Frames of reference...

well, in defense of wells, most folks reply literally to every other post cause they monitor this forum all day long, and end up with loads of posts, just not in a row....

whereas folks like wells check in only every so often, so he does it all in a row, which makes sense to me, all in line, just not spread out.... either style ends up with the same amount of posts in a thread...

how can you harass wells (or someone like me) for too many posts when we have yet to crack 100 and most folks have 10000!!!!!

let the man post....

well for one thing you have cracked 100 & most people who have large numbers have been here for years! (i joined long before the date it says, but this was a re-registering)

it was just the 6 or 12 or whatever it was in a row that were annoying - couldnt he just quote them all together?

AJ Wells wrote:

Al Jarvis wrote:

AJ Wells wrote:

Al Jarvis wrote:

AJ Wells wrote: in 1983 you would have had the same audience for a New Order show as for a Gang Of Four show, yet these days not a single person responded to my query about people from this lot attending the Gof4 shows...

AJ, how old are you now? You're late 40's, yes, so finger-in-the-air-time I'm guessing you were maybe 25 in 1983? Yet you're bemoaning the fact that NO and Go4 don't have the same audience ... today?! Surely most people of your age would've 'moved on', so to speak. Careers, kids, golf holidays, whatever. You can't surely be expecting a New Order audience to be made up of people your own age? Or are you saying that 'the kids' should also be listening to Go4? Why, exactly? Most people under the age of 40 wouldn't be aware of them. That was obvious when I saw both bands perform at Coachella last weekend.

I was a youthful and vibrant 22 in 1983 for you math majors...

Ajw

AJ, in the UK New Order had three top 10 singles in 1983 (Blue Monday, twice). So the fanbase here is entirely to what you've encountered on your [ahem] 'travels'. There is an obvious hardcore of support here for New order, people who follow them a lot more aggressively than you do and have seen them many more times than you have, and all of us are under the age of 40. In 1983, a 22 year at a New order gig might've looked a right old bastard on these shores. You might however have fitted in at a GangofFour concert around the same time, can't imagine many 'kids' were into them.

As a point of note, I was at Oakland, and you would've surely been in the absolute minority there age-wise, no? I'm 37 next week and don't recall many people older than myself, whereas I'm just a relatively median age at NO concerts over here.

Actually the audience for the New Order PCL period shows and the Gof4 Hard period shows were very similar... most were my age or older to considerably older... there must be a major difference between US audiences and UK audiences...

The Oakland show had the oldest audience I have ever seen at a pop concert... if I had to guess the median age of the folks standing in my area was mid to late 40s and a couple of 50somethings in suits... the Gof4 audience was much more diverse and included lots of young people as well as some older ones... but it was clear which show was nostalgia and which one wasnt... ;) Sort of strange for a band who is playing "new material" versus one just doing greatest hits off their first two releases... ah the wonderful perverse world of pop!

Ajw

I will never listen to Gang Of Four with stupid fans like that.

depthcharge wrote:

AJ Wells wrote: But this music is born of elitism and it will always have its roots in that regardless of how soft the band gets in their music or on themselves... and regardless of how large and uninformed the audience becomes... everything about Factory and JD/NO was elitist... every single aspect... its elitism born out of having nothing and wanting everything... of wanting life to be different than it has been... to me thats idealism which is always a wonderful thing, but you can call it elitism...

I dont begrudge fans who got into the band during Republic... I love that record... that was a band growing older and having problems but still producing beauty... but I do wonder about fans who can accept this mediocre new music without question... if you can really have a thrilling experience listening to Jetstream, then who am I to rain on that parade? But we have to draw the line somewhere... I mean dont you think that people who love music that you hate are... missing something? surely there must be SOME music you hate... if not, you should find some... and soon ;) Ajw

I don't equate the elistism of fans squabbling over 'who's the bigger or more serious devotee', with the idealism the spawned Factory at all really.

It's interesting that you say you don't begrudge fans who got on board through Republic and yet you're also suggesting most of the fans who remain today are essentially pretenders. So where's this magical cut-off point for true fandom? Get Ready? WFTSC?

Choice cuts from the current album like 'WFTSC' or 'Turn' frankly piss all over Republic tracks like the lamentable 'Liar' and I know I'm not flying solo in that belief. But then I'm probably just an insurance salesman or a Republican or somesuch for sticking around this long!

It's good to have the AJs of the world stoke the fires on these forums, especially when they admit their self-contradictions. All we need now is Eddie Colton to drop by and we can have ourselves a spit-roast.

:\pimp3:

It doesnt matter to me how you get into this band as long as you get the context of the music and of the band...

And to say that the best of this new record is better than the one bad song off Republic is not exactly high praise now is it? I have already admitted that small portions of Siren and Krafty have the makings of good songs, but the arrangements and choruses are cringeworthily awful... in contrast even those who find Republic soft cannot assail the wonderful elegant arrangements of those songs or the place of that record in the bands catalog...

But never mind me... history is already sorting all this out as we type... the more NO tries to gain a wider audience the more they betray their true nature... a few more appearances like the Ross show and they will be laughingstocks as opposed to Godlike heros...

Boy its not too far between those two positions is it?

Ajw

Tarbox23 wrote: well, in defense of wells, most folks reply literally to every other post cause they monitor this forum all day long, and end up with loads of posts, just not in a row....

whereas folks like wells check in only every so often, so he does it all in a row, which makes sense to me, all in line, just not spread out.... either style ends up with the same amount of posts in a thread...

how can you harass wells (or someone like me) for too many posts when we have yet to crack 100 and most folks have 10000!!!!!

let the man post....

Thank you kind sir...

Yes my wisdom comes in bunches and then I get back to wrestling with life...

Ajw

hibster wrote: so on the one hand wells praises gang of four for not needing new releases, then he praises them for realising that they couldn't cope with staying with the same sound.

make your mind up! & do you really have to reply to every single poston this thread?

(now i remember whhu i stopped reading alt.music.new.order & please don't let's go wishing for eddie!)

(laughing) If I replied to every thread around here I would be welded to this keyboard and wind up like that old bugger who died in front of his computer with his wife bringing him food which he refused...

I still post here because I still love the IDEA of this band although I am coming to see that its probably more MY IDEA of this band than anything else... eventually I will wise up and move along... in the meantime I get enough notes from nitwits who start out hating my words and later come to understand their wisdom to keep me performing my public service ;)

Ajw

"In contrast even those who find Republic soft cannot assail the wonderful elegant arrangements of those songs or the place of that record in the bands catalog..."

Not much "wisdom" to be culled from that little sophism, now is there?

There is too much pseudo intellectual twatism floating around in this thread.

Tristan Jayol XVI wrote: There is too much pseudo intellectual twatism floating around in this thread.

Hey even Borat thinks Jetstream sucks ;)

Ajw

Al Jarvis wrote:

AJ Wells wrote: I still post here because I still love the IDEA of this band although I am coming to see that its probably more MY IDEA of this band than anything else...

Finally, we're getting somewhere. YOUR IDEA of the band surely doesn't exist, AJ?! You must absolutely hate t'internet, increased exposure to a creature you had as marked down as a completely different beast. New Order, to most here, are simply a bunch of lads who like a larf (Wossy described them on TV this week as looking like a bunch of builders who've come into money), they do a few late nights at the Groucho, like a beer and are known do a bit of 'the other', on occasion, allegedly. They wear a bit of SI and prison-white trainers and are generally just 'English blokes', which a large majority of posters can relate to, moreso than any other British band of their ilk. They're not ashen-faced deeply introverted geeks who bury their heads into Camus or Dostoevsky and continually ponder the importance and beauty of it all and light candles for the demise of Curtis, for he was God. Barney dances like a deformed chimp and can't remember the lines to his own songs, Hooky gets his face on the cover of The Sun for smacking love rivals and Steve owns tanks.

Now, that's My Idea of a band!

Al, I wish I had said all of that!

So speaks a REAL fan of a REAL band!

AJ Wells wrote:

The Oakland show had the oldest audience I have ever seen at a pop concert... if I had to guess the median age of the folks standing in my area was mid to late 40s and a couple of 50somethings in suits... the Gof4 audience was much more diverse and included lots of young people as well as some older ones... but it was clear which show was nostalgia and which one wasnt... ;) Sort of strange for a band who is playing "new material" versus one just doing greatest hits off their first two releases... ah the wonderful perverse world of pop!

Ajw

Maybe back where you stood or sat, up where I was, I'd have to second Al's description...same sort of 20-something/30-something mix you see for concerts in general in the Bay Area. The Popscene dance club crowd was younger. But don't let the truth get in the way of your rhetorical screed.

Al Jarvis wrote:

AJ Wells wrote: I still post here because I still love the IDEA of this band although I am coming to see that its probably more MY IDEA of this band than anything else...

Finally, we're getting somewhere. YOUR IDEA of the band surely doesn't exist, AJ?! You must absolutely hate t'internet, increased exposure to a creature you had as marked down as a completely different beast. New Order, to most here, are simply a bunch of lads who like a larf (Wossy described them on TV this week as looking like a bunch of builders who've come into money), they do a few late nights at the Groucho, like a beer and are known do a bit of 'the other', on occasion, allegedly. They wear a bit of SI and prison-white trainers and are generally just 'English blokes', which a large majority of posters can relate to, moreso than any other British band of their ilk. They're not ashen-faced deeply introverted geeks who bury their heads into Camus or Dostoevsky and continually ponder the importance and beauty of it all and light candles for the demise of Curtis, for he was God. Barney dances like a deformed chimp and can't remember the lines to his own songs, Hooky gets his face on the cover of The Sun for smacking love rivals and Steve owns tanks.

Now, that's My Idea of a band!

Well its my idea of a band too if they made good records... those would offset all the rest...

Ajw

All right. I have to admit I often have a difficult time following the shedload of threads here. I don't begrudge anybody who can stay on top of it all, though I think a lot of it hangs on the style people reply in. Excessive quoting in general causes in the populace, but without *some* quoting it's difficult to follow context.

What "frame of reference" do I have, then? Probably an excessively nerdy one (the Brits would use 'trainspotty' I think), if anybody knows what I've been trying to do with respect to New Order over the past year and a half. But i still try to mantain some balance in my life, and don't do it in isolation. I feel privileged to have met and hang around with Jarvo and co, for one.

I was going to talk about AJ Wells' supposed overwhelming belief in the ideal of the band fueling his dissidence, but I think others have done well in addressing that. Personally, he's never struck me as somebody I want to *like*, he cetainly didn't want to meet up with anybody in Oakland. I have no problems with anybody who feels that GR or WFTSC are rubbish, many fellow NO fans that I greatly respect haven't yet or may never warm up to the latest. But they're not disagreeable about it to the point that that's ALL you hear from them. If you get somebody who rants about the same thing continually in real life you walk away from them and think to yourself

So my point is if you don't have anything positive and meaningful to contribute, or if you don't think this is FUN, what are you doing here?
Does it really look like AJ is enjoying himself? Many of the problems in this world can be blamed on crushed idealists. :)

The flip side of this of course can be illustrated in Barney's jogdance during the "Jetstream" Jonathan Ross performance...at what point does the cringeworthy gyrations of our latter-day Shatner start to impact their critical reputation? I guess one answer is "yes, it does matter, especially if I'm trying to convince my mates that this lot are Godlike Genuises, and that I'm not being played for a fool". Another is "who cares? it's just a pointless interlude, and NO have done other ridiculous things on the telly even in the good old days". And there you have it in a nutshell. Enjoy the dissonance.

AJ Wells wrote: Well its my idea of a band too if they made good records... those would offset all the rest...

Ajw

That's entirely subjective, though. What does your opinion whether they're good or not matter with respect to anyone else's? Or that it should offset the rest?

AJ Wells wrote: And to say that the best of this new record is better than the one bad song off Republic is not exactly high praise now is it? I have already admitted that small portions of Siren and Krafty have the makings of good songs, but the arrangements and choruses are cringeworthily awful... in contrast even those who find Republic soft cannot assail the wonderful elegant arrangements of those songs or the place of that record in the bands catalog...

But never mind me... history is already sorting all this out as we type... the more NO tries to gain a wider audience the more they betray their true nature... a few more appearances like the Ross show and they will be laughingstocks as opposed to Godlike heros...

Ajw

If you re-check my quote, I wasn't talking about one track off Republic but I'd rate the two WFTSC tracks I mentioned higher than AT LEAST 8 of the 11 Republic tracks and the others I'll be better equipped to judge in time. Some lesser Sirens' tracks are also immediately surpassing. I can understand misgivings about the quality of WFTSC but to then turn around and claim that Republic is somehow resoundingly superior is just plain deluded in my opinion.

You mention how history is supposedly sorting things out as we speak, well that same history has already despatched Republic to the nadir of the New Order back catalog. Almost every serious music journal will tell you that, even the band themself speak lowly of it. See the recent Hooky interview in MixMag. For this reason I find it difficult to accept your savage critique of recent New Order output as rational. Republic arrangements were wonderful? You're having a laugh, no?

I'd suggest you re-align your expectations for NO if you are to continue to follow their career. Be realistic. There are very, very few bands who can maintain the edge and resonance of their music over a long career, especially as their life situations and values change. The urgency often simply isn't there any more. But if NO can pump out a clutch of great songs over their final few albums as well as tour widely, then most of us will be more than content.

:\pimp3:

'A J-W-E Ellsey CYA