New Order #5 1985 04 10 The Mayfair Swansea

UPDATED

New Order have played a fourth time in Wales, at Portmeirion.

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The logical step after travelling from South Essex to Birmingham would be to then travel on from there to Swansea the next day.

So I obviously didn't do that. I got back from Birmingham about 5.30, went to bed, and was up again at 11.30 to head to London and from there to South Wales, arriving in Swansea about 6pm.

The ticket was torn in half at the venue, but I'd taken a photocopy of it first.

None of my mates were able to come to this gig, so this was one on my own, which also meant wandering fairly aimlessly around. The Mayfair is another venue that, as far as I can see, is no longer around. I got chatting to someone in the queue outside, who had got autographs from the band earlier, and had also taken these pictures:

I seem to recall I was sat at the front of a balcony looking out to the stage, so had a pretty decent view. We were treated to a DJ set heavy on Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw before The Stockholm Monsters came on. I seemed to like them more than the previous night.

New Order themselves didn't come on until about 10.45, but the later the better was my view (seeing as I would be waiting for the boat train from Fishguard until something like 3.30am).

Two melodica based songs started the set. Some lovely guitar additions on Your Silent Face, and Barney starting the "When I walked through the door" line too early on Love Vigilantes.

Temptation was followed by a complaint from Barney ("Who made this fucking mic stand?"), and The Perfect Kiss featured a lot more cowbell than usual. 

Serviceable renditions of This Time of Night and Sub-Culture were followed by a rarity - a live performance of Let's Go. According to New Order Online, it's not been played at all since 1987 and less than 20 times in total. 

Barney reassured the crowd that they would then play a song they knew next, to make them more comfortable, before going on to say they'd never played in Swansea before, but had in Cardiff (not well received due to the rivalry between the two). However, that Cardiff appearance does not appear to have been as New Order, it was actually Joy Division (Sofia Gardens, 3 November 1979). So these two appearances, plus Deeside Leisure Centre for the Futurama festival in 1982, seem to be the only occasions on which either band played in Wales.

Bizarrely, Barney went on to apologise for the dirt on his jeans as he'd only packed one pair of pants, before launching into a failed start to Ceremony, then nearly two minutes of improvisation, before normal service was resumed. 

Barney blamed the mix up due to the guitar being a bastard to play, but "then again I can't play anything on anything else". He took the opportunity to remind the crowd they'd never played in Swansea before, but "you've got to try everything once" as an introduction to Face Up. A fine guitar outro ended quite abruptly, and after blaming the tuning of his guitar on Andy, Sunrise followed, concluding the main set.

We were treated to more of Mick the DJ, who made enough of an impression to warrant a mention from by Barney when coming back on for the encores of Age of Consent and Blue Monday (with added cowbells! Which in some places were tapping out the rhythm from Village People's In The Navy!)

Trying to use up some time before my train, I waited outside the stage doors for a while and spoke to (as I wrote at the time) "Andy from Life" (no idea what about). There was then a long wait before the station doors opened and then another wait before the train pulled in. It was already busy, and even more so when a whole bunch of New Order fans jumped on, so much so that it was shoulder to shoulder standing room to Cardiff.

I got home exhausted, having enjoyed my first New Order "double header".

Set and song timings
1 Your Silent Face	6:07
2 Love Vigilantes	4:59
3 Temptation	7:37
4 The Perfect Kiss	9:21
5 This Time of Night	4:44
6 Sub-Culture	4:40
7 Let's Go	4:32
8 Ceremony	6:37
9 Face Up	5:27
10 Sunrise	5:16
11 Age of Consent	5:08
12 Blue Monday	7:42