A post in two parts:
Sunday afternoon, about 16:30.
In about one hour or so I’ll be going to Eindhoven to see Peter Hook & The Light. This band will play the entire Unknown Pleasures LP, plus a bunch of encores according to the website. For years its a trend of old and tired musicians to take their magic moment from years back and play it back to back. Never cared for any of those, although perhaps I’d loved to have seen the Sparks playing their 22 albums night after night a few years back. But then, maybe I would love to see the Sparks anyway. Being more a New Order than a Joy Division fan, I am a bit wary of all this. Is Hook out there to fish out big money from old fans? They bought the LP, then Substance, then the Heart and Soul CD set, saw Control and then what do you do next? Kids are out of the house for the old fans and maybe they want a night out, so for 27,50 euro a ticket to play with a bunch of hired guns, one LP (‘Closer’ will be performed later this also). That sounds like a dumb idea and I fell for it. Well, no, I tried to get the support act, with Zebra playing either our ‘Live In Leugen’ set or a totally new piece based on ‘Unknown Pleasures’, since it seemed unlikely that the original 1980 support act Minny Pops would play. I talked with Wally of the Pops about us joining them, doing our Zebra styled versions of his old songs, and even recorded a bit of that, which Wally deemed not punchy enough. In the end he didn’t want to do the support, and Hook didn’t want a support anyway (and there will be short film now), so I’ll be in the crowd thinking: bloody hell, what was I thinking going anyway.
to be continued in a few hours.
Sunday night, 0:26
I cycled back and did i see an announcement for ‘The Queen Experience’? I think I did. I saw The Light. Joy Division were once described as ‘three manchester united fans and genius singer’, The Light might be four manchester fans and a hooligan singer. Hook is actually a fine singer but then: I loved Monaco. It was a good, solid show and especially the Warsaw songs were great. The rock n roll aspect of the concert with regard to Unknown Pleasures I thought were less convincing. That doesn’t justify the original songs. But the crowd loved it, singing along – another aspect that somehow doesn’t seem to fit the originals. I was thinking ‘have you ever had the feeling being cheated’ – and at sixty minutes of live music and a totally redundant film (don’t people have youtube at home to watch these rockumentary bits?) and 27,50 euro a ticket: I am not sure if you see me at Closer in december. Get a decent support act, Wieman with Minny Pops for instance, and I’ll be there. I have six months to ponder about this. Spoke with Wally for a while, so who knows?
picture above by Lisette Sutherland
It seems like I was on holiday, but actually I wasn’t, or not really. But lots of things to report. First of all, the cassette, split, with Richard Ramirez was released, in an edition of 31 copies. I have 3 to sell. The Kapotte Muziek is a slightly edited version of our concert in Heerlen earlier this year.
Frans de Waard 