Power, Corruption and Lies

No, I am not talking politics here but something far more soul enhancing: music. I know it's a little late for this revelation but the New Order album Power, Corruption and lies is a serious piece o' work. Ever since I started doing research for my new screenplay, I've been listening to it. It first re-emerged into my conscious through the gloriously anachronistic trailer for Marie Antoinette. The song age of consent was stuck in my craw for a good week...

"I'm not the kind that likes to tell you just what you want me to"

The aforementioned screenplay I am working on takes place in 1983 so I'm collecting all sorts of mainstream and underground songs from that era. This album by New Order is the idyllic transition piece between the techno-popers they would be and the doom-meisters that were Joy Division. All this and Anton Corbijn has just started filming the Ian Curtis Bio-pic. No better time to revel in the dark tones of these brilliant Mancunians.

Songs such as Your Silent Face, 5 8 6, The Village and Blue Monday (ubiquitous for years after it's intial release) really capture the other side of the 80's -- free of pastel polo shirts, rampant comsumerism and tanning beds. Through necessity this album still had a lot of the human touch that makes music really hit you. Unfortunately as technology evolved they went on to be a slave to "the midi". You can only be this great for one album, things are gonna change and usually not for the better. When so many teens are counting on you, you're bound to make a few missteps. At the time though I thought they were humming along nicely. Twenty some years on, their output in the mid 80's feels as sterile as a GP's rubber glove.

It's good that I still look back on my teenage years with some fondness, not just embarassment and shame. Hell, the screenplay will be all the better for it.