GIVE 'EM ENOUGH ROPE
Will the return of New Order be Billy Barty's revenge?
By Cole Coonce
"The TOP 'if' was uttered from one of his band members: 'If Ian had just got on that plane on Monday morning, he'd have fucked his way across America and never looked back.'"
-Tony Wilson on the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, from 24 Hour Party People
"Whenever I get this way, I just don't know what to say... Why can't we be ourselves like we were yesterday?"
-New Order
ew Wave Nostalgia! It's Back! Again! At Coachella! In the Desert! Only this time it ain't the Cure here to take your Red Bull money! So which bunch of miserable limey bastards is it this year?! Who? New Order! Alright! Who? You know: the ones in Joy Division that didnae' hang themselves!
"Well I've got a keyboard, we've just bought it. A lot of it's done for you, you know; just press the buttons."
-synthesist Gillian Gilbert (the New Order-ite who wasn't in Joy Division, but married a bloke who was), ibid.
Good ol' New Order. You know the sound: Drum machines for days, a low-slung bass boing-boinging an octave too high, fighting for melodic space with a minimalist guitar twanging an octave too low. Bored, vaguely existential lyrics buried in the disco-riffic morass. New Order: The subject to the question discerning patrons of pop music have been asking since Gillian first "just pressed the button" ... which is: "How many fingers am I holding up?" The answer, of course, is: 1. (One.)
"There are 'substances' that opened my eyes and my ears to the beautiful sound of precise, strict rhythms."
-Bernard Sumner, And God Created Manchester
It's 1983, music lovers. On the radio and in dance clubs, "Blue Monday" is in heavier rotation than its lyrical subject, Ian Curtis, whose corpus delicti once spun from a clothes rack in his kitchen, effectively rebirthing Joy Division as New Order. (Monday being the day Ian and the lads were to arrive in America for their inaugural U.S. tour, with Curtis having snuffed it the morning before.)
The scene is Billy Barty's Roller Ring in Orange County. As a mirror ball circles and wonders where all the skaters have gone, an electronica groove thump-thump-thumps through the sound system, and stoned alterno-pop star guitarist Bernard Sumner plucks a couple of notes, with his ear resting on the body of the instrument. He struggles to find a note that is actually in the same key as the pre-programmed backing track. Hooky, the ponytailed bass player, drones on open strings and frets notes at the end of the road, creating an ersatz Gregorian wail. Flustered, the guitarist hastily hands his roadie the second out-of-tune instrument and accepts one that is, in theory, supposedly dialed-in.
Bernard quits doodling a few more measures into the performance, and repeats the charade with the guy who tunes his guitars. Third time's the charm, yeah? Nope. This one is even more out of whack than its predecessors.
As the band struggles to make it through one of a handful of songs it can actually affect to completion (button or no button), the hemp-brained guitar player mutters in a stunted Mancunian accent, "If you like this, you must like fookin' Ronald Reagan."
Ouch. Careful with that pigskin, Bonzo. To tell a buncha American new waver-ravers their tolerance of the ineptitude of the great Electro-Goth hope is unappreciated is a dagger in their young black hearts. But such was the contempt and derision billowing from the stage at the Roller Ring. And so it ends: not with a bang, but with a bong. And a whimper. The band leaves, and Barney tells the rubes at Billy Barty's: "We played a short set for a short man."
Through the years, there have been sundry appearances of the act that somehow melded dour minor-key dirges into upbeat pop anthems over sizzling and pumping four-on-the-floor disco drum machine patterns. But I'll be the Pope on a rope if I can reconcile the fact that New Order was stinking up the joint so badly during President Reagan's first term, I never thought they'd make it through another night, much less grunt out dance records for another couple of decades.
And yet the gray-bearded, salt'n'pepper-ponytailed pop stars from Manchester return to SoCal to hail the dawn of summer at the dusty confines of Coachella. Indubitably, they will be showcasing material off of their new release, Waiting for the Siren's Call.
And it is a reasonable party platter, as these things go. But who knows how it will play live? Watching these guys attempt to re-create it may be as inscrutable as Dubya fucking a football. Or as much fun as having a midget kicking you in the shins - if not right between the goalposts, Gipper.Published: 04/28/2005
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