Cuttings

ROCKIN' ALL OVER... WOMAD Mersea Island  SEA-SPEED-samba-Sufi-shhhhh-sensational: WO! MAD! 1985 was like being plugged in to a satellite-linked cable TV with a benzedrined conductor flicking manically through the channels. The test card never appeared, the suspense was as rife as the smiles, and the movie had a happy ending. Lord have Mersea, for the latter is the island near Colchester where this copulation of musical cultures took place. The dividing line between scrambled synapses and sublime sounds is as broad as a greyhound. The day before I reached the World Of Music Arts And Dance, I was mugged by a dog in London park who stole my baked potato. I didn't notice any Afgans, but maybe they'd already been turned into waistcoats. Yet while Pete's Planetary Incense reeked, there were moments when the globe was a falafel and it tasted real good. For on a weekend when the South African Government was considering implementing emerge...

STATE OF INDEPENDENCE CONFUSION REIGNS AS NEW ORDER CORRUPT THE USA. BY MICK MIDDLES, PIX BY KEVIN CUMMINS 'You just can't believe me when I tell you what you mean to me'. (New Order, 'Confusion') "Hello shitheads." (Pete Hook addressing audience in Washington) THE WEEK the image cracked. Two days before New Order arrive in New York — and you can feel it. The anticipation this band generates is phenomenal, unrivalled. Understandable maybe, if a general lack of activity prevails in these preceding days, but quite the reverse is true. This is a big week. Just about everybody seems to be here. A dreadful 48 hours of brash and unashamed ligging is taking place in and around the New York Hilton under the false monicker of 'New Music Seminar 83.' If British record company employees turn your stomach with their proverbial "'Tastic, 'tastic, must have lunch" attitudes, then the Americans caricature this into something totally grotesque. A...

Confessions of a bigmouth.  PRIVATE DIARY OF A MIDDLE -AGED MAN On "the tremulous threshold" of 30, MORRISSEY looks back on The Smiths and the anti-climax of his solo career. In this exclusive interview with SHAUN PHILLIPS, Morrissey talks about life with his neck on the guillotine. Photos by MARY SCANLON HAVING SEEN The Messiah and his Smiths feed the 5,000 with a Mother's Pride and a tin of sardines, no doubt his disciples were a little disappointed when on his own he could only manage to turn the water into house red and not the champagne they were expecting. When Morrissey released 'Viva Hate', the first album of his solo career, in March, even the Godfather Of Gloom shared in the anticlimax. "Lyrically, it wasn't the best, I'm well aware of that," he confesses. "It was a very peculiar time for me, making that record so suddenly, so unexpectedly, and I wanted to try something different. "Because of the particular status I have, wher...

TVOD Bill Black tunes in, turns on and freaks out with New Order Maybe it's the lamentably low profile Factory's finest otherwise adopt, but it's as if New Order chose August to explode onto a slumbering music scene. First came their contribution to Channel 4's Play At Home series on a Tuesday night. Generally self-conscious and occasionally infuriating (is Tony Wilson really such a prat?), in the story of Factory Records as told to the demure Gillian sitting in the bath with a naked Wilson, Hookey at the controls of a speeding trial bike and Barney and Steve largely behind the camera, New Order successfully de-mystified themselves and the austere label they support. If further de-mystification of the band was needed then their simultaneous live appearance on Radio One's Saturday Live slot and BBC2's epic Rock Around The Clock bash spoke volumes for a band who steadfastly refuse to fall in with what the industry deems appropriate behaviour. Like tuning up? ...

LAUGHTER IN PARADISE! Paradise is Morrissey's Manchester where he's looking for a deep gutter to lie in. But as he dismantles British society and declares 'The Queen Is Dead', at least he shows an hysterical sense of humour to GLYN BROWN. Acres of smiles by PETER ANDERSON. DO YOU want to be an unhappy person? "No, but I do feel that in an absolutely perverted and unacceptable way I've benefitted, really benefitted , from being quite a dour character. I've benefitted. It's like the wheelchair celebrity syndrome. "The other thing is, I can predict, without fail , if someone is going to turn out evil and nasty. When I think a mood or a temperament is wrong, something awful happens. Although I don't know if it's the force of my willpower." Like a sixth sense? " Could I be that gifted? Could we stand it if I was that gifted?" We couldn't stand it if you weren't. "Oh! Oh, aha ha ha ha HA! No, no, the world ...

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HOOK The members of New Order are beavering away at solo projects and the gossips are thundering. John Robb meets bass brute Peter Hook to discuss tension, 'Technique' and the truth about the Hacienda bar. Photo by Richard Haughton IN THE gloomy darkness of a Bury studio, hit by a sudden power cut, New Order bass beast Peter Hook is starting to bear an uncanny resemblance to James Anderton. The similarity between the hulking, Viking brute bassist and Manchester's top God cop can be attributed to both men's bristling beards and no-bullshit philosophy. But, fortunately for us, Hook treads a far more agreeable path than the police chief. This year, the world's biggest bumbling pop outfit have built on their megabuck successes of 1983, when remixes of fusty old material were launched chart wards like primed ballistics. The reapparance of that old carthorse, ’Blue Monday', in the chart meant a happy bank manager and the consolida...