AN EXCELLENT 45 THAT'S LARGELY FORGOTTEN

But then again, when its the follow-up to the majesty of Ceremony and is itself followed-up by the perfection of Temptation, it is a bit easy to overlook just how good this sounded on its release back in September 1981:-

mp3 : New Order - Procession

Quite similar to a number of the tracks on the debut LP Movement, it wasn't a huge shift away from the Joy Division sound but it did highlight that with Bernard Sumner was a completely different sort of vocalist from Ian Curtis, the band's music would have to grab you in rather than have you think how the hell a man as slight and frail looking as Curtis could sing as if every note was being pulled from the very depths of his soul up to his vocal chords...

I bought the only copy of this single that my local record shop had and it came in a cardboard sleeve with a strange green design which I thought alluded to the title of the b-side. Soon discovered that it has come in nine different colours - and while I wanted to own every single one of them, there was no way as 18 year old student who that month had just started university was going to waste valuable vodka money on something as unworthy as a 7" bit of plastic (and besides, I would only have been so careless as to 'lose' all of them about 5 years later along with the rest of the 7" vinyl collection at that time).

The b-side was a precursor to what New Order would become within a few months - a band of their own right delivering electronic dance-music.

mp3 : New Order - Everything's Gone Green

This is ripped right from vinyl folks and is a bit shorter than the versions generally available on compilation LPs. Oh there's also a wee skip and a jump about 3mins in.....

Happy Listening