I originally titled this post 'Bring Back Blokes', but got so immersed in miserable reasons about why that was necessary that I had to stop writing and begin again. Instead, I'll jump straight in and write about last night's book launch at Rough Trade East for Dec Hickey's book on New Order, From Heaven to Heaven.
The four men on the panel sat in a line a bit like a girl pop group, but not pop singers and not girls. It was a formation for the delivery of anecdotes and personal histories instead of songs, lubricated by a pint or two beforehand in the local boozer (I did imagine emptying out the microphones after the panel discussion, and finding at least half a pint of ale accumulated between the four of them). This was a chance for a band's greatest fans to take to the stage many years later, and tell the story of that band from another perspective.
The chair of the panel was Guardian journalist Dave Simpson, who came out with nuggets of focused information at just the right times in the discussion; he had the ability to put everything in context, just when that needed to happen. The others were Jon Marsh from The Beloved (I used to do their press for a very short while), and John Wozencroft.
The four dedicated archivists revealed a lot about the tenacity fandom through the lens of their New Order gig-going. There was no one-upmanship but instead, the sharing of a joint narrative between ardent enthusiasts and an audience perched on the most uncomfortable seats in the universe. We heard about those missed last trains after gigs, the hitchhiking split into risky groups, the gig dates, the venues, the information about PA systems: name-checking Rob Gretton a lot. The bravery of the group after Ian Curtis died as they started rehearsing without knowing which members of the group might be the lead vocalist (even Rob had a go, they said). Gillian Gilbert joining the band on keyboards, without being a keyboard player, because they needed an extra member who got on with everyone.
And the cassettes! Recordings of sound checks passed on to the band so they could remember how to play the songs later that night. Trading, and not trading of bootleg recordings (each man has a stash of cassettes that they wouldn't share under any circumstances). Why did they make so many recordings? Because the songs changed all the time, sometimes instrumentals acquiring vocals before disappearing, sometimes songs only being played once or twice before being dropped. It was the rawness of the live recordings that they loved: the commercial recordings came nowhere near to the gig recordings with their atmosphere of liveness, the sound of the venue and the sound of the crowd. The audience laughed when the panel described their dismay when the band's set got longer than one side of a cassette, leading to the 'cassette-flip moment' of rapidly turning the cassette over during a gap in the set. Dec described recording the sound check at the end of side two, to prevent inadvertently taping over the set proper when he flipped sides!
This was much more than just listening in to a conversation in a pub: it was an insight into a world of engagement with a band that has lasted for decades and given an extra stratum of meaning to the lives of four blokes. No toxicity here, no misogyny, no anti-woke rhetoric: there was no need. There was something utterly graceful about the whole thing.
Book here: https://shop.damagedgoods.co.uk/pro.../from-heaven-to-heaven
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