At their first concert, New Order were billed as the "No-Names" and introduced as "the remnants of Crawling Chaos" (another {not very good} Factory band). - Water Rat
Rumours states that they played the "Western Work Demos" that night (Dreams Never End / Homage / Ceremony / Truth)
Not confirmed.
------
< I think, upon reading your version of the quote, that Mark Johnson did get
it right. My recollection was incomplete and slightly wrong.<
Johnson's quote in full refers to "our mates couldn't make it" when what SBS
said was "The Names couldn't make it". Johnson lifted the inaccurate quote
from one of the very few reviews of the gig (from, IIRC, New Music News, the
short-lived paper put out by NME staffers during an IPC strike).
>So, you were there that night... wow, that must have been something
special. Did you know the band were going to be on? How was the crowd's
reaction? Care to share any thoughts/impressions?<
Unless you were well plugged in to Factory, you'd have had no idea that NO
(or Joy Division!) were going to play. They weren't billed. I'd recently got
hold of The Graveyard & the Ballroom and fell in love with it, and ACR had
recently played the Factory all-dayer at Blackpool Stanley Park (my home
town). So I decided to go and see them again.
The Beach Club was in a small two-floor club called Oozits in Manchester,
round the back of the Arndale Centre. It took a bit of finding, and as I
didn't know where it was, I got there early. Good move, as it turned out.
The Beach Club format was bands upstairs, and films downstairs. The film
showing that night was Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which fitted the ambience
well. However rather thandiving in to see the film, I thought I'd check out
the venue area - I could hear a band upstairs - turned out to be the end of
ACR's soundcheck.
And this is where my brain started working overtime. At one side of the
stage, there was Donald Johnson at his small, funky drum kit. On the other
side of the stage (such that it was - I don't think there actually was a
stage at all, just an area of floor) sat a much larger, black kiut. All
around were flight cases stencilled with the words JOY DIVISION. Sitting
casually on an amp, there's Bernard. I knew from talking to Tony Wilson at
the Blackpool event that JD were continuing. You don't suppose....
To this day I've never seen Metropolis all the way through. I just got myself
a beer, and waited by the stage.
About half an hour later, with the club half full, we were off. The stage is
small enough to mask the big hole in the middle of the band - There goes the
famous Crawling Chaos quote, and we're off on a 20-minute trip through a new
set of Unknown Pleasures...
Nerves were masked by decibels - vocals scarcely audible. I guess they played
Dreams Never End - Hooky singing over his shoulder, back to the crowd
throughout. Certainly they played Homage, the first of the new songs to be
discarded. And I guess they played Truth, with Barney's Melodica and Steve at
the drums, with slightly wayward reel-to-reel rather than a drum machine.
Five songs at most (Ceremony? Mesh? Guess so - as there was something that
sounded a lot like Warsaw)
By the end of the set, the room is heaving as people abandon the cinema -
they were still coming in as NO departed the stage. "Youve just missed Joy
Division.."
Rough and ready, and more than a little bit angry. But you knew it'd be OK.
Six weeks later, they played Blackpool, with a great deal more poise. Heck,
you could even hear the vocals...
ACR, by the way, were sublime. First time I'd heard Shack Up.
BTW, I'm still a bit pissed off that the Names didn't show ... never did get
to see them ;-)
Mark Bursa
