Originally Posted by: Mr_D1sco A couple of things for you though CTB, notwithstanding the implosion of Freebass, you can't really claim BL playing the SECC and the MEN Arena as a symbol of their own status - they were just the support act for the Pet Shop Boys.
I'd dearly love Hook to write some more new material - his band are great, write with them! - but if he is happy in what he is doing at the moment then I say just leave him be... Plenty of the Hook-bashers on here (and there are many) would simply judge any of his new material before they even listened to it anyway, if they even would listen to it in the first place.
Plenty of people love his album shows & he gets around the world just like N.O - every time I see a Light announcement their tours get bigger and bigger. Good luck to him!
Fair point, I accept that. They also didn't play at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut either, but Freebass did. But...
I wouldn't call myself a Hook-basher, I did - and still do - admire his unique musical contribution and freely acknowledge it as an important ingredient of the NO sound. I just called out bullshit when I saw it, and backed it up with evidence that (mostly) refutes unsubstantiated claims from him or his acolyte/s (or him pretending to be an acolyte, possibly). In a way Hooky himself is the world's worst Hook-basher - every time he mouths off about his former bandmates in the press, he's doing himself and his fans (past and present) far more a disservice than any anonymous keyboard warrior could achieve.
I'd be happy to 'leave him be' were not for his endless bitterness and demonstrably inaccurate comments about his former bandmates. As a NO fan, I find it unedifying and disappointing to see this from someone I had once held in high regard, and rather than sycophantically accept and defend his position purely on the basis that he once contributed to the iconic 'classic' sound of New Order, I thought it worth pointing out a few things that seem to otherwise go unchallenged. After all, if he is about to launch a book of memoirs about his time in New Order, so you'd reasonably expect that he would value the power of unambiguous truth. If his new book is as flexible with the truth as some of his past comments in the press might suggest, his reputation is likely to take a further bashing in coming months - again, this would be at his own hand.
Plenty of people do love his shows with The Light, agreed... but that's not the point. The point is, they aren't shows with new - or even old - original Peter Hook music that is independent of NO or JD. NO and JD are popular - that's why he tours those shows. The rest of New Order tour to promote new material, mixing it live with reworked versions of older, well known stuff. Hook has no new material, for whatever reason he's chosen to not take the risk of recording and touring his own stuff. That anyone could argue that it's New Order and not Hooky that are 'doing for the money' is a bit delusional, frankly.
Let me know how big the crowds are when he does a show performing One True Passion in it's entirety.