It's all changed over time, hasn't it? Technology has made everything so much more immediate - years ago when I used to trade tapes with people, I would wait a couple of weeks for a letter, list update and a batch of goodies - nowadays everything can be put online and lifted off the net, instant messengers and all that mean that you can have realtime conversations with several people across the world at the same time.....fabulous really, except it increases expectation and decimates patience. People are no longer content with hearing the new stuff on the radio a couple of weeks before it is released, and then rushing down to buy the record when it comes out, if there is the slightest chance of a P2P these days, some people are there like vultures. Everything has to be right now! I blame MTV personally ;)
Part of the great thing about New Order, which has long since been consigned to the trash can of the memory, was the way in which new songs were introduced. You'd get these half-finished song ideas played at you at gigs, and by the time they were next played they would have evolved a bit, moved forward possibly in terms of lyrical development etc, and you would get to know them that way. There was no great pressure to get hold of the product weeks before it was available, you already knew roughly what to expect. When the record came out, you could go down the store and get a copy, then marvel at how they had turned these works-in-progress into polished tunes. I well remember a number of letters and phone conversations I had in 1986 with Snotters and Dave Simpson about what was likely to be on the new album (Brotherhood) - we had pieced together several tunes from the new stuff they had been adding to the set, but it wasn't until the September 86 dates that we got the full picture, with the addition of Angel Dust, ELC and All Day Long to the set. We'd known all the Low Life stuff from way back, same with much of PCL. Obviously the band changed their approach to live performance between Brotherhood and Technique, so when the Technique songs were played they were already the finished article.