Sep 092012
OK, maybe not a dedication but an observation from our fellow townsman, hrrundivbakshi, who is in the UK. He texted me last night with this request:
I’m in the UK at an otherwise totally irritating massive rock festival. Despite my dire immediate artistic surroundings, I have to say my eyes have been opened by one band in particular. Since the internet is basically unavailable on the Isle of Wight, please post this two-sentence concert review:
Holy shit — New Order is amazing. Who knew?
Favor done, my friend.
My first reaction: “Duh.”
My second reaction: I’m more interested in the ‘totally irritating’ bands that he’s seen. Maybe it’s schadenfreude, but after having a less-than-exceptional experience last weekend hearing “The Men,” I want to dish.
New Order have a replacement bass player now, right?
HVB’s review is a revelation to me. I saw New Order in 1987 or so and walked out after a half dozen song. Sumner (?) and Hook were like a karaoke act, with Stephen Morris doing nothing on drums except occasionally tapping his hi-hats and hitting his snare in sync with a drum machine. Most of the time, however, he was getting up from the drums to stand behind the woman on keyboards and literally place her hands on the keys. Terrible, terrible, terrible performance! It wasn’t like I stumbled into that show. On record they had plenty of songs I liked and still enjoy hearing. Good to hear they’ve finally remembered how to play live.
They’ve always been notoriously patchy live, I’ve only seen them once and really enjoyed them, but consider it more by luck than judgement. I did once have a ticket to see Joy Division but couldn’t get there because of a train strike, which is something that will probably irk me until the day I die.
The festival may be totally irritating, but at least it has had the best weekend of weather in living memory (well, this year anyway…) The rain has been fairly incessant since about April or May, and some festivals have been cancelled due to flooding. I’d heard the weather while we were on holiday described as “mixed”, but found out yesterday that the middle of Northampton where I live flooded while we were away.
I’m dying to find out what’s so irritating about it, the line-up looks quite interesting, and as good as any recent Glastonbury, I’m tempted to go myself next year
Were The Men crappy live? That sucks if they were. Aren’t you in San Francisco? The Bottom of the Hill has Lydia Loveless coming in October and a friend of mine is opening up for her with his band, The Devil’s Own. Take the next day off work and get bombed. I think it looks like a fun, rowdy night.
2000 Man, I don’t know whether we caught The Men on a bad night or whether they aren’t so great live. All I know if that Trigmogigmo, Hammertime, Mr. Royale and I all looked at each other in amazement and said, “At least we only paid twelve bucks to see this.” Horrible, muddy sound and only 25 minutes. I don’t know whether they were pissy so shut us down or whether they had they had to finish up by midnight (then why go on so late?????). I have both of their albums and only recognized two songs, and that was with some straining.
Thanks for the heads up about The Devil’s Own. I’ll check them out.
As a fan I was excited to hear HVB’s report and I have been scanning the reviews…it’s interesting how the same performance can elicit such varied and differing opinions…guess you’re either a true believer or not…
“…Opinions were also mixed about New Order’s Saturday headline show (8/10). Although they have the back-catalogue and credibility to deserve the billing, there were those who walked early after realizing that they had just never been quite as into the band as they thought they were at the time…”
http://www.virtualfestivals.com/latest/news/13393
http://www.nme.com/news/new-order/65996
Tom Chapman is their new bassist.
I went into The Men’s show “cold”, but was really not impressed. Hard to tell how much to attribute to the mix/sound and how much to the musicianship/style. They may as well have not had a mic, so low and unintelligible was the vocal in the mix. Their wall of sound was less interesting than the opening act (Destruction Unit) because it had nothing distinct in it. And only 5 songs!
The opener was similarly muddy but at least had an observable riff or two to start a song. Their lineup almost seemed comical — drummer, bassist, guitarist/singer/likely-songwriter core, augmented by two young hipster dudes front and center who often just produced noisy feedback by holding a guitar up by the neck while preening, or shaking it over by the amp.