2023 European Tour

All signs are pointing to them being over their case of the "Shakes".

But a useless track makes it's tour debut...

And there

"VP" and "Decades" aired again, plus a couple of surprises. Solid set.

Have to say, I'm pretty impressed that they are mixing things up a bit.

Well done, New Order!




PS Again, every single time I decide to give a UK gig a miss, they play 5-8-6. I'll never get to experience that song live, I'm convinced of it. :-(

When these gigs were announced I made some noise here on the forum about NO doing endless gigs in enormo-domes for big ££, and I stand by the comments I made at the time.

BUT

On Wednesday a friend texted me:
"If I can get us tickets for Friday for under £30 would you go?"
Me "yeah, sure good luck!"
Him: "ok I got them for £18 each"
(He got them on Stubhub, in case you're wondering)

Well I had to go!

They weren't the best seats in the house (block 419, about half way along the side, up high), but they weren't that bad either. My first ever seated NO gig (well there was the Troxy but I stood for that!).

Thoughts on being seated at the O2? The seats are like cinema seats with cup holders for your overpriced Pepsi (£4.50 for a small one I think?) or overpriced Budweiser, £7.75 a pint (-I declined). Spirits were £12, I think. No wonder there was no queue at the bar! Oh and people could buy 'cinema' style food like hotdogs. Rock n Roll eh?
Trips to the bogs (and the bar) were super-easy though. Which was actually nice.

I can only guess that I was talking during the Tristan & Isolde intro (Setlist FM) or it didn't happen, because I just remember TBTHOG (Biff & Memphis) with the divers on screen and suddenly feeling it sink in: Oh yeah I'm at an NO gig!

The opening salvo of Crystal, AOC and Ceremony made the required impact; you could feel the crowd come alive during Ceremony.
Following up those three with Academic felt like a slight come-down. It's one of my fave MC tracks but it can't compete with the first three songs.
A surprise 586 at least upped the energy again, athough the sound/production sounded a bit messy. Was that just down to my cheap seats?
586 meant no "Shake it Up". I've never heard the latter live and TBH I didn't want to last night either! Result.

Bernard introduced Isolation as a new version (or words to that effect) and said something like: "I hope this doesn't annoy the JD purists". I thought it did sound a bit "New Ordered -up", which is ususally a good thing in life, but actually I think I prefer the way Hooky plays it.

Your Silent Face was next and ahh, what a joy. My complaint for many years with this is that the sequenced "Kraftwerk-y" sound tends to dominate over the melodic synth chords when they play it live. But last night I could hear those big chords coming through strong and clear. And it was majestic. Judging by the roar at the end of the song, the rest of the crowd seemed similarly thrilled.

Well NO giveth and NO taketh away. The next two were Be A Rebel and GIAUE. It took me a moment to recognise BAR until I thought "oh it's the one that sounds like Coldplay". Paris got WFTSC where we got Guilt. Well WFTSC is the last great song released by NO in the 'Hooky' days IMHO, so I'm jealous of Paris on this one.

Sub-Culture and BLT followed these two though, so everything was right with the world again. We did also get Vanishing Point - which Paris didn't, so now I'm feeling smug. Mind you, I felt that Bernard's vocals were too prominent on this one. Would defo like to have heard more of the overall music and a little less of Bernard's ageing voice.

Plastic was ok. Maybe sounded a bit muddy. I think they've got rid of the Denise/Dawn backing vocals on 'tape'. I certainly couldn't hear them.

Then into the home straight of TF, BM and Temptation.
I again found myself wishing for the '87 version of TF rather than the "cut n' shut" live mix of several different versions. Also watching Bernard with hands clapping above his head for most of the song was a bit weird. Can you imagine 80's Bernard standing there with his hands above his head like he was in a Queen video or something?!

Re BM, I couldn't hear the first sequenced synth sound that fades in over the machine gun drums at the start. It seemed to go from the drum intro striaght into the "chug". Could this just have been my "cheap seats" audio experience?

Temptation? Reader, it was majestic. It was long, it seemed to have an extra bit tacked on after it should have ended, but I didn't care. The rotating "disco ball" style lights inside the O2 dome worked well with the feel and lyrics of the song ("this circle that's been placed around me") .

If the gig had ended there, I'm sure everyone would have gone home happy. But no, there was more.

Decades - what a downer! Oh I love this song and loved hearing it at Ally Pally. But after a very brief walk-off before the encore, it felt like a complete change in mood. I guess I just wanted things to stay upbeat. Well Transmission kinda fixed that. And during Transmish and LWTUA I think i may have uttered "I love you Stephen Morris" out loud. His drumming was once agan top drawer here, and it's good to hear him let loose.

Well I wasn't planning on attending and then paid a bargain price. Result. Some people paid £100 for this!
Will this be my final time seeing NO? Who knows? But if it was, well it was quite good!

________________________________________________________________________


PS Confidence Man were...ok. They did 8 tracks including On And On and Holiday which I like. And a track called Instrumental Intermezzo where Janet & Whatshisname left the stage and the 'veil boys' gave us a vocal-free dance track - a good tune, but hardly live. Also Janet Planet had a Madonna-style conical bra that lit up and then chaged colours. I guess she couldn't complain if anyone stared at her tits!

Edited by user 30 September 2023 14:18:58(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Glad to hear you enjoyed it (surface and Debaser). How did ticket sales go for this one? Did the place look fulll? Any or many empty seats?

I might have got a bit carried away with my little review. But I'd like to think I'm not a big gusher on here generally...

Re: ticket sales, I looked on Ticketshafter on the morning of the gig. On the O2 plan/map thingy you could zoom in on each section to see exactly what seats were available (like when you book cinema seats online). The vast majority were greyed out with just a few spare seats dotted around the upper sections. The floor area and lower seat sections were all grey - sold out.

As for the curtained off area - I don't think those seats were ever on sale. If you look at the clip below (not mine) you can see that NO had lasers and powerful spotlights shining diagonally upwards from the stage towards the seats at the back of the venue (top level). You could see the lights making a pattern on that black curtained off area. If anyone had been sitting there, they would have been pissed off at best, or blinded at worst. I think it was an "artistic" decision to keep those upper sections (411 to 413) off-sale - for the sake of NO's lightshow.

You can also see the lights shining upwards at the top seats/curtain in the third pic of this NO tweet. (Open tweet in a new tab if you can, then click on the pics, or look at the same pics on NO's Facebook)

And in the third pic of this reply

Ah ok. Interesting.

A work colleague mentioned to me that his friend went to this and that members of New Order came round to one of the bars at the 02 post gig and chatted to fans. My work colleague has a little bit of a reputation for making up stories but i can imagine maybe Phil and Tom doing something like that but Bernard certainly not. Stephen and Gillian? Hmm not sure it's something they'd do either.