I’ve Been Waiting To Hear Your Voice For Too Long Now

You’d expect a song called Sunrise to be a lament for the night just gone maybe or music trying to replicate the bliss of the feeling of the sun’s rays on your face first thing, possibly the walk home after a night well spent. In 1985 New Order’s Sunrise was something else, possibly the angriest and most aggressive thing they recorded. It’s a full band performance starting with moody keyboards and an immediately distinctive, upper register Peter Hook bassline and then Bernard’s scratchy, raw guitar, an angry urgent sound, harking back to their previous band but definitely bathed in the New Order’s mid- 80s light. Speed, tempo, rhythm- lots of speed and some bile too. Bernard sings at an enemy about communication failures, insults and injuries and being the subject of hatred. It’s all very specific.

‘Why did you never speak my name in front of my family
You gave a gift then you took it away’

‘Your name might be God but you don’t say that much to me’

‘We might be your black sheep
But you forgot us a long time ago’

Hooky’s bass rises and falls, the guitar lines go ever upwards, Gillian’s synths add weight and Stephen pushes everything on to its conclusion, the pile up at the end and the crash from going too fast, Sumner’s guitar finally finishing in distortion as he thrashes away at the strings.

Sunrise 

This version recorded live at The Hacienda in December 1985 shows the song’s power played live and the effect it had on their fans- and the playing of the four members together, a modern rock band when they fancied it, as well as dance pioneers.

 

Dreaming

Drew posted this song a couple of weeks ago over at Across The Kitchen Table. I loved it the first time I clicked play and have been playing almost daily ever since. I can’t hurt to re-post it here, in case anyone missed it over at Drew’s blog.

The Lucid Dream are from Carlisle and have been around for a decade releasing 3 albums, making a guitar led, psychedelic racket. The new song, SX1000, as a bit of a departure. It sounds like a 1990 acid house remix of an indie guitar band where the remixer has chucked most of the source material away and turned the acid all the way up.

How good is that? Right up my alley and the video is excellent too. It appears judging by the comments at Youtube and elsewhere that The Lucid Dream’s fanbase aren’t all happy about this change in direction. This is Bad Texan, released back in 2016, a full on guitar, northern rock song. Very good too.

586

This is a New Order rarity which a friend posted on social media recently which I had forgotten about- I don’t have a decent quality rip so there’s just the video…

In 1982 Tony Wilson asked New Order for twenty minutes of ‘pap’ to be played at the opening night of the Hacienda (May 21st 1982). Bernard and Stephen went away and got stuck into the drum machine and synths and came up with this which became known as Prime 5 8 6 (or Video 5 8 6). It is twenty minutes of pulsing rhythm and synthesizers, significant mainly because parts of it later became the version of 5 8 6 on Power, Corruption And Lies, Ultraviolence (off the same album) and Blue Monday(you don’t need me to tell you anything about Blue Monday). The band gave it to Touch Magazine who put it out in two parts on cassette in 1982 and then on cd in 1997.

In the picture, a stunning shot of Gillian Gilbert on stage in Brussels, April 1982.

Aciiieeed

I’m on an acid house tip right now. These two pictures go some way towards proving the maxim that it was a scene where the crowd were the stars. The one above of party goers at The Hacienda, indie kids losing it, is a favourite.

I had navy blue James Come t-shirt back in the day. It was really good quality, kept its shape and colour really well. It also provided opportunities for wags to point out that I had come all over my chest etc.

This picture (below) from the legendary Shoom is a cracker too- shame about the watermark, I couldn’t find a version without it. The clothes, bandannas, the look on the faces, the wide eyes…

Shoom was held in a leisure centre in Southwark, a wonky version of what Danny Rampling and others had experienced in Ibiza the previous summer. Danny Rampling has recently uploaded this two hour acid house mix. Not entirely nostalgia either, being a mix of acid house old and new. It will rock your house. It has been rocking mine.

https://www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2Fdannyrampling%2Fforever-acid-house-danny-rampling%2F&hide_cover=1&light=1

Shot Right Through With A Bolt Of Blue

While we’re doing Joy Division and New Order let’s have Frente!’s much loved cover version of NO’s Bizarre Love Triangle (from 1994). It’s good sometimes to hear familiar songs done differently- this is very sweetly sung with an acoustic guitar picking away. You could call it twee if you wanted to. I think I would.

Bizarre Love Triangle

 

The hole in the ground in the photograph was The Hacienda, Whitworth Street. What other city in the world would have allowed one of the most important parts of its cultural history to be demolished? The view at the time was ‘we are not sentimentalists, tear it down’. Now there’s a pretty nasty apartment block on the site called- yes, you guessed it- Hacienda Apartments.

Here’s the 1986 original of Bizarre Love Triangle. Epic in every way.

Chapter And Verse

I got Bernard Sumner’s autobiography (Chapter And Verse) for Christmas. I haven’t read it yet but have spent some time flicking through it. Bits of it sent me off towards the record collection and to Youtube. Which is where I found this piece of footage from thirty years ago.

January 1984 and The Tube is filmed live from the Hacienda. Onstage are The Factory All Stars who play four songs- 52nd Street’s Cool As Ice, ACR’s Shack Up and New Order’s Confusion (all three together as a medley). Then Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart (sung by Caesar from The Wake). There are way too many people on stage, several singers and a multitude of musicians (including members of The Wake, Quando Quango, ACR, 52nd Street, Bernard from New Order and Marcel King). They all seem to be having a good time and yes, it is a bit shonky but it is very good fun too.

Later on the same evening and also on The Tube a young lady called Madonna will make her first British TV appearance, miming and dancing. There is a story that Peter Hook offered her some cash to dance in the dressing room but I’m sure that’s not true.