I agree. He either isn't comfortable admitting it, or perhaps even subconciously has a distaste for how candid he was with some of its lyrics.

In an unprecedented move, he actually wrote two sets of lyrics for "Vanishing Point". The "unfinished" excuse doesn't hold water.

Bernard has said in the past, maybe a couple of times, that Run just never worked very well live, they gave up on playing it.

"Technical ability"? It's New Order. There isn't a single song in their repertoire that hasn't been butchered at least once.

Every song on Technique has been performed live in the past. At the legendary 1989 'SECCstasy' gig in Glasgow, they played everything apart from "Guilty Partner". Most gigs in 1989 featured 5-7 Technique tracks. The shorter gigs on the dire 1993 tour tended to feature only 2-3, but that was perfectly acceptable when promoting a newer LP. At the four gigs in 1998,"Fine Time" and "Guilty Partner" were played twice and "Run" once.

It's their return from 2001 onwards that really sticks out. A ton of songs returned to the set (including a few too many Joy Division ones for my taste) yet NOT A SINGLE Technique track made the cut thoughout their 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006 or 2011 tours. That's a long time (and a lot of gigs) to pretend a fan favourite album doesn't exist. Could it really just be that it's too hard to play?

Finally, in 2012, "Round & Round" snuck back into the set (but not at every gig). I believe "Dream Attack", "Fine Time" and "Vanishing Point" are the only others to have been aired since and Technique-less gigs are still a common occurrance.

Edited by user 22 September 2023 11:15:36(UTC)  | Reason: typo

I missed it, but caught the Ally Pally gig two days later.

Those '98 gigs were generally great.
I know this seems weird now but, when they first started playing JD numbers regularly in those run of gigs, it felt so damn special.
Now, as Andy said above, they play too many of them (at least for my liking) and I don't think Bernard's voice really suits the JD stuff.

Saying that, certain JD songs sound pretty good, IMO. Isolation, Decades, Heart & Soul especially. Wish they'd swap out LWTUA, Atmosphere & Transmission for these tracks more often.
It'd be pretty decent to hear something like Warsaw too, or one of the other 'punk' numbers.

The only one of the '98 gigs I missed was Manchester.
I caught all the others, including their one-track appearance at Albert Square for the Commonwealth hand-over ceremony.
Not sure why I passed on Manchester 29/12/98. Probably lack of cash and it being a very close date to the Ally Pally gig.
Makes me wonder if the London gig's tickets went on sale before the Manchester ones, as it's odd that I would chose London (a pain to get to for me) over Manchester (easy-peasy for me). Unless I just thought it might be nice to spend New Year in London.

The Apollo gig was my favourite of the bunch, probably due to hearing rare-outings of songs (inc. Paradise, Touched, Confusion and the JD tracks) for the first time. Obviously, there were diminishing returns each time they played these tracks at the remaining '98 gigs, but they still sounded great.
The best bit of the Apollo gig for me was hearing In A Lonely Place as the last track. Sounded brilliant. And to be playing that at a venue that JD had graced the stage of as well.
I walked away from the gig that night in complete awe.

It's on 5 11, I believe.




Yeah, it was definitely pre-internet (at least for me and most of the country, I think).

I don't think it was advertised much. It seemed to be more 'word of mouth'.
I remember that me and David Smith (from Paradise fanzine) found out about it too late to get tickets through legitimate means. We ended up getting tickets through a tout that we were put in contact with. Cost us £50 a ticket, which seemed scandalous then.

I think DigiMike missed it too, due to not knowing about it, and he's really well connected. So if he and Paradise fanzine weren't aware of it, I reckon it must have been pretty 'under the radar'.

Anybody else manage to get a ticket for the Apollo gig? If so, did you manage to buy them through legitimate means (Virgin Records Manchester, on the door at the Apollo etc.)?

I guess it was arranged as a warm up for their Phoenix Festival headline slot the following weekend.Of course, by the time the Manchester Apollo gig had been finalised and confirmed, Phoenix Festival had been cancelled and never happened again.I did go to a couple of the Phoenix Festivals, in 1995 ,and 1996 i think.Not a great festival but it wasn't far from me, 30 miles or so, at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford Upon Avon.

So we all ended being allowed to use our Phoenix Festival tickets for the Sunday at Reading 98.To this day some people still think New Order were the headliners on that Sunday night when in fact Garbage were.Think we wandered off a couple of songs into Garbage's set.I just couldn;t be bothered with them after the euphoria of NO's set. Thing is, i was quite a fan of Garbage and Shirley Manson around that ear but i just didn't want to watch them.

Ah, yes.
The Phoenix debacle. Yeah - I had a ticket for that, but used it for Reading.

I did stop to watch Garbage as I quite liked them, although I felt the second LP (which was what they were promoting at the time, I think) was a bit of a let-down after the first one.

My abiding memory of their set was Shirley Manson apologising, at least twice, that they didn't really have any numbers that could better New Order.
She wasn't wrong, but I did think that was quite nice (but not very rock 'n' roll) of her to show such humility.