New Order San Francisco

In case anybody missed it. They played a one off cover of Scott McKenzie's San Francisco (Be sure to wear flowers in your hair) to end the San Francisco show. It looks like the put some effort into it, and it sounded great.

Is it bad to say I enjoyed this more then Plastic and Singularity? I think i'm more of a guitar NO fan then a electronic fan.

Not a bad cover. I always find it a little weird when New Order play tunes from before New Wave (Vietnam was one, pre-Hooky departure; Electronic did a Steve Winwood tune too), I found almost all that 60s music so suffocating myself (being American, maybe it was less so in the UK?), one of the things I loved about the whole new music scene was how it ignored all that stuff.

It was amusing and a genuine surprise.

I was very perplexed before the vocal started as to what the hell they were playing. It made me recall my first NO gig in 1987 when they opened with TbtHoG. It hadn't been released at that point and in those pre-internet days, info was thin on the ground. I spent weeks before the show wonderering what the concert would kick off with and they played something I didn't know existed!

I think Barney was wanting to play the song for years. During the 2005 San Fran show he busted into a chorus of the song in the middle of the show. So I think this was a long time coming.

It's a commonplace of music that NO never did the same set twice - unfortunately for the fans (and fortunately for the critics) this went out the proverbial window in 1988. The way they're surprising the fans (this, plus the two newbies) is, in the words of Oscar Wilde, awesome. Maybe they're making a special effort to show they're still cool even without a certain low-strung bass hero?
In a similar vein... NO always did shoddy, shonky, shitty TOTP appearances that did more harm than good. Again, not borne out historically. Blue Monday sure but...
TLU sounds good and even the less-than-outgoing Gillian said she was proud they managed to knock out such a complex piece live.
True Faith and the much-maligned Technique performances are up to scratch. In fact, Round 'n' Round was what got me into 'em in the first place!
After that they were a finely-honed live outfit and there was precious little difference between the TOTP versions and the official ones. In fact that HTS take looks suspiciously mimed to me - love the way Hooky's bass starts booming before he's even grabbed it at 3.00 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNN5DdD0pA .

Beautifull Man

And were changing our ways, wearing flowers in our hair

Not at all, I enjoyed it more too.

Maybe NO should become a 60's cover band???

Also, is it me or does Sumner look a bit thinner? Not that it matters or anything