A week or so ago I was in the car with my fiancee and a song I’d never heard before but that seemed strangely familiar came on the radio. "Sounds like New Order," I said. She said she was thinking the same thing but mentioned someone else it sounded like.
"That’s a Peter Hook bassline if I’ve ever heard one," I said. "Gotta be New Order."
I heard the song again this morning, and this time, the DJ said who it was. "Yes, the ’80s band," he added.It just shows how out of touch I’ve become. Ten years ago I followed that band’s every move, being (at the time) an incurable Joy Division fanatic. Since Joy Division was gone forever, New Order was the closest thing I was going to get. And sometimes I settled for the side projects, although they were almost always disappointing.
It’s a good song, I guess (though I still don’t know the title). It didn’t instantly resonate with me like their 1993 comeback "Regret" did, but it’s a whole lot better than anything else that took up space on the same album with "Regret."
But I guess it shows how priorities change when we get older. A search revealed the album was released about a month ago. There was a time when I’d run out on my lunch break and buy it on the basis of the band’s name on the cover. I just don’t do that anymore. I bought half my collection of CDs on the basis of one song, or on the basis of who recorded it, and I’ve been bitten way too many times.
A couple of weeks ago I was in the record store and I listened to a whole pile of discs and had a blast. But I walked out empty-handed. It was a great way to spend that evening, but I didn’t hear anything that made me want to spend 17 bucks. And it could very well be a year before I go do that again.
Am I getting old, or is there that much less interesting stuff out there now than there was in 1987?
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.
Two words:
iTunes and PyMusique.
(Assuming that PyMusique is still up-to-date; that is another one of those DRM cat-and-mouse games.)
Allofmp3 dot com. Russian MP3 site charges .02-.04 per song. Not sure on the legality of the site, but looks legit. No drm choose your format. MP3, Flac or OGG.
But you know, it is suprising when you hear some yahoos ring tone at work, and it sounds like the opening for Blue Monday, and then when you ask them about it, they never heard of NO.
Ahem. There used to be two people in that entire building who knew who New Order was–every time I had to come over for a meeting, that is.
But maybe I should be nice. Before 1993, no St. Louis radio station would play anything by NO but “True Faith,” except maybe on Sunday nights when Les Aaron had a two- or three-hour alternative music show on the less popular of the two Top 40 stations.
I think it’s funny every time I hear someone with a ringtone that sounds like an old Western Electric rotary, someone walks up to them and asks where they got that ringtone. Imagine that, a phone that sounds like a phone…