Finsbury Park 2002 - World in motion

I was at this gig, right at the front too, and have no recollection of World in Motion being played.

Can anyone confirm whether it was or wasn't, or if I was too out of it or having a piss in a Portaloo?

Ta

I think it was part of the encore, with Keith Allen.

IIRC, John Simm came back on after doing Digital with the band. No Ralph Little.

Edit: Just had a look on my 511 DVD and there's no mention of it, weirdly. Perhaps I'm confusing it with Reading - which was only 4 years earlier...

Ain't on the DVD, but I guess you knew that. Played for the first time at Reading but it always wound me up that they edited the show for the DVD, presumably for Tara's Shitwankoo. Zzzz. They lost all the banter, my personal favourite being, 'Thanks. you've been a fucking brilliant audience. And we've been a fucking brilliant band.' The first live album (BBC) was butchered too.

Seem to recall , and setlist fm appears to confirm this, they did do WIM at Finsbury Park 2002 (though i wasn't there) but didn't stick it on the DVD as i presume even studio editing couldn't save it.But why they didn't include Ceremony and Confusion at Reading 98 on the 316 DVD was baffling.

Thanks guys. You've highlighted the issue though. According to the listings it was played, but it wasn't on the DVD, and I have no recollection at all. I was pretty pissed, but I remember EVERYTHING else about the gig.

Gigography

New-Order.net

I have a boot of the gig and it definitely includes World In Motion.

Barney comments before the song that they haven't rehearsed it and asks that any journalists at the gig do not judge them based on this one performance...

...and it truly is an awful rendition.

Barney basically fucks up the first chorus and starts singing 'We're playing for England', whilst Hooky carries on singing 'Love's got the World In Motion'. So they both drown each other out, making it a chaotic, garbled mess.

So, pretty bloody terrible. But, as is often the case with New Order and live performances, equally just as ridiculously brilliant. I would probably hate seeing / hearing any other band fuck up as many times as New Order but I will always forgive them. Live performances were always so damn unique:

Equipment going horrifically wrong; Confrontational interactions with the audience; Bum notes; Songs performed in the wrong key; Lyrics forgotten or, better still, made up on the spot, sometimes to comic effect (song titles like 'I've Got A Cock Like The M1' and 'I Got A Wank Off A Girl With A Spotty Back' etc); The band (especially Barney) beingcompletely off their faces.

But still utterly brilliant. And that was just the 'bad' times. When they aren't experiencing any of the above, they can be soul-smashing.

But that's coming from a person who has loved them for 30+ years. I can therefore kind of see why they left off World In Motion from the DVD. The average punter would'n't've been overly impressed by the performance, I would think (sucks to be those people).

Bearing in mind that since that wonderful Glasto '81 footage was released*, we've had to put up with shit like this:

http://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/new-order/news/is-this-the-worst-glastonbury-headline-set-ever/

You can imagine that similar 'reviews' would've appeared had WIM been included.

* That Glastonbury footage is bloody amazing. Legendary, even. I loved that this actually confirmed what had often been rumoured - Barney being so pissed that he fell over and continued to play his guitar whilst horizontal. During 'Procession'. No wonder Barney denies that they've ever written a song called 'Procession' (as detailed in Hooky's book). He's probably tried to eliminate the song from his memory. Either that or he suffered some degree of memory loss during the blow to the head as he hit the stage.

They played it at Finsbury : and it was a car crash. Like a seal honking into a megaphone. Rest of the gig was a stupid, tawdry, fun romp - like having had a few drinks too many.

Fucking hell!!! I was right at the front too, but no recollection. I was just on alcohol that day, but I've been caning it for a long time, so maybe I'm just going to have to put it down to being a casualty of war. I also have no recollection of Touched by the hand of God played at Brixton the previous October. And I fucking love that version. I was mortal that night, so far dos.

There's a cool misconception about NO that they always do shoddy but fun, gorgeously unpredictable gigds. Like a lot of the mythology around 'em, it isn't true - or at least ain't been for 30 years. The 89 gigs were repetitive cos they didn't have time to reprogramme, 93 was megarepetiive, and after then they've been awesome but professionally so. It's the same as the 'TOTP' cult, as I pointed out at http://forums.neworderonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=26701#post26701