Cuttings

ELECTRONIC: Get The Message (Factory) Simple . If it was up to me, this would've been Single Of The Week by a mile, but this page belongs to those costermongers off Bread so we must let it lie. However, take it from me, this is draught genius. The two most important members of the '80s two most important groups making great (metaphorical) love together. 'Get The Message' is the record I gave up my job in insurance to one day review. Not as Bakerlite as 'Getting Away With It', this is an altogether more seductive pop single,   with acoustic wavyness and an award-winning flibbertygibbet drum machine fill. New Order can now split up. K: How come every song sounds like The Beatles today? R: I wouldn't say it was a classic.  But you must admit, Bernie Sumner's got a lovely singing voice. K: Oh, it's a fella is it? R: A good try. You'd have trouble getting it out of your head.

ELECTRONICALLY TESTED FRONTSTAGE / BACKSTAGE REPORTS FROM CLUBS AND CONCERTS AROUND THE WORLD. THIS MONTH: LOS ANGELES. WHERE ELECTRONIC PLAY THEIR FIRST-EVER GIG — WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE PET SHOP BOYS. IS THIS THE RETURN - ARRGH! - OF THE 'SUPERGROUP' ? REPORT: DANNY KELLY. PICTURES: KEVIN CUMMINS SITUATED SOMEWHERE BETWEEN HOLLYWOOD AND DISNEY World (and related to both!), the Dodgers Stadium - Los Angeles’ shrine to baseball - is literally fantastic. Part spaceship, part cathedral, its 60,000 scats are housed in brilliantly floodlit stands that tower endlessly into tile evening sky. Tonight those seats arc packed with an excited, predominantly female throng awaiting the arrival of Depeche Mode, the biggest British band, bar none, in these parts just now. But before that they'll see something that'll one day seem rather more important: the live debut of Electronic... Brainchild and plaything of New Order’s Barney Sumner and genius about town John

JOGGERS PLAY POP • Any band that hangs out with George Michael, forsakes drugs for jogging and spends five years on that difficult second album must be completely arse, right? Wrong. Not when they're ELECTRONIC, aka Johnny ‘Smiths’ Marr and Bernard ‘New Order' Sumner. TED KESSLER finds out what took them so long. Getting away with it KEVIN CUMMINS Well, you know what happens when you go on the piss with the Pet Shop Boys. You start off in the studio with a couple of kir royales and every intention of getting back to the hotel in time for cooked room service. But by the time you’ve finished playing Neil the album you’ve jettisoned the kir and started swigging the champagne straight from the bottle. So when Neil announces he’s off to Heaven, it seems churlish not to join him. Heaven, it seems, is stiil a good place. Unlike most London dubs it’s not exclusively populated by either snotty-nosed ravers or fashion nazis, and tonight it really feels like these are the good times

GETTING L.A. WITH IT The first supergroup of the '90s or the latest in a long line of rich men’s follies? Despite the follicle-jangllng brilliance of their debut single 'Getting Away With It' the jury was still out on ELECTRONIC - thanks largely to a dearth of live ‘put up or shut up’ shows. That is until last week, when Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr's Mane miracle took to the stage at LA's Dodgers Stadium - with THE PET SHOP BOYS! - as support to Basildon's finest DEPECHE MODE. DANNY KELLY was there-rubbing shoulders with Brit rock's homesick exiles THE CULT, 'hard working' ( sic ) HAPPY MONDAYS and 'im Out Of Simply Red - to declare Electronic rock-solid state of the art. Tattooed love boys: KEVIN CUMMINS Sunset Strip West Hollywood, is about eight miles from NWA's Compton. And a million light years away. This is the cash money part of town and, within 200 yards of one another, Sunset boasts three hotels simply oozing rock 'o'

ELECTRONIC KICK HAC! ELECTRONIC MANCHESTER HACIENDA “WE FOUGHT the law and we won” smirks Barney and the Hacienda heaves a sigh of relief which erupts into an almighty cheer. Tonight is a time for uneasy celebration, the free tickets are stamped with the word ‘Thanksgiving’, there’s glasses of champagne on the door and once more the floor is ram-jammed with party people. After months of biting their nails, the Hacienda can smile again and relax. On certain occasions Manchester feels like it has to be Madchester, and there is a mass gathering of the clan. Gone are the days when pop stars should be heard but not seen and tonight you can’t move more than three people without tripping over an Inspiral. The music mafia are out in force, from old partisans to fresh young blood, celebrating the Hacienda's resurrection. The Hacienda, once an empty abattoir that no one knew what to do with and more recently host to a scary phenomenon called ‘dance music', has been snatched from the jaw

Johnny Marr Bernard Sumner Brothers of invention Separately, they were the architects of some of the greatest British music ever made. Together, they’re trying to do a bit more than that. Ladeez and gennelmun, cleaned-up, wised-up and trussed-up in some nice Safeways pants, the supersonic duophonlc Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner. On the first faintly warm evening of the summer a spacious, snow-white, chauffeur-driven Mercedes sweeps through the streets of central London. Inside are Electronic, Manchester's coolest dance duo, en route to Holland Park's upmarket celebrity diner, Daphne’s. Lounging in the back seat, Johnny Marr, former Smiths guitarist and one half of the band, recalls how, the last time he ate in Daphne's, he sat next to Al Pacino. Marr recounts how he eventually persuaded an anxious Pacino to give him his autograph out in the street. Sitting in the front seat, meanwhile, sometime New Order singer Bernard Sumner reckons his current musical partner left