Talking about music you like is a very personal experience and the fact is – most people aren’t in to the same type of music. The Onion famously put out a shirt that said “Your favorite band sucks” and it’s usually true. I hope you’ll indulge me anyways.

Growing up in Texas, I was just close enough to Dallas to drive down there with a friend to see all kinds of different bands. In retrospect, leaving Dallas at 3am for a 2 hour drive back to my hometown probably wasn’t the best idea pre cell phone but we didn’t know any better back then.

I moved up to Utah for school and have stayed up here. Fortunately, Salt Lake has a great Alternative music scene and I’ve been able to see quite a few acts, like Oasis in February 1995 in front of 50 people prior to them blowing up. I’ve been to over 100 shows over the years including a couple of of European music festivals like the Roskilde festival in Denmark, Hultsfred festival in Sweden, and Lollapalooza in Dallas.

One band that has alluded me all of these years is New Order. I did get to see Peter Hook and the Lights on tour where he played a lot of old New Order and Joy Division songs but never had the pleasure of seeing New Order. This concert was originally scheduled for last year but due to Covid restrictions was postponed another year to October 2022.

I had watched Ticketmaster for tickets for quite some time as this was a sold out event for both the Friday and Saturday shows. I finally found some semi decent seats for $200. The show was at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

I flew Salt Lake City to Burbank direct on Delta Airlines and was upgraded to First Class which is always a hard get coming out of Salt Lake City with all of the Diamond members.

My brother and I parked at the Los Angeles Zoo and took the $6 bus over with other like minded 40-50 year olds to the show.

There is car parking at the Hollywood Bowl, but they stack up the cars very closely so in essence, you need to wait until everyone is in their car in order to get out. No thanks.

There were lots of dining options there but we had opted to eat before hand due to the sky high prices and long lines. The line for just popcorn was 20 minutes long.

The Hollywood Bowl is an amphitheater setup and the October weather was perfect.

The lineup was DJ Paul Oakenfold, Pet Shop Boys, and New Order. DJ Paul Oakenfold came on first and played about a 20 minute warm up set. Surprisingly, New Order then came to the stage. I had expected them to be the headliner but apparently Pet Shop Boys and New Order switch each night who is headlining.

New Order had 3 of the 4 original members: Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert, and Stephen Morris. Peter Hook was absent due to some disagreements between him and the band.

The setlist was Regret, Age of Consent, Ceremony, Academic, Your Silent Face, Guilt is a Useless Emotion, Bizarre Love Triangle, Plastic, True Faith, Blue Monday, Temptation, Decades, with an encore of California Dreamin (Mamas and the Papas cover) and ended with Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Here are some of the clips:

Ceremony

Bizarre Love Triangle

Blue Monday

Temptation

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Full Show

Bernard isn’t the best singer live, but I thought he did a very good job at this event and New Order played a good mix of old New Order and Joy Division hits. I’m glad we arrived early as there were several folks that filed in half way through the New Order set. I can finally cross New Order off of my concert bucket list and was very happy with the Hollywood Bowl performance.