New Order #11 1985 12 07 Fulcrum Centre Slough

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 too soon. He must have been happy enough though, as at the end he said "When I retire I'm going to move to Slough"!

 

The red bass appeared, heralding Confusion, and Hooky's annoyance with the crowd was more apparent before Weirdo (wrongly described on the bootleg cassette inlay card as Broken Promise), when he said "You've got a big mouth" and then "Alright cock face, you paid to get in". At some point in the show, and it may have been during Weirdo (I can't be certain), Hooky actually resorted to using the head of his bass as a weapon, plunging it into the crowd. Strangely, it didn't get seem to result in a riot.... Maybe because at the song's end he commented "That's not a very nice thing to say"!

 

Ceremony and Temptation were both excellent, and the encore, according to Barney was "just to prove we love you all". It kicked off with an excellent version of She's Lost Control. I believe this was the first time this had been played by New Order.

 

Continuing on Barney's good mood (maybe not so much Hooky's), he said after She's Lost Control that "I hope you're enjoying yourselves as much as we are, as for once in our lives we are enjoying ourselves". This lead to a great rendition of The Perfect Kiss, with some really nice guitar vibrato.

 

Only two songs (Weirdo and The Perfect Kiss) were in common on the consecutive nights of London and Slough, and yet both shows were extremely good in their own right.

 

Set and song timings
1 State Of The Nation	6:23
2 Blue Monday	7:40
3 The Village	4:46
4 Sub-culture	4:41
5 This Time Of Night	4:56
6 Thieves Like Us	6:18
7 Confusion	5:02
8 Weirdo	5:02
9 Ceremony	4:09
10 Temptation	7:49
11 She's Lost Control	3:54
12 The Perfect Kiss	9:29