New Order:Sublime or Ridiculous?

I'm not saying New Order aren't highly worthy or anything. Just wondering.

I've often wondered if your strategy can be practically applied, but such restraint I find to be semi-inhuman. Much credit to you if you can do it, though.

-- Alex in NYC (vassife...), February 7th, 2002.

Wow. i can't believe I broadly lambasted Movement as ridiculous. Apologies for that.

the mother of all 'portables' go!
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note: all discs are mostly chronological by themselves as best I can tell, except the last which is chronological by artist (mostly).

Joy Division 'portable' (78:11)
Digital
Disorder
Insight
New Dawn Fades
She's Lost Control
Shadowplay
Wilderness
Interzone
Transmission
Something Must Break
Dead Souls
Love Will Tear Us Apart (single a-side vers.)
Isolation
A Means to an End
Heart and Soul
Twenty Four Hours
Decades
Love Will Tear Us Apart (Peel Session vers.)
Ceremony (from Still)

(pretty straightforward and tidy, I wanted Ceremony on the end to point the way to the future).

--------------------------------
New Order 'portable' disc1 80:56

Ceremony (re-recorded vers from FAC 33T/Substance)
Temptation (5/87 from Substance)
Blue Monday (12" vers. from Substance)
Confusion (5/87 from Substance)
Thieves Like Us
Sub-culture (Robie remix from Substance)
Perfect Kiss (extended vers. from Substance)
True Faith
1963 (94 edit from Best Of)
Fine Time
Round & Round
Run
Regret

(the first disc in my 'three histories' of New Order. It's my dream Substance disc1, with the singles from Technique and "Regret" tacked on - oh! and 1963 which is not the remix, but just a slightly shorter edit of the original. Oh and I LOVE the "Sub-culture" remix).

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New Order 'portable' disc2 80:38

Everything's Gone Green
Dreams Never End
Age of Consent
Love Vigilantes
ShellShock (12" vers.)
Paradise
Weirdo
Broken Promise
State of the Nation (12" vers.)
Blue Monday 1988
All the Way
Love Less
Guilty Partner
Vanishing Point
Dream Attack
World in Motion (single mix)
World (The Price of Love)
Ruined in a Day

(covers additional singles and favorite album tracks and most of the additional tracks from 'Technique')

--------------------------------
New Order 'portable' disc3 80:51

586
Your Silent Face
Sub-culture (album vers.)
Sunrise
Elegia (album vers.)
As It Is When It Was
All Day Long
Mr. Disco
Spooky
Everyone Everywhere
Young Offender
Avalanche
Crystal (radio edit)
60 Miles an Hour
Close Range
Run Wild
Here to Stay (radio edit)

(essential odds-n-ends and my faves from 'Get Ready')

side order 'portable' New Order side projects 78:04

Electronic - Getting Away With It (extended vers.)
Electronic - Get the Message (album vers.)
Electronic - Idiot Country
Electronic - Reality
Electronic - Tighten Up
Electronic - Feel Every Beat
Electronic - Disappointed (single mix)
Electronic - Forbidden City
Electronic - For You
Electronic - One Day
Electronic - Second Nature
The Other Two - Tasty Fish (album vers.)
The Other Two - Selfish (The Single Mix)
The Other Two - Selfish (That Pop Mix)
Monaco - What Do You Want from Me?
Monaco - Happy Jack

(surprisingly strong, I find I listen to this quite a bit. This disc generously pretends that Revenge never happened! also 'Twisted Tenderness' is absent and the last Other Two album which I haven't even heard. The second Monaco album is ignored because I don't remember anything from it).
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I love these CDs probably more than any non-person thing.

I like JD and NO equally -- I can't really compare them; they fill completely different roles in my life.

portable Joy Division 1:19:27:

Warsaw
No Love Lost
The Kill
All of This For You
Digital
Sound of Music
Excersise One
Dead Souls
Disorder
Day of the Lords
Insight
Interzone
She's Lost Control
Transmission
Atrocity Exhibition
Isolation
Twenty Four Hours
Decades
These Days
Atmosphere
Love Will Tear Us Apart

portable New Order 1:18:45:

Ceremony (substance version)
Dreams Never End
Procession
Everything's Gone Green
Temptation (substance version, not 81-2ep)
Age of Consent
The Village
Blue Monday
Confusion
Love Vigilantes
Perfect Kiss (12" mix) while choosing some versions to keep short, I had to go all out here
Bizarre Love Triangle (Brotherhood version)
Subculture
Fine Time
True Faith

Spencer, as far as side projects, what about all the stuff on the Cool As Ice comps? I think that contains some of Bernards most amazing productions, clearly he was more then just a twiddling knobs on those tracks, but programming the sounds, the drums etc.

And while here, anyone have info on the Red Turns To 12"? New Order with the singer from OMD apparently?

Wow. You actually retracted that. Whew! (literally wiping brow)

Funny you should mention that one! I was moving some piles of records around the other day in my room and came across that and thought 'hey wow I didn't realize I had that one with me!' and thought I'd play it but didn't. Maybe I will tomorrow. I need to get some sleep now.

I should have joined this thread at work today. Damn.

My first portable disc listing upthread is f*cked up!

Here is the correct tracklisting:

Ceremony (re-recorded vers from FAC 33T/Substance)
Temptation (5/87 from Substance)
Blue Monday (12" vers. from Substance)
Confusion (5/87 from Substance)
Thieves Like Us
Sub-culture (Robie remix from Substance)
Perfect Kiss (extended vers. from Substance)
Bizarre Love Triangle (12" mix)
True Faith
1963 (94 edit from Best Of)
Touched by the Hand of God
Fine Time
Round & Round
Run
Regret

(same running time 80:56, still chronological)

I have to disagree with this since New Order almost never sounds cheesy to me in a these-are-old-electronics kind of way. The sounds have come out surprisingly timeless. As much as I love Joy Division (top 10 band for me), I would say that Ian Curtis heavy vocal style is perhaps the most dated sounding thing on my compilations (except for maybe "586" which sounds like a tv show theme from 1986)

... in 1988, I picked up an issue of Musician that I still have around for some reason -- I think I got it for the Pink Floyd article on the cover. Figures. Anyway, besides that, there was an informative enough article (for young me, at least) about Joy Division and New Order. New Order had released their Substance compilation the previous year, godlike assemblage that it was, and Joy Division's own Substance collection was about to come out. New Order had on the strength of merely two singles, "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "True Faith," had become one of my favorite bands, and I had taken the plunge into getting their CDs as quickly as possible in the last months of my high school existence. None of them had lyrics printed in their sleeves, as it happens, and I found out why in the article. Near the end, Bernard Sumner said something that turned out to be rather important:

"If you want to print your lyrics, that must mean you feel you have a message that's very important....To us, that sets the lyrics apart from the music and makes them more important than they really are. I try to develop an atmosphere with lines that are conducive to the feeling or emotion of the song."

I think I was initially disappointed in this stance, especially since I really wanted to know more of what was being said in the songs. But it turned out to be the turning point, and while I can't say when for sure, some little while after I stopped explicitly caring about printed lyrics, reading along with them or any such thing. I returned to square one, in ways. I just listened, and it was not only remarkably freeing, it made sense. One doesn't have a lyric sheet when suddenly hearing a song for the first time on the radio or on TV or on computer or via a passing car or whatever.

but yeah i generally thin that the "feel" of the singing in the context of the song makes it quite easy not to worry about any infelicities in the lyrics.

However, the lyrics to songs like "Bizarre Love Triangle," "Temptation," "Thieves Like Us," and the other early classics when he was just starting to find his own voice identity mean far more to me than anything Ian ever wrote. Ian was obviously fascinated with death, but I think Barney was even more fascinated with life--love, passion, music, confusion, and all the rest--and I find that just as powerful.

Well said, Doc.

he got looooooooove technique

amen