Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1505
Peter Hook and the light live at Cat's Cradle yesss.
Good morning, good morning. My head hurts. I am tired. I had some sort of… unusual illness yesterday but I think it has mostly reverted to the mean of my normal ailments oh goody.
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We are listening to the new Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke album. It is good so far. It is called Tall Tales. It does not seem to be replete with actual tall tales, which is a disappointment. Thom did one of those open letters this week, acknowledging how awful things have gotten in Gaza, decrying Bibi. He also did a very heartfelt letter about call-out culture and online bullying. Unfortunately for him, he did them in the same letter. Not a wise move. And, really, any entry-level PR hack coulda helped him avoid this. Live and learn, Thom Yorke.
I submit to you, reader, that if a man embarks on a world tour, multiple times, and sings, every night, some of the most ridiculous lyrics ever put to paper, lyrics written by an ex-friend, well. I submit that this is secretly an act of love and maybe he doesn’t hate that friend after all.
Maybe this whole Hooky v Barney New Order feud thing is overblown. How else could you sing lines like:
The sea was very rough
It made me feel sick
But I like that kind of stuff
It beats arithmetic
Every single night. When you didn’t even write them.
I also submit to you, reader, that it really is a weird-ass thing that a man can travel the US playing the entirety of a twenty-four year-old album of English syntpop that barely charted, and he can play small rural towns in the south to sold out crowds, well, that is some weird shit.
Peter Hook and the Light is a real weird phenomenon. But I also submit to you that Peter Hook, more than any other rock star with an overwhelmingly huge back catalog of banger hits and album-cut gems, has figured out how to be a legacy act that rules. Paul McCartney does a pretty good job too. But Peter Hook? Man. That guy knows how to pick a setlist. Peter Hook has played three sold-out shows at Carrboro’s legendary Cat’s Cradle across the last decade. Every one of them an amazing setlist, every one of them a different setlist.
Whether you are a giant obsessed New Order/Joy Division nerd, or a casual fan, there is going to be something for you at a Peter Hook and the Light show. Peter Hook and the Light have a different setlist every night. Peter Hook and the Light might, at any moment, bust out a track that you never, ever, thought you would hear live, even after seeing Peter Hook and the Light like five times and his former band New Order even more often. It is insane.
Now, playing all of Get Ready is a weird thing, to be sure. But it turned out it was awesome. Because even if you got to see the original Get Ready tour, you didn’t get to see “Rock the Shack” live, which is awesome, or “Run Wild,” which you think would be utterly ridiculous but totally worked.
The song selection is one reason why Peter Hook and the Light are far more compelling live than New Order is. Now, it was probably not by choice that Peter Hook plays smaller venues than New Order does, but he has made that work for him, by choosing awesome songs. New Order could, in theory, tour small towns all over America and play “Run Wild” or “Iceage” but they do not. They do normal rock star tours, maybe 10 dates, giant venues, one show in the south total if you’re lucky. Peter Hook is playing two shows this tour in North Carolina alone.
Another irony is that Peter Hook and the Light sound so much better live than New Order. And I have thought about this a lot, because New Order actually sound pretty good live these days. But a thing that works for Peter Hook and the Light is, ironically, the two bass guitars. Now, Peter Hook, had he stayed in New Order, would never have consented to having two bass guitarists, god no. But if you think about it, two bass guitars on New Order songs is brilliant because Hooky’s bass is always so high up and the songs still need some deep bass grounding while Hooky is off doing Hooky things. But in his own band, where he is the master, he seems unthreatened by a second bass guitar. Especially when it’s his son playing it.
Two bass guitars, it works for them.
Smaller venues, amazing setlist, better live sound. This is what you get with Peter Hook and the Light. You don’t get the New Order name, and you only get one member of New Order instead of two or three (depending on Gillian’s situation) and you only get one member of Joy Division instead of two. They are different, they both have their merits.
But damn. Peter Hook and the Light. Band you never wanna skip if you are a New Order fan.
Get Ready holds a special place for me, even if I would rank it as, mmm, gonna say the sixth-best New Order album. It was the first time I got to see them: Republic tour was in the summer, when I was back from college in Alaska. All the others before I could get out. And they didn’t play the east coast so I flew out to LA to see the Area:One tour with my friends Jill and Jes. Outkast and Moby also played. It was a great day and a treasured memory with a now-departed friend. Jill was so happy. Outkast played on a giant tongue. No complaints. Last night made me miss Jill, love you Jill.
This show: Crowd loved it, action fans in the front, dance party in the back. During the New Order set, they even got the cranky-cool bartenders at Cat’s Cradle dancing, something you never see.
New Order has a cadre of fans that follow them in the UK called The Vikings. There are some Vikings in the US — English people love adopting the US. And I have wondered if there are Vikings in the American south, if there is a Peter Hook viking splinter group, and the answer to all of these is yes. So many action fans, so many people who are obviously going to two, three, four shows.
And why wouldn’t you? We had an awesome setlist last night: Iceage, Day of the Lords, Heart and Soul, Sub Culture, Insight. But in the last four shows they have played Isolation, Touched by the Hand of God (!!!), New Dawn Fades, Perfect Kiss, Leaders of Men, Love Vigilantes. I could go to the Asheville show tonight and aside from Get Ready, the set might be completely different.
And even for a casual fan, that is okay! They got Bizarre Love Triangle and Love Will Tear us Apart and Blue Monday and Regret and Crystal and Ceremony and Temptation even if they did not get True Faith or Age of Consent. My god, New Order has so many bangin tunes. Joy Division has so many bangin tunes. It is an impossible task to cover everything. But Peter Hook, man, he tries.
I’ve never skipped a New Order tour, since I got out of Alaska. And I probably won’t. They’re getting old, bands I love are retiring and dying and every time I think about skipping one now I think “well this might be the last time.” Plus it is fun to take my daughter to the bands she is growing up with (though she has already seen New Order).
But I do not get excited about New Order tours anymore. I know the drill — the same hits, the same “obscurities” which are not obscurities, the same Joy Division songs. If I am lucky, like last tour, I might get one song I’ve never seen them do live before. Maybe. If I’m lucky.
But with Hooky? Every tour, every show, is a thrilling mystery.
Peter Hook keeps my love of New Order and Joy Division alive in a way that New Order cannot. Which is weird, because I love the last New Order album. I would not be terribly disappointed if I went and saw New Order and they played nothing except tracks from Music Concrete.
But I would not be upset because we have Peter Hook and the Light.
Plus, he’s a great vocalist! It’s crazy how Hooky can do a solid Billy Corgan (who did backing vocals on a Get Ready track), a great Ian Curtis, a solid Bernard. He has a guy helping him with Bernard’s higher stuff, but still. Hooky’s such a good singer, it is very weird he was not New Order’s vocalist after Ian’s death. Hilariously the one song his vocals did not sound spot-on on is the New Order song he sings on the album version. I guess he felt unconstrained by the need for mimicry.
We went with our friends Nora and Brian, they had some friends there, always nice to go to a show with a group, because we do not get to do that too often down here.
People’s t-shirt game was solid. Hooky has a jersey shirt he’s been selling for years, same design: his name as the team name, and the year of the tour as the number. So you see people in the same shirt with the numbers 15, 16, 18, 20, etc. It is pretty awesome. Lotta Cure T-Shirts. Buffalo Tom, Boston what. Saw a Chameleons shirt. And then some good punks for the early Joy Division: Fugazi, Adolescents, Descendants, Type O-Negative and the like.
But the best shirt, by far, was the dude in a Jim Bob tour t-shirt from a show at Sepherd’s Bush Empire. My god, deep cut. I mean, I am as big of a Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine fan America was ever likely to produce but… wow. Deep cut. Also I am looking at the setlist now for Jim Bob live at O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, England on Dec 13, 2019 and boy howdy, what a set. So many Carter USM classics: Anytime Anyplace Anywhere, Only Living Boy in New Cross, a cover of Inspiral Carpets’ This is How it Feels. That dude is psyched to own that shirt and I wanted to let him know that at least one person appreciated it, but he was off up front the whole time. I did not get a chance.
I did not exactly counter-program as usual. Hard to counter-program new order and joy division. I wore my Shellac shirt I bought at that awesome chinatown loft show in Boston in mmm gonna say 98? Ish? I don’t know I don’t wear that shirt more often. Comfy, fits great, still in great shape after 25+ years.
Also I bought a drink, my fourteenth of the year, and my receipt says “Rock Club LLC” on it as the merchant and, well, that is a great name for a company. Jealous.
Justa mix for you today, but I have rounded it out with one each of Joy Division, New Order and Monaco tracks that he played last night. That Monaco track has 22 million plays on Spotify that’s crazy. Just a couple million shy of Crystal. Blue Monday has half a billion, though. Bonkers. Enjoying the new Lorde so far, she is going for it. The new Alan Sparhawk is growing on me. Thank you, Nick, for Misty Lane. Thank you, Gatti, for the old Japandroids I listened to it yesterday.
See you tomorrow and I will write about something other than Peter Hook and the Light I promise.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.