New Order Album: “Live in Glasgow”

Like some (most?) fans I bought it mainly for the second disc with rare and unseen footage.

Yes, we are rewarded here with the eclectic repertoire from the first TV appearance in April 1981 (Celebration) to one of the final concerts in 2006. I had wanted the Celebration footage for years (you have a snippet of it in NewOrderStory) and it's great to have it finally. Then come Glastonbury shots, which are worth every cent you spend for this DVD. Apparently pissed or otherwise influenced Bernard Sumner is completely off the hook there, being enraged by the longhair audience, who is not ready for drum machines; in the meantime the cameraman, dazed too, is trying to tune his own sight: camera wanders unfocused on the floor, eerie wires and blurry knobs. Right before the concert some dude filmed Rob Gretton and the band getting out of their old Ford and camping around, which is amusing. Knowing "Barney" Sumner's personality and attitude, it's unbelievable that something like this officially saw the light of day (well no wonder, the entire project was carried mostly by bassist Peter Hook and drummer Steven Morris). After that the footage quality becomes less professional: like blue x-rays of a dancing body at a gay disco. Almost monochrome, shot from one stand, the footage has surprisingly great sound quality; "Hurt" and "Ultraviolence" are superb, although ONE BIG DOWN: the first 10 or so tracks lack basses! I had my subwoofer all the way up and still barely can get any low register.

The 2006 section is kinda out of place: disc 1 represents the band at their latest already (it'd been better then to use some of the January 2006 Manchester show consisting completely out of Joy Division songs, like "Warsaw", "24 Hours").

As for the concert in Glasgow, I was reluctant initially to buy it, had it not for disc 2. More or less it's the same type of concert that we could get on "316" (2001) and "511" (2004), with addition of "Waiting For The Sirens' Call" songs. The band apparently realizing this decided to embed their comments in between the tracks, which is a neat but underdeveloped idea here. The sound may be better than on "511", the true rarities are great "Shadowplay", "These Days" and "The Perfect Kiss", while turning "Love Will Tear Us Apart" into a whoping, crowd-chanted anthem makes you cringe. Ironically, when the band was making NewOrderStory back in 1993, they didn't give a hint of what was going on; this time, going separate ways again, the antagonism is clearly seen.

I ordered this concert on DVD. The DVD with the actual concert material on it was defective! It would not play at all on my conventional DVD player. When I played it on my blu ray player, it played up to "Sirens Call", then went bizerk. I was about to contact Amazon and place an order for an exchange, but then read the reviews and noticed that other people also received defective DVDs. So exchanging a defective DVD for another defective DVD is not worth my time and effort. Its a shame, because i really liked the concert, what little I saw.

Unfortunately, of all the music DVDs I've ordered from other groups and concerts in the past, I can't say that this even came close to the being best as far as sound quality goes. It sounds like someone went down into the audience, and recorded the concert from there. The sound was not all that good! The music from all the instruments was loud and clear, but it was very difficult at times to hear what the group was singing. Their voices were muffled and drowned out by the instruments. The video quality on the other hand was good. But, the concert was filmed inside a hall, dimly lit, and gave the appearance of being filmed inside a box. Overall, this could have been done a lot better.

But as stated in the first paragraph, I was not able to advance past the 11th song. If the DVD wont play, quality doesnt matter any more. Again, I am not the only one to suffer with this problem, so be ware! Sometimes when the recording process is deffective, that problem will multiply itself over multiple copies. I'm very disappointed.

This DVD set is excellent. Your get insight into how the individual minds of the band work (minus Gillian, as she was talking care of her and Stephen's children from 2001 to 2011). This concert showcases their recognizable hits (True Faith, Temptation, Byue Monday, etc...) as well as songs from their then-recent album Waiting for the Siren's Call. This is not concert footage you haven't seen before (Bernard flubbs lyrics, dances around etc...) however I think it's worth it for the second disc alone, as it contains rare and never before seen footage of shows from their hayday.

Perfect DVD!

Perfect new order's performance too

Great deal!

Antonio Chagas ( Rio de Janeiro / BRA)

Great concert, even though it's similar to their last production, it's still worth it. The first DVD (Glasgow concert) must have been of poor quality as it froze up, skipped, froze up, skipped, etc, for the duration of the entire video. The second disc worked fine. I have a new DVD player and haven't experienced this with any other disc, and I've played plenty. I'm lazy and probably won't go through the time and process of returning it (especially after I assumed it would work and threw out the receipt and pacakging), but was disappointed in a defective disc being shipped to me. For New Order fans, as long as it works, def worth picking up.