new order songs and memories...

Wow, ok this might be long, but so it goes....

True Faith- Summer before 7th grade, spending most of the time swimming at my friend's house, 4th of July weekend, then watching VH1's A-Z countdown (every video in their archieves played ) Remembered the bizarre video, and tried in vain to keep that wonderful percussion/bass sequencer in my head for years. Recorded a snippet of it next summer and watched it over and over again.

Flash forward, Christmas 1998. I got the Wedding Singer soundtrack (always been an 80's music fan in general). Hearing "Blue Monday" for the first time. Whoa. So different sounding than "True Faith", and Barney's voice was so different! It was so etheral and mechanical, fell in love with it. Remember playing Playstation all break listening to that one track. I remember that Christmas clearly, because my sister one night got sick in her room (her ENTIRE room, it was fucking disgusting )

Christmas 1999: Substance. The beginning of the obsession.

Summer 2000: Upgrade to cable modem, means access to New Order/sideproject songs grows.

Fall 2001: Get Ready....beginning of college (not exactly the happiest time in my life), but listening to this album really helped get me through it.

And the rest is history. :D

Even though I'm still obsessively into them, New Order will always be associated with my first semester of Grade 12, and the conditions/emotions that made it up:

I decided to forfeit all social life so as to concentrate solely on schoolwork to ensure I will have somewhere to go next year because the situation for going to university here in Ontario is so screwed up for this year (two high school graduating classes at once trying to get into university. Serious competition. An academic average of 85% is not enough). So that resulted in many hours of homework/studying while listening to NO CDs on repeat (or 5 in a row on the CD changer).

I was in love with someone whom I would never be with. I know, it's ridiculously sophomoric, but I'll never forget sitting in the hallways at school during spare period, New Order compilation tape on my Walkman, as I waited in vain for him to walk by just so I could get a smile and simple "hello." And every time I listened to "Temptation" or BLT at night in my room all alone, I would sing along, feeling like I could be the depressed subject in the video for those songs.

One more memory about "Temptation"--I put in at the beginning of the comp tape so I could listen to it on the way home from school every day. Walking along Kingston road, I felt such an exhilaration and sense of "f*** everybody who's happy!" at the lines "Up down turn around/Please don't let me hit the ground/Tonight I think I'll walk alone/I'll find my soul as I go home".

And TPK on vinyl ...I would blast that in the privacy in my room on Saturday nights, close my eyes and dance like crazy, pretending I was in the Hacienda Manchester hearing it live. One can only dream...