Cuttings

A cold and windy Good Friday saw us head to Brighton to see New Order supported by The 15th (who I have no memory of). Alan Wise introduced the band as " four young people from Liverpool who write their own stuff - Joy Division! " This was pretty much a show of two halves. Again opening with State of The Nation (replete again with lots of whoops), then Love Vigilantes was followed by the underwhelming trio of Sub-culture (Hooky commenting on someone's disgusting shoes), Shellshock and Confusion .  Things then changed, starting with a rare outing for Let's Go . For this show, 5 8 6 was the song to gain additional cowbell accompaniment. Things went wrong with the sequencer at the start of Temptation , but this allowed some improvisation with Hooky starting the song, then Stephen joining in before Bernard, resulting in a very good version. Age of Consent and Sunrise were both good versions, before finishing with The Perfect Kiss , featuring the lyric " My frie

We left Bradford and spent some time in Liverpool before making our way to Birchwood for the Spectrum Arena. Continuing on an earlier theme, it appears this has also now disappeared . This time we did arrive in time to see Life , whose set included " Tell Me ", " Better " and " Optimism ". New Order were far superior to the previous night, even though they kicked off with State of the Nation again. Then it was The Village , featuring some really nice guitar work. Broken Promise included some bizarre lyrics, and was followed by As It Is When It Was . Lyrics were a little erratic on Your Silent Face , and Confusion had an awful lot of whoops. Age of Consent also had some good guitar additions, and the start of Temptation in particular was great. Sunrise preceded Blue Monday that also included some lovely extra guitar and added cowbell at the close. Finally, Shellshock (its live debut) was introduced as being an instrumental version, but then in

Time for another double header, my third. Three of us got a lift to Bradford with a work colleague of mine who'd been to university there and at whose girlfriend's house we would be staying. We went to Italia Cafe to eat first (my colleague said "It's not Italian, but it is cheap") and it does seem to have some musical history (it's not there any more). A subsequent pub visit and a slip in the icy conditions meant that by the time we arrived at St George's Hall (which *is* still there, unlike some of the other venues where I've seen New Order) we'd already missed Life. I was at the stage for this gig, which was fairly quiet, but I don't recall much about the show itself. State of the Nation opened, which seemed to be quite common in this spate of gigs, and was followed by 586 and Broken Promise . Bizarre Love Triangle, Lonesome Tonight, Sooner Than You Think and Love Vigilantes all followed, with good solid renditions of each. Next were

As with the show the night before, this was another where an attempt to get tickets in advance (in this case by calling the Fulcrum Centre on November 28) proved fruitless, so again it was a case of chancing it on the night.   It was a chance that paid off. Three of us got in for £28 (strange amount), which as can be seen from below, was not massively above face value in £ terms.   Support was Quando Quango. They played Genius and Love Tempo at least, but I'm not sure of the rest of their set.   For New Order, State of the Nation was followed by Blue Monday , which included some nice guitar improvisation at the end.    An excellent version of The Village preceded Hooky complaining about someone touching his mic stand, before launching into Sub-culture.   After This Time of Night , Barney asked the audience to " Please be quiet I'm trying to concentrate ".   Thieves Like Us had added cowbell in the opening section, as well as Barney starting a verse to