New Order #8 1985 11 08 Pavilion Hemel Hempstead

New Order's only concert in Hertfordshire, and they didn't scrimp on the ticket design...

I did try and get tickets for the Sheffield Octagon gig the night after ULU, but had insufficient time to send a cheque and receive them back in time, and they were unable to reserve either. So much easier nowadays (assuming you can get through to the "buy" section of ticket selling sites).

The venue wasn't the easiest to find (again, not so much of an issue nowadays), and apparently is another that's no more (following Tiffany's, Tower Ballroom and the Mayfair).

The Beloved were the support (although I only found this out later) and it appears I enjoyed them.

New Order were on for just under an hour, starting with Age of Consent. At its end Hooky said he couldn't hear something as their "mouth was full of shit". Maybe he was channeling this into the "long farewell to your soul" scream in Dreams Never End.

On one of its last live outings (to date) an excellent version of Procession was introduced by Barney as "an old song".

An even rarer appearance of Thieves Like Us (it surprised me too how infrequently it's been played live) included some lovely extra guitar in the opening section. We All Stand sounded much better than the album version - sparse drumming and nice guitar work.

Throughout the show, Barney consumed an entire bottle of Pernod, which lead, in Your Silent Face, to quite visible spittle trailing from the melodica. Barney was cracking up quite a lot through the song too, which features a repeat of the "Caught me at a bad time" verse.

Broken Promise at this stage had quite a different chorus ("I'm so glad I found you"), and this particular show involved quite a lot of "twats" in the first verse. Confusion was followed by Face Up, with the extra guitar flourishes at the beginning that don't feature on the recorded version. Mind you, this was only a prelude to the couplet of "You kept your pussy warm for me, even while watching TV/I'd rather watch BBC2, than shag the fucking arse off you".

Sunrise was excellent as always, as too was The Perfect Kiss, the last song of the set.

After a lot of noise, they grumpily ("Thank you very much motherfuckers") came back for Bizarre Love Triangle (which also features on the soundcheck on the bootleg). It was introduced as such by Barney, who also said it had no lyrics. This was its live debut and although the keyboards in the final version stayed quite true to the original, there was a lot more guitar. At its end Barney did say it would be a really good song once finished (he was right of course), then introduced Weirdo by saying that it, by contrast, did have lyrics - "shit lyrics, but it has got lyrics to it". He also admonished a member of the crowd ("Stop touching my fucking mic stand you little cunt") before noting that he does "notice the world around me". "Twat" got another mention in this as well ("We're as happy as a fucking twat, we're as happy as an old man's hat").

Another very good concert.

Photos by Gary Crawford (Twitter: @GaryCrawf1)

The bootleg tape cover:

Set and song timings
1. Age Of Consent	5:10
2. Dreams Never End	2:58
3. Procession	3:48
4. Thieves Like Us	3:40
5. We All Stand	4:45
6. Your Silent Face	6:03
7. Broken Promise	3:44
8. Confusion	5:21
9. Face Up	5:08
10. Sunrise	5:44
11. The Perfect Kiss	9:19
12. Bizarre Love Triangle	5:07
13. Weirdo	4:46