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Is it true that New Order have (over the years) had the worse sound engineers, lighting crew and roadies in the history of rock n roll?
I draw my evidence for the prosecution from various live recordings which have terrible mixing, out of tune guitars and Barney shouting for people to "turn that f*cking light off!".
A tad harsh, I feel. Many of the complaints from Bernard seem to be about the monitor mix more than anything. certianly in the JD days Terry Mason hadn't got the hang of things like them wanting to be able to hear themselves.
Some festival set-ups don't exactly lend themselves to crystal-clear sound, but you could count on the fingers of one hand the number of really bad sound nights in club gigs. Sure, they had equipment blow up and that over the years, and many a sequencer fail, but I would never say that they had the worst crew out there, far from it.
NO Regret wrote: Is it true that New Order have (over the years) had the worse sound engineers, lighting crew and roadies in the history of rock n roll?
Don't know where that came from?
The same sound engineer also does the Charlatans, amongst others.
The same lighting engineer also does a little outfit called the Chemical Brothers. Who surely have one of the best lightshows around.
Er, as do New Order as a rule, don't they?!
I saw the Order live twice:
1st time was Paris Olympia, 2001. Sound was crap (although it is usually very good in this hall).
2nd time was paris Zenith 2002. Sound was supercrap. You simply couldn't recognise the songs.
It's true they have all kind of technical problems all the time though...
Especially when they are recording the gigs... Hammerstein Ballroom and Hyde Park were, let's say, full of technical issues.
NO Regret wrote: Is it true that New Order have (over the years) had the worse sound engineers, lighting crew and roadies in the history of rock n roll?
I draw my evidence for the prosecution from various live recordings which have terrible mixing, out of tune guitars and Barney shouting for people to "turn that f*cking light off!".
Just spat ma coffee all over the keyboard!
And there was me thinking Barney was just a moany bastard and they couldnae play live ;)
I'd just like to point out to the famous Andy Liddel.... and the rest of the crew - I was only kidding 
Ben wrote: I saw the Order live twice:
1st time was Paris Olympia, 2001. Sound was crap (although it is usually very good in this hall).
2nd time was paris Zenith 2002. Sound was supercrap. You simply couldn't recognise the songs.
Bollocks. Sure the sound was ropey at Zenith, but if you couldn't recognise the songs you must be a Paul Young fan! ;)
Seeing that the majority of N.O.'s live crew have been with them since the beginning, have a vast amount of experience and work for other established acts. Then i'd say your 'critique' of their performance is wide of the mark, to say the least!!!
oldmonkey wrote:
Ben wrote: I saw the Order live twice:
1st time was Paris Olympia, 2001. Sound was crap (although it is usually very good in this hall).
2nd time was paris Zenith 2002. Sound was supercrap. You simply couldn't recognise the songs.
Bollocks. Sure the sound was ropey at Zenith, but if you couldn't recognise the songs you must be a Paul Young fan! ;)
To be fair whenever I saw them on the first Glasgow Barrowlands date in 2001 I couldn't recognise a couple of their tunes either at first. I think Close Range was particularly anonymous and crap sounding; just a grinding wall of guitars and as it was a new one, I think Barney had some difficulties with the lyrics.
New Order are just one of those bands that whenever they're good, they're fucking blinding. But whenever they're bad... well y'know 
It's a bit unfair to blame the bad performances solely on the sound and lighting people though, I'm sure they do their best with the venues they're in and the band's performance.
Run Wild from the o2 Festival a great reminder of how badly the band (Barney in this instance) can completely and utterly fuck up a song! Amusing tho
everyone on the crew is mint.
especially: roger 
bass phil jerry and damien and of course the legend andy liddel
top blokes
jack
State of Love and Trust wrote: everyone on the crew is mint.
especially: roger
top blokes
jack
About time I notice you got a new nickname!
Marc wrote: "Turn the guitar up and the vocals up too, oh, I've never met a cunt like you"
And therein lies the fucking problem.....what a fucking twat he is. You CAN'T turn both up, you get into a battle, they occupy the same range in the spectrum, I've mixed dedicated monitors a few times (never again), and can promise you that "turn the vocal up" leads almost imeadiately to "turn the guitar up" which leads back to "turn the vocal up". The very cleverest thing you can do, is to notch up the guitar at the same frequencies you have attenuated on the vocal when you rang the feedback out of the system....the problem with that is that some guitars have the uncanny ability to feedback, not through the strings but through the pickups themselves....adding whacks of EQ boost just makes this more likely.....fender strats are fuckers for it, so are SOME gibson SG's (I know two people who own original SG's...one of them is happy with the player knelt down in front of a massive Orange stack, the other can whoop and howl from several feet away at moderate gain).
It's also worth mentioning that the Vox Ac-30 is one of the most nasal, chainsaw like amps in existence. It is also the precise opposite of your PC speakers.....allow me to explain..... You can buy PC speakers claiming to be like 300W that you can barely hear, but the 30W Vox, can slice through the sound of an atom bomb....no joke, Bernard's amps could handle somewhere like the Apollo with no mics.
As for FoH sound...I think based on boots of course, that they have had some of the most involved and creative off stage engineering I've ever heard, their engineers have always known the material and thrown their own 2p's worth in. my one live experience featured a great sound in a room that couldn't take it. there were a lot of fuck ups too.....
Dawn's voice inaudible at times, audible only on the delay return at others. Acr's vocal panned hard right. Hooky's voice, as far as I could tell, only coming out of his wedges (and possibly the sidefills) for most of the gig. And as I mentioned, a little self control on the bottom end would have gone a long way to making a better concert.....and believe me I am a bass PSYCHO, and there are people I've worked with who would pass out from shock were they to read me suggest a reduction in the bass end, but seriously, it was crazy that night....even a little eq to tune out the frequency the room rang at (I can find out that F if anyone cares LOL) would have been a saviour. Of course, I have no evidence to suggest that they didn;t bust their bollox all day doing every trick I know and many more known by real pros, and still managed only that......but how likely do you think that is at a NO gig in manc :D
PS Jack...does their monitor engineer smoke a lot and take a lot of nerve and blood pressure medication?
sorry, but i've only ever seen them when the sound was great. that may have something to do with me always being near the front.
Pretty much summed up the problems there Cambo - and when you put a 330 with an AC30 you are gonna howl like a three legged dog through the wedges if you do as Bernard wanted in that quote!
He's always been on at them to add bits of bass sequencer into the monitors. Wouldn't want their FOH job for any money!
Lets not forget that the lighting brief for most of the 80's was 'BLUE' I think Andy Liddle did a fantastic job sticking to this and creating an atmosphere.
Snape wrote: Lets not forget that the lighting brief for most of the 80's was 'BLUE' I think Andy Liddle did a fantastic job sticking to this and creating an atmosphere.
Fact of the matter is that I always loved their understated lighting...no need to augment their beautiful music with all that flashy crap :D
I seem to recall some one of them saying thay hated lights beind on them for the very valid reason that it prevents you spotting incomming bottles and piss cannisters.
oldmonkey wrote: Wouldn't want their FOH job for any money!
Well if it was that or monitors......
Its good to hear such a varied response. Some folk are with me but some think I spill comptete and utter garbage.
Fair enough. I was only after the truth and I think I got somewhere like near to half way there.
