Episode #137 | 7.18.23
New Order: Blood on the Dance Floor, E in the Bloodstream, and Inventing the 1980s
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In this episode
New Order proved that a rock band could make dance music and actually become cooler in the process. The musical hybrid they created helped define the sound of the 1980s. It also defined the growing subculture in their hometown of Manchester, England, specifically at the Haçienda, the nightclub they owned. But beyond a fine time, the club scene brought gang violence, a notorious crime family, cocaine, ecstasy, a mental breakdown, and an arrest at the height of New Order’s fame.
Sources
Substance: Inside New Order, by Peter Hook
Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984, by Simon Reynolds
Flashback: New Order Play a 10-Minute ‘Temptation’ in 1981 (Rolling Stone)
New Order Keeps Marching to Its Own Mystery (NY Times)
New Order’s Three Months in Ibiza: “The Height of Decadence” (Bandbox)
New Order: “It Made You Feel Like Dancing, That’s the Thing That Came Back with Us from Ibiza” (Fader)
The Oral History of Haçienda, One of History’s Most Notorious Nightclubs (Vice)
Backspin: Peter Hook on New Order’s Later Years (Yahoo)
How the Haçienda became a gangsters’ paradise (Manchester Evening News)
Rank Your Records: New Order’s Stephen Morris Rates the Band’s Pioneering Catalog (Vice)
New Order: Life After Death (Rolling Stone)
Disgraceland is a podcast about musicians getting away with murder and behaving very badly. It melds music history, true crime and transgressive fiction. Disgraceland is not journalism. Disgraceland is entertainment. Entertainment inspired by true events. However, certain scenes, characters and names are sometimes fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
Credits
Hosted by Jake Brennan.
Written by Zeth Lundy.
Copy editing by James Sullivan.
Mixed and engineered by Matt Beaudoin and Sean Cahalin.
Score by Jake Brennan.
Additional music and score elements by Ryan Spraker.
Additional music services by Bryce Kanzer.
Ad music composed by the late, great Ian Kennedy.
Disgraceland theme song, “Crenshaw Space Boogie” written and produced by Jake Brennan. Performed by Jake Brennan, Bryce Kanzer, Jay Cannava, and Evan Kenney. Mixed and engineered by Adam Taylor.
*illustrations by Avi Spivak @avispivak