (I assume) programming glitches initially, but Barney was kind enough to excuse Gillian as it was her birthday. 

The set proper ended with Face Up, and after about ten minutes there was an encore of Blue Monday and Age of Consent. Barney claimed they were made to come back at Gillian's behest as the crowd hadn't sung Happy Birthday to her (and they didn't really even at that point), and that there would be a wait for Blue Monday as "our roadie there Andy doesn't know how to load the sequencer".

Referring to getting two encores rather than one, Barney said this was due to Gillian's birthday that he may have mentioned before....

Set and song timings
The Perfect Kiss	8:53
Love Vigilantes	4:26
Sunrise	4:53
Sooner than You Think	5:00
Lonesome Tonight	5:15
This Time of Night	5:05
Subculture	4:45
5-8-6	5:15
Temptation	8:10
Face Up	5:59
Blue Monday	7:47
Age of Consent	5:22

===================================================================

Footnotes

Only one other gig attended in the period since Margate, and that was Aswad at the Pink Toothbrush. Stood near one of the huge bass stacks I felt something on my arm to see dust descending from the ceiling, no doubt prompted by the extremely loud bass....

Wednesday 3rd October 1984

1. Love Fire 
2. Not Guilty 
3. Rainbow Culture 
4. Ina Your Rights 
5. Gave You My Love 
6. Tuff We Tuff 
7. Forward to Africa 
8. Chasing for the Breeze 
9. Roots Rockin' 
10. Candles 
11. Rockers Medley 
12. Warrior Charge 
13. 54-46 Was My Number 
14. Drum and Bass Line