Blue Monday - 40 years old

[Come along, Min]

Dreams Never End is my favourite early song and Your Silent Face my overall at-a-push favourite.

BM will always be a banger despite being overplayed. It still catches me every so often.

There's a story about Kraftwerk turning up at the studio they made it at, trying to work out how they done it and not quite being able to get their head around NO's method.

Confusion is an utter banger, and works best alongside other electro/freestyle-pop monsters of the time like Freeez's IOU, rather than the then current indie stuff of their contemporaries.

[Jimski]

The lyrics were mainly terrible. The vocals were often terrible. And yet they made some of the very best tracks of the 80s. Remarkable really.

[treibeis]

I was a "Broken Promise" ("The more you earn, the less you learn / There's a fire in life where we will burn") and "Sooner Than You Think" ("To buy a drink that is so much more reasonable / I think I'll go there when it gets seasonable") man myself.

[Benjm]

I once looked up "seasonable" to check that it was even a real word and discovered that its only previous documented use in popular music was on a Level 42 track that came out around the time that Lowlife was being recorded. Bernard was like a lyrical Robin Hood, stealing vocabulary from the affluent jazz funk south east and redistributing it to the post-industrial north west. Mensch.

[Logan Mountstuart]

I'm another Dreams Never End fan. I just remember listening to Movement when it came out with both a sense of dread and immense sadness.

I found it a really uplifting song that gave me hope that they'd be alright and find their own way out of the mire.

True Faith, Procession and Bacon Lettuce an Tomato are also big favourites. I thought Confusion was a really disappointing follow-up to Blue Monday. I think it's the song I've skipped over the most in my lifetime.

Has anyone done that as a thread before?

[Jah Womble]

Good to see another vote for Procession.

[nmrfox]

Whilst I thought Dreams Never End and The Him were pretty decent tracks from Movement, the whole album itself was slightly disappointing; especially in view of what had gone before. The first three singles were excellent, as already noted upthread before Blue Monday, but the opening track off Power, Corruption & Lies, the excellent Age of Consent, absolutely blew my socks off, especially as it contained that rarest of things, a New Order whoop.

[diggedy derek]

I don't know all of New Order's records, as they were a bit before my time. But the one album I know inside out is Technique, recorded in Ibiza on the cusp of the UK house music explosion. "Fine Time" from that album is still absolutely incredible, as much of a future shock as "Blue Monday" and it still sounds remarkable. They must have had some pretty great technology at their disposal, as there is so much going on in that instrumental.

Technique is a really good record for a band effectively 13 years into their existence.

[imp]

Agree, Technique is their strongest LP. Have it on LP, tape and CD - every time I saw a copy, I thought it was a good idea to have a back-up, and have listened to it dozens of times in all formats. Though I also agree with mr fox that the opening bass line to Age Of Consent gets you going every single time.

[hobbes]

Let's Go to Bed was released in November 1982. (Love Cats would've been in the charts during November 1983.)

You're quite right. It's Google that's wrong. I remembered it was November but couldn't remember the year, so I carelessly just googled "lets go to bed release" and it says 1983 in big font.
Lower down it has website saying 1982. Stupid Google.

[delicatemoth]

As an aside, Power, Corruption and Pies remains the best title ever for a football book.

Also, I don't think NO were that much of a departure from JD. Listen to 'Isolation' or 'These Days'. If JD had got the chance to make a third album there's every possibility it would have moved further in that direction.

[hobbes]

The thing I have always loved the most about New Order (and actually one of the things I most love about The Cure) is the driving up-front bass.
I find music that has the bass as just a timekeeper strangely unsatisfying, like a meal without enough umami. I like it to be out front and melodic.
As me and my old mate in a band used to say, "bass should be heard and not just felt."
I still didn't like Level 42, obviously.

[Greenlander]

The lower the bass hangs the better the band.

Mark King never got the memo.

[diggedy derek]

Also, I don't think NO were that much of a departure from JD. Listen to 'Isolation' or 'These Days'. If JD had got the chance to make a third album there's every possibility it would have moved further in that direction.

Movement feels pretty much exactly in between Joy Division and what New Order eventually became to me.

[3 Colours Red]

The lower the bass hangs the better the band.

Mark King never got the memo.

It's tricky to get the bass to hang low when you're holding it up to your armpits.






I'll get me coat.

[Lang Spoon]

The thing I have always loved the most about New Order (and actually one of the things I most love about The Cure) is the driving up-front bass.
I find music that has the bass as just a timekeeper strangely unsatisfying, like a meal without enough umami. I like it to be out front and melodic.
As me and my old mate in a band used to say, "bass should be heard and not just felt."
I still didn't like Level 42, obviously.

That's what makes Can soar above most prog., and early PiL piss over the Sex Pistols.