Last week about the release of the original 'Ceremony' on CD after all this time. Apparently I'm not yet done musing about New Order (for no particular reason, it's just that I'm a music geek). On this particular occasion I'm wondering 'what is the rarest New Order song?' And of course I've got an answer for you. First, to clarify the question.

Visual Basic 6 Sp4 Download. I don't mean some obscure white label remix, or a live recording of a tune they played once. I want to determine which of their regular run-of-the-mill studio tracks is the most difficult to stumble upon. This is likely only the sort of thing that completists care about, and although I am not a fanatic by any means, I do enjoy seeking out the dark hidden places in post-punk music catalogues. And I've got an answer: 'Mesh'.

Now I can hear all you other post-punk music geeks clammering 'but that was on Substance, how rare is that?' To which I reply that yes, there was a song with that name on Substance, but it was not the song 'Mesh'. You have been duped! 'Mesh' itself has not been issued on any readily-available CD. Let me explain. Back in December of 1981 New Order liked the b-side of their second single 'Procession' so much that they turned around and issued an extended version of it on a slab of 12' vinyl. 'Everything's Gone Green' was released on Factory Benelux as FBNL 8 with two b-sides, listed as follows with their timings: 'Mesh' (3:25) and 'Cries and Whispers' (3:00).

These are both low-key mood pieces that sound exactly as though they are extra tracks from the session for their debut album Movement, released one month prior. They've got the same song-writing, the same recording, the same mood. And so although I have not read it anywhere officially, I will assume they are Movement cast-offs.

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The odd thing is they are as good as the tracks from the album, a record short by any standards at 35 minutes in length. Why they were not included on the album (or at least the CD version) is a mystery, though not the mystery I am investigating here. Here's the root of the enigma: the names for these b-sides were accidentally switched. So actually it's 'Cries and Whispers' at 3:25 which begins with the swirling synth reminisent of 'Procession'.

And it's 'Mesh', 3:00 in length, which has a plodding beat and the line 'out in the woods and the trees / atrocity lays'. (Or at least I imagine those are the lines, which is the same thing.) The compilation Substance 1987 perpetuated this problem. The second disk contains single b-sides on CD for the first time.

It has a track called 'Mesh' but it's actually 'Cries and Whispers'. The massive boxed set Retro includes exactly the same song, but correctly labels it, for the first time, as 'Cries and Whispers'.

The new Singles collection does not include b-sides and so has neither track. Now oddly, there is one place where you can find 'Mesh' on CD. In November 1982 the 12' vinyl EP 1981-1982 was released in Canada to collect up some of the group's non-album material.

It's a pretty scatter-brained effort on the whole, not including the 'Ceremony' single or 'Cries and Whispers'. In 1989 this EP was released on CD and become the only place on disk to get the full 12' version of 'Hurt' (at 8:03), a song truncated by about a minute for Substance 1987. More to the point, it is the first and only time that 'Mesh' has been available on CD -- and correctly labelled to boot. As a Canadian I know this well, having bought the vinyl EP when it was first released. Besides the musical content, it is notable for having cover art designed by Martha Ladly (ex-Martha and the Muffins), who was dating Peter Saville at the time. But before I branch out into the unwritten history of Martha Ladly, I'll stop.

I could easily fill several pages with this sort of esoterica, but no-one reads anything except my tech posts anyway. I stumbled upon your entry as I was searching to see if anyone realized that Cries and Whispers had an entirely different set of lyrics - and many of them - when sung on New Order's first tour of the US in late 1980. I have a bootleg of their performance in Boston at the Underground on 30 SEPT 1980. It sounds as if Peter Hook is singing here as well. There are many short bursts of lyrics with the same instrumental backing you'll find on the EP version. It sounds like one of the lyrics is 'inside the line' or 'the final.something' It's hard to understand.

It's extremely interesting and I wish I had the chance to ask Peter about it when I met him at Dry in Manchester in 1990, but I hadn't heard this recording until I recieved a tape copy in 1995. Homage is another rare track that was also performed at this gig in Boston and a handful of other gigs during 1980. It also appears on a badly recorded studio demo reported to have been recorded at the Western Works Recording Studio in July of 1980, possibly in Sheffield. Aparently there are decent versions of this 4 song demo floating around out there.