NEW ORDER

[Paulo]

New Order has released a 4 CD box-set which was reviewed here in my country (Brazil).... the press just said fantastic thing about it. The review ended celebrating NEW ORDER as the best ROCK band ever to emerge from the 80's and 90's!

I don't know in UK or US, but here in Brazil NEW ORDER is (or was in the 80's) perceived by the public and media as one of the best 80's ROCK bands along with THE SMITHS, THE CURE & SIOUXE & THE BANSHEES. A band with lots of credibility...

How come????????????!!!!!!!!!

I am no New Order expert, but everything I heard from them would fit even better under the "hi-nrg" label:

BLUE MONDAY
BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE
THE PERFECT KISS
WORLD (THE PRICE OF LOVE)
SPOOKY
REGRET
WORLD IN MOTION
TOUCHED BY THE HAND OF GOD
....etc

Well.. you're gonna kill me, but forgive me: to me, when I was dancing in a disco in the 80's I did not see any difference between New Order, Hazel Dean or Rick Astley.

Rock my a!#@ss

[BrunoRepublic]

Well... a lot of their singles were dance music, but much of their album material is firmly rock. On any given album -- except Substance, which was a singles compilation -- there's only two or three dance tracks, and the rest is rock (or alt-rock or whatever they're calling it this week). Listen to the albums "Power, Corruption, And Lies", "Lowlife", or "Brotherhood" for example. Songs like "Age Of Consent", "Love Vigilantes", "Face Up", and "Way Of Life", just to name a few, are clearly in the rock genre.

I'd say that while their best-known material is dance, the majority of their music is rock.

[Paulo]

I understand Graham. I know their rock tracks. Old songs like Sunrise, Procession, Let's Go, Broken Promise, etc... They're all typical 80's rock songs.

But what I meant to say is that the press tends to "forgive" any disco connections NEW ORDER has, because of their ALTERNATIVE ROCK credibility.

But NEW ORDER recorded some DISCO songs. I think if those songs were recorded first by another artist such as Rick Astley, they would be treated as crap and disposable. Instead, because of the INDIE-ROCK credibility NEW ORDER has, then the group is turned into the most creative thing in the world.....

The review said they were almost practically the creators of HOUSE MUSIC. They were an act of genius: blending rock music to electronics at a time nobody else was doing it. If it wasn't for them HOUSE would not even exist.

So rock is responsible for the appearance of modern dance music?? What about the previous styles before HOUSE which were already played at discos such as 70's DISCO and 80's HI-NRG?? Didn't they influence House??

It is different with THE SMITHS. To keep their rock credibility intact, they never authorized any REMIX of their indie-rock singles. To them DISCO and REMIX were such dirty words... they meant selling out to the sistem. So they never authorized it.

Taking their point of view as reference, then that is integrity, not new order's attitude.

The problem is that indie-rock groups have always proclaimed themselves as the best thing in music and frequently have attacked disco and pop. THE SMITHS (which is a band that I do love) summed it up on their hit-single PANIC:

"Burn down the Disco,
Hang the blessed DJ,
Cause the music that they constantly play,
Says nothing to me about my life,
Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ"

[Paulo]

Sorry, I keep on replying to my own post... but I was thinking:

How strange: a ROCK band (New Order) can record some DISCO tracks and still retain lots of credibility...

...while a DISCO band (such as the PET SHOP BOYS, but name yours) who have a similar approach to hi-nrg as the New Order singles, get the tag "disposable music".

Although I've read good reviews about PSB, I also read some bad ones. I remember one which said that Neil Tennant writes "disposable music which gets housewives tapping their feet while doing her hair"...

Very unfair and a bit far from truth!