My Second Recording: New Order / Henry J. Kaiser Arena - 2005-04-29

photo/screencap by Zachary Culbertson

New Order
2005-04-29
Henry J. Kaiser Arena
Oakland, CA

Setlist

She's Lost Control
Love Vigilantes
Regret
Hey Now What You're Doing
Krafty
Transmission
True Faith
Run Wild
Jetstream
Waiting For The Sirens' Call
Bizarre Love Triangle
Love Will Tear Us Apart 
Temptation
Crystal

(encore)

Blue Monday (mixed in with the Kylie Minogue's "Can't get you out of my head")

My second audio recording, and my third time seeing one of Manchester's finest, the last times being 1993 and 2001.  I ended up also seeing them at Coachella that weekend, but was barely pressed to survive the festival, much less consider recording it.

My friend Mike S. lent me his 90s vintage Sonic Studios DSM-6L mics (tucked underneath the shirt I was wearing) and PA-06 battery box, and I proceeded to plug them into an Archos AV320 HD recorder.  This was an era, before smartphones and tablets where watching portable videos meant lugging along a portable DVD player or bringing a laptop...it also seemed to be suited to use as a audio recording device.  One problem:  the built in hard drive was not designed to withstand any sort of jolt or shock, meaning that I missed both the opening She's Lost Control, Love Vigilantes, and a portion of the third song Regret...as well as the encore, though that may have been due to running out of battery power, which is why I didn't attempt to tape the openers, Chemical Brothers.

Another problem was that still being an absolute taping greenhorn, I set the input gain way too high, resulting in a distorted mess, but was mostly-somewhat able to clean up with judicious use of Nero's audio editor's de-clipper.  A few tracks of this were shared on New Order Online a few hours at the show, as for some ungodly reason I was in a hurry to get this out before leaving for Indio.  Had I had more sense back then, I would have just buried it in my backyard, never to be heard again.

Luckily for me, a second version showed up a few years later, though was only able to find this version 192K MP3s versus the usual lossless used by live music sharers.  While recorded more distantly, as we were right in front of Hooky if memory serves me correctly, it's overall a more pleasant listen, and the links to SLC and BM above are to that version.

At one point in time, a YouTube by the handle of "austinpowers61" put up clips of Crystal / Bizarre Love Triangle / True Faith / Blue Monday, but his account is no more.  I'm working on tracking these down...which has been done and reuploaded to my account, rejoince...so we're left only with about eighteen seconds of the start of LWTUA recorded by Zachary Culbertson, which unfortunately doesn't play anymore on YouTube...there was also a vid of She's Lost Control, but that looks to be lost, unfortunately.

For a transcript of Bernard's oft-amusing between-song banter, you are directed to the new-order.net site.  I recall we were all fairly pleased with their performance, think it was one of their best of the pre-return-of-Gillian era.  Although during BLT, there's a truly horrific improv of Madonna's Like A Virgin during the verses *ahem*, I will neither confirm nor deny that was my doing.