For what it's worth this is a post i made to the ceremony mailing list a few months backon the subject and i do hate to rehash old material, but as i'm a relative newcomer here, i figure i'd go ahead and see what y'all thought about it. i'm sure it's nothing radical and new, but here goes. anyway, it's long...
So I wanted to wait until I actually had the thing in my hands before I vented on this issue. And while alot of this might have been said before, this is my feeling on the matter. I think the JD box set probably spoiled us since it's so complete in it's scope (practically all of the officially released stuff, plenty of rarities/demos, and a whole disc of live tracks). Of course that's pretty easy for a band whose recording history spanned a mere 3 years (2 proper albums and a handful of singles with all the tracks able to pretty much able to stand up next to one another). Unfortunately, in the case of New order you've got the same number of discs to chronicle a band who's been doing it for over 20 years with 7 albums and an boatload of singles and whose sound has transformed radically from their first release to their most recent. So it's pretty obvious that you just can't go into the same depth with 'Retro' as you could with 'Heart and Soul'. I mean maybe there were a couple of things that everyone would've done differently w/ the JD set ( personally, I would've liked to have seen "Gutz", "the kill", etc.) but in general, I think you can say it was well worth it for both the completeist and casual fan alike. Sure everyone has their favorite tunes of which they might've wanted a live or alternate version, but for the most part they laid the cupboard pretty bare.
Fast forward to New Order and 'Retro'. I know that most bands probably don't spend all their time sitting around contextualizing their back catalog and reckoning their spot in musical history, but it seems to me that previous to this box set they've treated their non-singles with a bit of disdain. I remember a reviewer of "the Best of the Pogues" claiming that any album making such a claim that didn't include "the sick bed of Culculhainn" immediately undermined any validity it's title maight have carried. Well, substitute "Temptation" and "New Order" in that thought, and you can see how much care this band has given to it's retrospective releases. Well now we get "Retro", and a chance for them to tell the whole story. But how to do it? Well it's pretty obvious that they're not willing to knock the veneer off their present incarnation like they are with their previous one. I mean, could anything be more humbling to a band than to listen to "decades" from "Still" or the first half of the Preston Warehouse show? OK, so we don't get "Homage","When I'm with You", the X-mas flexi or even pre-release versions of Technique or Get Ready cuts. Well, I can live with that. Really. There's so much officially released stuff with enough pedigree that it would almost be wrong to bump a quality track for something that only a completist would want. And let's be serious, the completist already has most of the stuff anyway. Plus, they can throw 'em a bone w/ a limited "bonus" disk. We'll eat that stuff up. So now there's still the problem that a 4 disc set still won't be all-inclusive like the universally hailed (you know critics and fans alike) JD box set. Well, really there's 2 solutions: 1) know that we're not going to make everyone happy, but still put our heads together and try to come up with four solid discs that represent the history of the band as best we can (and throw in a bonus disc for the whining completists) or 2) admit that we're faced with a Herclean task, and knowing we can't possibly present a complete picture that will please everyone, we can just through our hands in the air and get four friends to choose the stuff and that way they can take the blame when they leave off "Run" (and throw in a bonus disc for the whining completists). Well I gues we know what happenened...
I'm sitting here with 3 F*CKING VERSIONS OF ELEGIA WITH NARY A LOVE VIGILANTES IN SIGHT!!!
Deep Breath.
Now I sat down last night and in literally about a half hour came up with what I would've done. And let me just put my biases out there right now:
What follows is even a compromise for me. Ideally I'd sacrifice more of the post factory work for 2 live discs, one chronicalling their early,"club" (for lack of a better word) days and another post-technique arena/festival gigs. But as much as it may not mean as much to me, to omit much of the post-factory work wouldn't really tell the whole story either. Related to this, I'm not necessarily a fan of live compilation discs. They seem a bit disjointed to me so I tried to narrow it down to one show which met 2 crtirea: it's known to have been recorded and it contains as many songs as I consider to live "standards". So I chose the 1dec 88 sao paolo, brazil show for the bulk of it and made an educated (I think) assumption that all of those sao paolo shows were recorded as well to fill in the gaps in a pretty seamless way. I also took for granted that the readily available 3 16 and Finsbury DVDs would suffice for the Movement and Get Ready portions of New Orders live history.
The whole idea of a remix CD is a joke. I mean this isn't New Order. Admittedly, I don't know how these mixes come about, but I think it's just a bunch of DJ's fiddling with the master tapes long after the band's forgotten about them. For God's sake, they didn't put "Stars on 45" on the Beatles Anthology did they? Plus there's already the (rest of) NO.
So if anyone's interested, here's what you would've got in the mail if I'd have been in charge of this whole circus we call "Retro". For what it's worth all of the singles are included save for "Here to stay".
(Note: stop reading now if you don't want to see yet another disgruntled fan's ideal New Order mix tape).
Early:
ceremony (original)
in a lonely place (7")
dreams never end
chosen time
denial
procession
everything's gone green (7")
temptation (12")
hurt (7")
blue monday
age of consent
the village
your silent face
leave me alone
confusion (original)
Middle:
thieves like us
lonesome tonight
murder
the perfect kiss (12")
love vigilantes
sunrise
shellshock (12")
as it is when it was
state of the nation
way of life
all day long
blt (12")
true faith
1963
touched by the hand of god
Late:
fine time (7")
round and round (7")
vanishing point
run2
best & marsh
world in motion
regret
ruined in a day
world
spooky
special
crystal
60mph
someone like you
Live:
01dec88 ibirapuera, sao paolo, brazil
ceremony
true faith
subculture
paradise
dream attack#
every little counts*
mr. disco
your silent face
blt
blue monday
age of consent
temptation
perfect kiss
face up*
fine time*
#--03 dec88
*--02 dec88
Bonus: a grab bag of remixes and live songs that aren't necessarily crucial, but are in my opinion either interesting sonically or important historically, but don't necessarily fit in the flow of the album proper.
video 5.8.6. (edit) 6 or 8 minutes of this would suffice I think. We all know how to get the full version.
let's go (instr.)
elegia (full)
perfect dub
sub-culture (record mirror mix)
evil dust
paradise remix
the happy one
mto
beach buggy
everyone everywhere (live montreaux fest., 02july93)
temptation98
run (live 16jul98 apollo, mannchester, the encore from the triumphant reunion gig)
love will tear us apart
in a lonely place
(unlisted double bounus track)
rock the shack (bbc radio session '01)
Whew! Now that that's off my chest, I can go back to listening to "retro" for the month.
cheers,
robin
floating around for my wife and child to see. I mean leave it to the bootleg collectors to chuckle at all the naughty bits. My point is that they seem a bit more concerned with their legacy as joy divsion whose retrospective releases have been both copious and well-considered especially when compared to the less-than-entralling new order comps.
:D
YAAAAAAAYYYY!!!! Robin has spoke! So it is said, so it has been written!! Jolly good job Robin...I couldn'a said said it better myself!
