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The Blue Monday Diaries: In the Studio with New Order
A firsthand account of the studio sessions for the fastest selling 12" single ever, 'Blue Monday', New Order's classic dance track, and Power, Corruption and Lies, their acclaimed second album. Compiled from the diary/journals of Michael Butterworth, the trusted friend of New Order who lived and worked with the band throughout the recording sessions. Three decades on, author Michael Butterworth breaks the silence to reveal exactly what went into the recording of this classic track, as well as the Power, Corruption and Lies album. Drawn from Butterworth's meticulous journal entries, Blue Monday provides a uniquely personal insight into the creative personalities of the band.
- GenresMusic
275 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 15, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 7, 2020
Very interesting read. A different approach to many books that focus on the recording of a key album.
The writer was there at the time of recording Power, Corruption and Lies and the majority of the book is his diary of that time. Makes for interesting first hand view point, which is shaped by the writer’s train to thought.
Not a bad thing, all the requisite information is there, just different.
The writer was there at the time of recording Power, Corruption and Lies and the majority of the book is his diary of that time. Makes for interesting first hand view point, which is shaped by the writer’s train to thought.
Not a bad thing, all the requisite information is there, just different.
May 23, 2024
IF ONE had chanced by my quarters at any point during the preceding months, one's ears might have been pricked by insistent bursts of high-pitched squeaks. One may have surmised that the squeak surely emanated from a small rubber dog-chew toy, and one would have been correct. The window is of course positioned at such an elevation that peering-in is prohibited, but had 'one' been able to do so, one would have been witness to such a toy clenched tightly by my jaws, which would at regular intervals clench, hence the squeaking which drew us in to this milieu.
This clenching and chew-toy-ing has of late become my means of expressing a 'liking' for a thing. 'Like, Like, LIKE' the squeaks would say if they could be transliteralised - if such a crude instrument as language could ever reach such sublime heights of expression as 'the squeak'. And there is so very much to 'Like', not only this book that has preoccupied my functioning consciousness.
Nostalgia was once considered a psychological malady - and, frankly, they were right. Nostalgia is not simply wallowing in the style of a bygone age, or binge-watching The Man from UNCLE. It is a desire to retreat into the Lost World of your own recent past, that you got mugged out of enjoying to the fullest, you think, accompanied by the realisation that the horse you are flogging is both dead and yourself.
Fear not - there is only Optimism. There is no alternative. Tempered by necessarily caustic realism, but indefatigable nonetheless. It is all a dream, only bits drop off - more quickly, if you make unwise decisions. We are indeed hurtling through the digestive tract of an unknowable ruminant.
'Evocative' is a word I rarely use (only three times in this paragraph alone, e.g.), a word I rarely use without thinking, because overuse dulls it's gleam. Remember when everybody said everything was 'resonant'? Everything is resonant in some way, but if everything is, nothing is, etc. The title in question, 'Blue Monday Diary' really is both resonant and evocative! But thyen, Manchester is the Emerald City of my psyche. The real and unreal Manchesters are fused to me as if they went through Seth Brundle's contraption. They overlap and are indistinct. The city is a machine that eats people. It makes money, and as a by-product spews out budding middle-class families, drug-users, alcoholics, graphic designers, and it's own servants - dour functionaries, moneyed property-developing footballers, events managers, and other gargoyles.
Large swathes of the city as-was have been auto-cannibalised, then regurgitated as monolithic, phallus-tombstones sprouting like graveyard fungus. The gothic style of the present is 'power-bland'. Featureless, but clean, shiny, even. The primary quality is they are just THERE. They want to be noticed at any cost. Aggressively overbearing, if they were people they would elbow you out of your own wedding photographs.
There s a 'Once Upon A Time In Manchester' yet to come. But like the other works that bear similar titles, the story is not one of unalloyed triumph - there are great moments, but the are veined like flecks of gold through a saga whose dominant themes are of compromise, failure, regret, disappointment ETC., Betrayal! Fabulous, sexy betrayal, the engine of all great drama. But where there is betrayal, there must of necessity be loyalty. No one believes they will pussy-out before the cock crows thrice, but pussy-out we all essentially do - and most often, pussying-out is the only non-suicidal option available. Henceforth, we live to fight another day, or at least cower through it in relative comfort, but we do so with a tremor of guilt and fear evermore.
Even thought the nascent New Order had suffered a bereavement necessitating a change of name, at the stage described here, they still exude a virginal exuberance. 'Getting on with it' was the most pressing concern, and it was still a Land Unexplored. And you can still tolerate your shipmates until approx age 30. Something happens, tails drop off, we shed skins - you can still do it, with ease and professionalism - but corrupting influences are having their way. Your own hormonal delusions subside, and things look different - not fundamentally different, just profoundly different. Did the Electric Circus ever exist? Or was it merely a delusion shared by a group of hyperexcited hysterics. Love truly is The Drug. Everything else is a counterfeit.
Onward, though. Onward, with optimism - there is no alternative, No Joke. Is Paramount Books still there? I hope and pray. If I ever escape ... Read this marvellous account, buy it, buy it now ... augment with Michael Moorcock, Jerry Cornelius, L Frank Baum, Phil Dick - even on an off-day has some potent euphemisms for you - for example, (...), Roadside Picnic, the ecstasy of ruined industry, overgrown with green, underground comix, Archie comics, ECs, Oz, Phun City, BOOTLEGS ... Th Shop On the Borderlands ... THE SHOP ON THE BORDERLANDS must be rebuilt ... shopping is fun ... THE INVISIBLE SHOP. The invisible power of cool control, power that is omnipresent, but invisible. Force fields, imagery of punishment, imagery of revelry. Build your own prison, it's fun!
Of coure, I like money and shopping - who wouldn't? Some poseur? It is a great comfort, and as a mammal of course I instinctively crave comfort. But there's the rub. The stuff of drama. DRAMMER! But guilt either destroys you or it's a mere affectation. It's a disease, but I do think it helps make the planet more tolerable. Crazy Catholic, yes, maybe. Money, why, it's as rational as water. you can argue with it, but you'll be wasting your N-R-G.
Bad times for such counterfeit-Loves churned at pharmacologically. The New Order enjoyed the last great eras of the chemistry set. The Mutants of SF remembered the sixties, and asked for a 'New Drug' in the eighties. And lo, it did arrive. New Drug, New Order, as the election poster promised. As a politician of the time said: 'the problem with reality is, it's like trying to round up The Blob with a sheepdog. As soon as you get it in the pen, it's oozing out through the bars, and it absorbs your sheepdog. Better a handbag full of jelly than a trouser full of mole rats!'
Hey, anything goes (peace sign) (speaks into hidden radio to control - static, radio chatter - ).
This clenching and chew-toy-ing has of late become my means of expressing a 'liking' for a thing. 'Like, Like, LIKE' the squeaks would say if they could be transliteralised - if such a crude instrument as language could ever reach such sublime heights of expression as 'the squeak'. And there is so very much to 'Like', not only this book that has preoccupied my functioning consciousness.
Nostalgia was once considered a psychological malady - and, frankly, they were right. Nostalgia is not simply wallowing in the style of a bygone age, or binge-watching The Man from UNCLE. It is a desire to retreat into the Lost World of your own recent past, that you got mugged out of enjoying to the fullest, you think, accompanied by the realisation that the horse you are flogging is both dead and yourself.
Fear not - there is only Optimism. There is no alternative. Tempered by necessarily caustic realism, but indefatigable nonetheless. It is all a dream, only bits drop off - more quickly, if you make unwise decisions. We are indeed hurtling through the digestive tract of an unknowable ruminant.
'Evocative' is a word I rarely use (only three times in this paragraph alone, e.g.), a word I rarely use without thinking, because overuse dulls it's gleam. Remember when everybody said everything was 'resonant'? Everything is resonant in some way, but if everything is, nothing is, etc. The title in question, 'Blue Monday Diary' really is both resonant and evocative! But thyen, Manchester is the Emerald City of my psyche. The real and unreal Manchesters are fused to me as if they went through Seth Brundle's contraption. They overlap and are indistinct. The city is a machine that eats people. It makes money, and as a by-product spews out budding middle-class families, drug-users, alcoholics, graphic designers, and it's own servants - dour functionaries, moneyed property-developing footballers, events managers, and other gargoyles.
Large swathes of the city as-was have been auto-cannibalised, then regurgitated as monolithic, phallus-tombstones sprouting like graveyard fungus. The gothic style of the present is 'power-bland'. Featureless, but clean, shiny, even. The primary quality is they are just THERE. They want to be noticed at any cost. Aggressively overbearing, if they were people they would elbow you out of your own wedding photographs.
There s a 'Once Upon A Time In Manchester' yet to come. But like the other works that bear similar titles, the story is not one of unalloyed triumph - there are great moments, but the are veined like flecks of gold through a saga whose dominant themes are of compromise, failure, regret, disappointment ETC., Betrayal! Fabulous, sexy betrayal, the engine of all great drama. But where there is betrayal, there must of necessity be loyalty. No one believes they will pussy-out before the cock crows thrice, but pussy-out we all essentially do - and most often, pussying-out is the only non-suicidal option available. Henceforth, we live to fight another day, or at least cower through it in relative comfort, but we do so with a tremor of guilt and fear evermore.
Even thought the nascent New Order had suffered a bereavement necessitating a change of name, at the stage described here, they still exude a virginal exuberance. 'Getting on with it' was the most pressing concern, and it was still a Land Unexplored. And you can still tolerate your shipmates until approx age 30. Something happens, tails drop off, we shed skins - you can still do it, with ease and professionalism - but corrupting influences are having their way. Your own hormonal delusions subside, and things look different - not fundamentally different, just profoundly different. Did the Electric Circus ever exist? Or was it merely a delusion shared by a group of hyperexcited hysterics. Love truly is The Drug. Everything else is a counterfeit.
Onward, though. Onward, with optimism - there is no alternative, No Joke. Is Paramount Books still there? I hope and pray. If I ever escape ... Read this marvellous account, buy it, buy it now ... augment with Michael Moorcock, Jerry Cornelius, L Frank Baum, Phil Dick - even on an off-day has some potent euphemisms for you - for example, (...), Roadside Picnic, the ecstasy of ruined industry, overgrown with green, underground comix, Archie comics, ECs, Oz, Phun City, BOOTLEGS ... Th Shop On the Borderlands ... THE SHOP ON THE BORDERLANDS must be rebuilt ... shopping is fun ... THE INVISIBLE SHOP. The invisible power of cool control, power that is omnipresent, but invisible. Force fields, imagery of punishment, imagery of revelry. Build your own prison, it's fun!
Of coure, I like money and shopping - who wouldn't? Some poseur? It is a great comfort, and as a mammal of course I instinctively crave comfort. But there's the rub. The stuff of drama. DRAMMER! But guilt either destroys you or it's a mere affectation. It's a disease, but I do think it helps make the planet more tolerable. Crazy Catholic, yes, maybe. Money, why, it's as rational as water. you can argue with it, but you'll be wasting your N-R-G.
Bad times for such counterfeit-Loves churned at pharmacologically. The New Order enjoyed the last great eras of the chemistry set. The Mutants of SF remembered the sixties, and asked for a 'New Drug' in the eighties. And lo, it did arrive. New Drug, New Order, as the election poster promised. As a politician of the time said: 'the problem with reality is, it's like trying to round up The Blob with a sheepdog. As soon as you get it in the pen, it's oozing out through the bars, and it absorbs your sheepdog. Better a handbag full of jelly than a trouser full of mole rats!'
Hey, anything goes (peace sign) (speaks into hidden radio to control - static, radio chatter - ).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews