Sunday, January 28, 2007

New Order

The summer of 1989 played an important role in the development of my musically-obsessive disorder. This was the summer after my senior year in high school, when I discovered the Smiths catalog, the Cure catalog and an album called Technique by New Order.

That summer, I played my Smiths, Cure and REM cassettes alot, but not like I played Technique. I played this cassette so much that I wore it out and had to buy another. The second time I bought it, I also bought a HUMONGOUS wall poster of the album cover to put on my dorm room wall. Even though the wall poster is long gone, I think I still have my Technique cassette somewhere in my cassette collection. (Yes, some of us still save cassettes.) I listened to this album ALL THE TIME.

Being a naive (AKA stoopid) freshman, I signed up for a MWF Aerobics class that met at 8am. Holy crap... that was dreadful. Part of my final exam was to lead the class through an aerobic routine. And of course, I chose a song from that album... "Mr. Disco."

I just paused from writing this post and pulled out the cassette and put it on. I had to do alot of fast-forwarding and playing and fast-forwarding and playing until I got to "Mr. Disco." As I was heading back to the computer, I started doing my final exam aerobics routine... there was alot of jogging in my routine and lots of arms crossing. This song is so infectious!!!!

I remember that my aerobics teacher had a mix cassette of workout songs that she put together. The greatest joy of the class was doing aerobics to the Steve Miller Band's "Jungle Love" every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.

...oh, I can't find my piece of mind because I need you with me all of the time. I used to think about you night and day. I used to feel what language cannot say....

God, I love "Mr. Disco."

But anyway, on Friday's radio show, I played "Age of Consent" off of New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies record. And it made me want to find more New Order records. Any suggestions would be great.

1 comment:

Mary said...

Ohmigod, I had that poster in my dorm--and an older one, too. I have a lot of New Order on cassette and eventually, got some on CD. I bought Substance on CD cause I wore out my cassette. AND I put a New Order song on a tape for an aerobics routine in high school! (ahem, I am a wee bit older than you.) I forgot what song but my aerobics teacher asked me what it was b/c she had never heard of it and it was such a good song for jumping around to music. I'll have to see if I can find my aerobics routine cassette...and you can borrow any of my New Order CDs!