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I used to love the World in motion single when i was a boy, then i forgot all about them.
Then our kid bought the train spotting soundtrack and i give it a whirl and thought temptation was definetly by a band i could dig, so i was walking into town to buy their 'best of' the day after and Regret came on the radio on my walkman and it sealed my fate. So i bought every album week after week, then proceeded to buy all the vinyl records the local record shop had.
Chris Nash wrote: My cousin took me to see JD in 1979 and I sort of liked them. It was just cool to be with 'older lads' and drink beer. Really got into New Order afterwards when the same cousin took me to see them.
I tend to forget that alot of fans 'found' New Order first, then JD in the late 80's around the time of 'True Faith'.
Then again, I keep forgetting how sodding old I am...
Interesting that most of the people on here talk about the record/cd/video that converted them.
Like you, for me it was seeing them live. Being (slightly) too young to really appreciate Joy Division I was aware of this band New Order, and had a couple of their records.
But seeing them live - January 1983 - Cardiff Joint Student Union bar - that's what got me into them.
It perhaps sounds a bit corny to say that it was a life changing experience, but certainly my life has not been the same since.
When it comes to music, for me I normally hear a song I like on the radio or when out and I then try to find that song to own. I’ll also give a few other songs a try to see if I like the band or if it was just a one or two song thing for me.
I first heard NO back in the mid 80’s but really did not follow the band or go out and buy the records. Even though I liked most of what I was hearing on the radio. At the time was just not a big record collector so I never went out and bought what I liked to hear on the radio. Due to this I pretty much forgot about them until I had a friend who is a big NO fan, get me back to listening to NO, which happened in April of this year.
At that time, I realized that I recognized most of the songs that she was playing; I just could not remember who was singing them. I also realized that New Order is one of the few bands that I actually like just about everything that they have released.
Since then I’ve been hunting at the used CD stores in the area trying to get my hands on all the CD’s that was missing. I’m up to 7 CD’s and still trying to find more of the early releases.
Psy
When I was 14 I used to hang around a local indie record shop. I was more into singles than albums at that time, and thanks to new wave I had a healthy interest in keyboards. One of the fellows who worked there asked me if I'd ever heard of New Order and put on the 12" of "The Perfect Kiss" which was brand new (April of 1985). I thought it was pretty amazing, but it didn't stick right away. I didn't buy it.
In November of 1986 I was watching MTV and saw this absolutely amazing video (so unlike anything at the time) called "Bizarre" something and I recognized the name of the band. By then I could drive and was hanging out at a much better indie record shop close to the university campus. I went in looking for the single and they didn't have it, but they did have the album. It was called Brotherhood and had fairly cryptic design. I bought it on cassette.
For the next several months that cassette was all I listened to. It was such a cool combination of rock tracks on one side and dance tracks on the other. One of my school friends loaned me the prior two albums Lowlife and Power, Corruption & Lies and I fell in love. This was also around the same time I really got into Depeche Mode and The Cure.
By the time Substance came out I'd collected what I could, but most things were imports and none of it was really easy to come by where I lived. I didn't even know about Joy Division until their Substance was released in 1988 and someone filed it in the New Order bin at the shop. It took a while to sink in but I fell in love with them as well.
So this year marks my 20-year anniversary as a New Order fan.
Barney raped me as a young child, so when I got older and the hormones started to kick in, I just sort of felt compelled to go back to New Order. I can't help it. I'm a victim. 
First heard Everything's Gone Green on TV in '82 or so. There was a late-night movie slot run on Friday or Saturday nights on one of the local (Baltimore, MD) stations, and they used EGG as the "Theme" for the show. Then, a few years later, my first real snogfest was soundtracked by Brotherhood, and then I stole all of her JD tapes.
i think it was older sister who came home with unknown pleasures, seeing a review in the nme. she never got that much into them, but i did. narrowly missed seeing them live back in manchester where i grew up. i remember my friend at school (who was a buzzcocks fan) saying all these people coming to see the support and then leaving. one track was 'rambling in'.. only then i realised the lyric was 'where will it end'
first saw new order at the ritz, stll have the ticket. will post some early tickets when we buy a new scanner this autumn
I had just started in the lower-sixth and me and a few mates used to get a mail order parcel from Rough Trade every couple of weeks with a selection of the latest and greatest punk/postpunk 7" singles. Living out in N.Lincs, there were no decent record shops handy (the Humber Bridge wasn't finished until 1981 - so a ferry trip was required to get to Hull), so this was how we got to hear the bands we read about in the NME and Sounds. We never knew what Rough Trade were going to send, but it was inevitably brilliant - Subway Sect 'Ambition', ATV 'Action Time Vision', Desperate Bicycles 'New Cross, New Cross', 'Teenage Kicks', stuff by The Raincoats, Au Pairs etc etc. Anyway one of the records was Cabaret Voltaire's debut, the double 7" with 'Do The Mussolini' on it. I wasn't that impressed, but my mate Vic was obsessed with it - he kept saying 'we've got to see this band!'. We'd started our own band and were going to as many gigs as we could, but few decent bands played in Cleethorpes or Scunthorpe so we had to look further afield. (exception : The Sex Pistols played on the Anarchy Tour in Dec 1976 - my first proper gig!!). Various elder sisters and a couple of slightly older mates had cars, so a small group of us started going to Sheffield, Leeds and even Manchester to see bands. Just after we got the CV single, we heard that they were playing at some place called the Russell Club in Manchester. A girl who left our school the previous year was at UMIST and into similar music - someone phoned her and she said 'definitely come to the CV gig - Pete Shelley is supporting'. So we did. After a LOT of confusion about whether the Factory club and the Russell Club were one and the same, we arrived at the gig to find out that 'Pete Shelley' was in fact The Tiller Boys i.e Pete and Eric Random, and there was some bunch called Joy Division 3rd on the bill. Thank god we were early. Saw them another dozen or so times in the next 18 months - gotta say they were a decent little live combo.
i was doing what i used to do every saturday morning back then in chorley,look for records to buy. nad one in particular grabbed my attention "transmission" it had just come out at the time and i had no idea who joy division were. but that crab nebulea sleeve just grabbed my attention , so i took it to the counter to ask for it to be put on to see what it sounded like. i was grabbed instantly by the opening synth drone and bassline (still gets me today). as ian began to sing the lass behind the counter said (oooh hang on love i think ive put it on the wrong speed, lol.) she hadnt of course and for me the rest was history. you could say they had me at hello.
BM. Then standstill until TF in 1987.
My brother was a DJ around Manc in the mid to late 80s (he always boasts he did a set at the Hac as holiday cover for one of the regulars, Mike Pickering, Dave Haslam, etc) so he had pretty much all the NO 12" from this period which I played to death.
Being a niave little teenager I didn't realise that this great band was from my own city until TF came out. I thought they were Yanks!
So from subconciously following them since BM I realised actually who they were and what they were about. Technique was then released and I went mental. At the time NO seemed to be everywhere as well as the charts. Vanishing Point was used as the title music for the brilliant Making Out and Best & Marsh was the title track to, erm, Best & Marsh.
This fantastic period culminated when WiM went No. 1 forever (well, a fortnight at least!), Madchester was the centre of the universe and the Hac was the coolest place in the world.
The result of this was the ability to speak in my broadest Manc accent - with matching Barney centre parting - to nubile, young, females with lovely tight arses holidaying in Magaluf in 91 and tell them I was from Manc, went to the Hac, and was into NO - the response was better than any Lynx advert! "What a cool accent you've got. I love your hair! Do you really go to the Hacienda?..." etc, etc until time for bed... 
Oh, but of course it'd be Blue Monday. The way the story goes at my house, my brother had it on the local 'dance' station, and the dj was a serious worshipper of UK indie and punk. He played Blue Monday and I started doing this dumb dance that everyone became transfixed by. I couldn't even say the band's name properly, apparently I kept saying "noorrer", and it wasn't but a few years down the road around 7-8 that I actually started requesting albums/tapes for birthdays and Christmas.
So, in the end, my brother got me into NO. He also got me into other bands that have become great favorites and it never ceased to tick me off when I'd get the "aren't you too young to like this stuff" from teachers or older friends. 
Back when I was 7 or 8 my mom would invite her gay friends over and have parties while I sat in my room at my old Commodore 64 computer and geeked out. They'd bring their records and through the door I got to hear all the great stuff that you usually only heard in clubs. Always been into dance music as a result.
Looking through one of the stacks they'd brought, I saw one that just startled me completely... somebody had the idea to cut a 12" record sleeve in the shape of one of the floppy disks I'd been playing around with so much. What a neat idea! I remember actually picking it up and my mom telling me to put it back.
Fast forward to 1987-88ish... Jr. High school age for me. I was riding in a car with mom and a friend and we're listening to the alternative station and this fucking fantastic song is playing... great beat, smooth moody vocals, and a killer refrain melody... something about the morning sun. I was disappointed because I didn't find out who it was or what the song was called, but the song stuck with me and wouldn't let go. Every once in a while it would get stuck in my head and I still had no idea who it was.
A year or two later, had to be 1989, I was at a school dance... homecoming or something, I don't remember. They'd got these house DJs to do it for us and they played all this great underground junk... house music all night long. I loved how all the tracks just blended together and how all that mattered wasn't the lyrics or the artist or what their video looked like... just the beat. One of them had this killer synth hook that kinda stuck out to me and I would remember later... and some lyric about being too young, but I was too busy dancing with my friends to pay much attention to it.
Keep in mind that at the time i had no idea any of these experiences were related in any way.
Not long after that I was with my mom again at her friend's house and they're playing CDs, which we thought were the greatest thing because we didn't have a CD player yet. A few of them were talking about this trio of bands they'd gone to see at the Meadowlands a few weeks prior. Somebody said something about a song by one of them she really wanted to hear so they pull out this CD which frustratingly didn't have the artist name on it. And it was that same voice... the picture you see is no portrait of me... the one who sang that morning sun song. I usually didn't speak up at these gatherings since it was my mom who was the guest and I was just tagging along, but since the neat colored cherub on the front wasn't giving me any hints, I had to ask who it was. Someone said "New Order."
I decided when I got home I'd check my mom's shelves (and shelves and shelves) of records to see if she had any by them. By this time I'd started invading them and discovering the likes of The Police, Erasure, Depeche Mode, Information Society, etc. Turns out she had Substance and Technique. I loved the lack of information about or pictures of the band on the sleeves. It made me want to find out more about them. I had no face or personality to associate with what I heard, and had no idea what to expect.
I put Technique on first. I recognized Fine Time and suddenly I was back in that high school gym with my friends. Then strangely some guitar-based track was next. I thought these guys did dance music. They'd tricked me and become my gateway drug to indie rock.
How strange that the titles on the label gave me no clues. Though it's probably a good thing because I had to listen to all of Technique and all of Substance before I finally found that "morning sun" song I was looking for. And then I played both albums again... and again. There were so many songs that I'd heard before and didn't know it... Blue Monday, Subculture, Shellshock, True Faith, Fine Time, Round & Round... that it was like listening to my still young life replaying for me.
From there I went out and bought their albums. Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" may have been the first tape I'd ever bought, but Low-Life was number two. Eventually I had to have them all. Technique was, and still is, my favorite. When I found Regret at the record store a few years later I was ecstatic to find out they were putting out new material. And even though I didn't quite like Republic as much as their previous when it came out, when my mom's travel plans for us got in the way of my being able to see them on that tour I didn't speak to her for about a week. To this day I still have not seen them live. (Come back to Atlanta, PLEASE!)
Geez, that got long-winded. Sorry guys.
There are times when I get tired of them and stop playing their records for a bit but I always end up coming back. I don't care what any of the rest of you think, "Who's Joe" is Barney singing out that no matter what kind of changes happen in my life, I won't get rid of them. Their music is going to come find me wherever I go, whatever I do.
Heard Blue Monday at a youth club disco in 83. Loved that but didn't much time for music generally until Substance came out in 87.
Cheers
[orange]Ultramega[/orange] OK wrote: my dad likes them, goes to EVERY gig. i try to get to as many as i can
hahahahah
[orange]Ultramega[/orange] OK wrote: my dad likes them, goes to EVERY gig.
Apart from the Washington gig in 83 that he sort of forgot about until they were halfway through the first song!
JD : A friend of mine let me hear "Closer" when we were in highschool. I then bought Substance and was hooked ever since. NO: Someone gave (!) me a stack of LP's/12" records including an original floppy disc Blue Monday 12". It has always been a dancefloor filler at the parties I went to as well. First NO record I bought was Substance.
Uncle John constantly played New Order - earliest memories 83/84, wasnae till '87 I became the obsessed numpty I am now. It's all in a story I did somewhere on this site
After buying UNKNOWN PLEASURES in 79. Never saw Joy Division, though first New Order gig was Glasto 81 :D
Hearing and seeing the video of 'True Faith' in the summer of '87 first got me into them and I went out and bought 'Substance' shortly afterwards. I struggled to really get into them for a while but after buying 'Technique' in '89 I was hooked. Purchases of 'Brotherhood', 'Movement' and 'PCL' soon followed, although I didn't buy 'Lowlife' until about 6 months ago. I've only managed to see them once (Reading '93) but can't wait to see them again in October.
First time I heard them was on the late,great John Peel show,playing tracks from their new debut album MOVEMENT.Liked them,but thought they were a bit doomy to buy.(D'oh! Movement's my 2nd fave NO album these days). Will have to be Temptation on which I started taking notice,and LOW-LIFE was my first album.I was hooked. Although I liked LWTUA,it was actually hearing Isolation of STILL which got me into JD.
What can I say? SHEDS are the new dancefloors.
I know I've heard of BM, BLT, TLU, and even LWTUA from my brother who was into new wave music back then. But I never took noticed of NO until i heard True Faith, which was a new single back then. Then I saw the video, and saw some NO songs (BLT, BM, and BM) in my brother's new wave compilation cassette tapes. Then I bought my very first CD, Substance 1988. That is where I discovered there were a lot of better tracks than True Faith in the album compilation. So basically that was it. The rest followed... Low-Life... Brotherhood... PCL... Joy D.
Indeed!
1987 I listened to'Unknown Pleasures' and 'Still' and I was astonished. Then, at the same year, I listened to New Order's Substance ....
How.
Shugzv's fault,i used to go to his house everyday and all he played and listened to was NO,and when i heard Technique that was it i was hooked,so Thanks Shug!!!!
