Just buy/stream some class of âbest of Manchesterâ record/playlist.
Job is oxo.
They were a band that were ultimately less than the sum of their parts.
They had the best rhythm section in the business but too often were dragged down by a weird English folk/Morris dancing vibe.
In football team parlance they had a very high ceiling but flattered to deceive. They were a bit like England under Sven in that regard.
The Stone Roses album has several tracks youâd skip over.
Their best stuff was when Mani was let loose to go proper funk but nearly all of that stuff didnât make an album.
Stone Roses member POWER RANKINGS:
1 Mani
2 Reni
3 Brown
4 Squire
+1.
Joy Division/New Order were a better band than the Happy Mondays but the Happy Mondays are closer to my heart.
Oasis > Happy Mondays > JD/NO > Stone Roses > The Smiths
Donât Dream Itâs Over was written about the current Limerick hurling team.
Iâve never met anybody who told me they liked The Eagles.
I donât want to either.
Did I mention I spotted Shaun Ryder in Portlaoise the other day?
Iâd have The Smiths higher in the ranking but wouldnât broadly disagree. Each to their own, whatever you got into aged fourteen is usually the first on the list.
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Manchester bands as international football teams:
Oasis - Argentina 1986 - a team mostly made up of solid plodders but led by otherwordly invincible genius which led them to conquer the world and make people feel things nobody else could make them feel and which they still long to feel decades later.
Joy Division/New Order - West Germany/Germany 1980s/90s - heavily influenced by Krautrock and Kraftwerk, had to go through a name change, produced consistent excellence over a long period.
The Stone Roses - Brazil 1982 - had a very high ceiling, had a superb rhythm section, too cavalier, couldnât get a tune out of the fella up front, got overtaken by more disciplined opponents.
The Happy Mondays - A mixture of Cameroon 1990, Colombia 1994 and Romania 1994 - flair filled, lovable headbangers, mixed up with drug cartels and liked to pull a gun
The Smiths - Yugoslavia 1990 - a talented but combustible mix - destined to end in acrimonious break up before fulfilling their potential.
The Buzzcocks - Czechoslovakia 1976 - brought a cheeky attitude and cocked a snook in the face of more established authority.
Elbow - Turkey - perennial dark horses, had a good year in 2008.
James - Sweden 1994 - solid outsiders but a bit dull.
The Fall - Uruguay 1986 - extremely cynical.
Simply Red - England 1992 - people just wanted them gone because of what they were inflicting on the public.
Noel Gallagher is the musical equivalent of Diego Maradona?
Thatâs a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to.
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New Order > Joy Division
Not a chance.
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More original and more influential.
I couldnât imagine Ian Curtis singing World In Motion.
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Busking is shite and needs banning
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Certainly amplified busking does
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Yes correct. Loud playing of shite music or a shite version of an otherwise good song
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Iâm going to adopt a âno firm opinionâ stance on whether Joy Division or New Order were more original or influential.
Not least because they are essentially the same band.
I recall watching something a while back (maybe a year ago) where there was a comment that stuck with me, I think it might have been Stephen Morris talking about a comment somebody made to him, where it was commented that Joy Division âsound like Manchesterâ. There was a reply âThatâs stupid, how can music sound like Manchester?â But the comment sunk in with him and he started to see how, yes, Joy Division sounded like Manchester.
I think Joy Division might be the most influential group of all in British music. You can see their influence so obviously in a direct musical sense in The Cure, U2, Simple Minds etc.
But then New Order might be the most influential British group of all time because they were at the very heart of bringing electronic dance music into the mainstream in this part of the world both through making it themselves and through opening the most influential club there has ever been and ever will be on earth.
The period between 1989 and 1991 when dance was fusing with rock and indie and whatever youâre having yourself were perhaps the peak years in all of music history. You had several key albums released in that period. Screamadelica, Loveless, Achtung Baby, Pills N Thrills N Bellyaches, and some of the Stone Roses non-album output. Maybe a few songs The Cure did around then too. All of these were essentially attempts to fuse the style of Joy Division with the style of New Order.
New Order were better because they have more great songs because they were around for longer.
But again, itâs the same band.
Johan Cruyff might not have been the greatest footballer ever, but heâs probably the most influential football man. You could make a similar argument for Joy Division/New Order in terms of influence.
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Good post. I think new order were more influential because they part of defining an entire new genre.
Relatedly I think Primal Scream donât get the credit for either how good or how influential they are. Theyâre class.
I donât know about influential - Primal Scream werenât so much musical magpies as full on chameleons ( The Chameleons were another band heavily influenced by Joy Division) - theyâre mainly associated with the acid house/indie crossover but they had incarnations in C86 and as gospel, country, Krautrock and Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute acts, but they were fucking brilliant and thatâs all that matters.
Well not being a dickhead to your long serving members matters too I suppose and Bobby Gillespie fails that test.
Bhoys, as a League of Scotland followerâŚcould you also please espouse on the jocko indie music scene? Is there a Glasgow/Edinburgh divide or does the fact theyâre only 45 minutes apart make that a moot point. Could you trace the development of the music there & what the major influences were? You have the likes of Simple Minds, Primal Scream, Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub that come from a Celtic persuasion. Are there any loyalist indie bands? Or do we only have Marti Pellow & Wet Wet Wet? It only dawned on me recently that the Chelsea Dagger song that greeted Celtic goals back in the day is nearly 20 years old. They were a shit band that had a big hit though I think.