NO: 09 JUL 1983 City Gardens - Trenton, NJ

 

(whatdoidonow1996)

Setlist

Age Of Consent, Your Silent Face, Dreams Never End, Truth, Leave Me Alone, Cries And Whispers, Hurt, 586, Denial, Temptation [encore] Blue Monday

The original source for the writeup was a cassette from my collection, a non-descript Maxell XLII. This is on the A side. The B side contains the abbreviated (only first seven songs) from the gig in Washington DC the night before. The filler after that is a performance by Minimal Compact in Gothenburg, Sweden 12 DEC 86 ("Take Me Away" and "Nuclear Twist")  This is noted to establish that this tape was copied no earlier than late 1986.  This was all before the soundboard recording linked to above started to circulate.

Sound is fairly clear and dynamic, some level of hiss, not too bad, though there likely are azimuth alignment issues at the start, but these clear up.

The opening 30 seconds is the tail end of a song (probably not New Order)...just a bit of synth and feedback. There's a break, and then the proper set begins.

Age Of Consent

The opening lines from Bernard are off-key.

Right channel volume cuts out from 1:22 - 1:35...may be a mic issue. At 2:43 some fan calls out for an Eric...there's a bit of chatter throughout this one.

Your Silent Face and Dreams Never End follow.

Right afterwards, there is Truth, featuring a very interesting melodica intro melody.

Hooky segues into the bassline for Leave Me Alone, which stops and starts.

lyric: "You get these words wrong / I don't give a fuck."

Cries And Whispers follows. There's not much substance to these notes because the Order are just playing these straight through!  Some buzz / crackling through the PA throughout this song.

lyric: "The edges froze / they seemed to turn to fucking ice"

Bernard appears to be having a bit of trouble with his delivery here...a couple of lines are more spoken than sung.

The volume greatly drops for the intro of the next one, Hurt, but that is more likely a reflection of recording characteristics within the venue than a tape error, although on the sbd copy it's fine.

Fairly energetic version, too.

5-8-6

PH: "Add more sequencer through here, drop it five."

Interesting staccato effect with the guitar.

Some keyboards can be heard in between tracks, as well as a punter yelling out, "Get a bigger hammer!"

BS: (in a weird nasally voice, attempting to imitate the Jersey accent) "Okay, suckers."

It has been revealed by 'Mongo Lloyd' that the final tracks after Hurt were 5-8-6, Denial, Temptation, an pre-encore break with PiL-type music playing (would love to be able to ID this), and the encore of Blue Monday, featuring the lyric: "Now I stand here masturbating".

Indeed, it turns out the original listing of 586/BM/Confusion here are actually from the Detroit show a week earlier, so the notes have been integrated with that listing.

NME journalist Dele Fedele's favorite show ever!

Versions

SBD #1 - On YT since 2013, as posted above.  A mastered version by the legendary Analog Loyalist from TPOIT was posted to DIME in late 2019.

AUD #1 - unknown taper/gear.  This version is missing the last three tracks, which are interpolated from Detroit '83

AUD #2 - known to ellaguru, who shared this on DIME in 2008.  Sony D6/ECM-959 mics, though the ID isn't 100% certain.  Complete.

AUD v3 - taped by female friend of mongolloyd, hasn't surfaced yet.