Tell me how do I feel

March 8, 2016 9:46 AM

The BBC teams up with the Orkestra Obsolete on the anniversary of New Order's Blue Monday to find out what it would sound like played on a diddley bow, hammered dulcimer, harmonium, zither, musical saw, and singing glasses.
posted by The Whelk (40 comments total)

Beat me to posting it by 4 minutes. This is a great great cover.
posted by frimble at 9:51 AM on March 8, 2016

I can't get the player to work, but that's O.K., because I think I'd rather hear Joy Division's "Transmission" performed on trombone, banjolele, washboard, and kazoo.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 9:54 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

The question is answered, it would sound fucking awesome.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:56 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

YouTube version
posted by The Whelk at 9:57 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's phenomenal, fantastic, wonderful: my favorite thing today. I want more!
posted by The Nutmeg of Consolation at 10:08 AM on March 8, 2016

That was beautiful, yeah.
posted by edheil at 10:09 AM on March 8, 2016

Awesomesauce has been poured over that track.
posted by Quasirandom at 10:10 AM on March 8, 2016

Simply phenomenal.
posted by Palindromedary at 10:12 AM on March 8, 2016

Best thing on the Internet today.
posted by Joey Michaels at 10:13 AM on March 8, 2016

As I said yesterday, "When I get my TARDIS sorted, I'm totally going to hold concerts like this throughout time and space."
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:14 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

I want more!

Hit the play icon again, it'll play again for you.
posted by el io at 10:18 AM on March 8, 2016

In a nearby parallel universe I'm dumbstruck watching a YouTube video of someone playing the melody of a song on a guitar. It turns out that if you turn it into a Frankenstein's monster with magnetic pickups that detect the position of the strings you can take the guitar out of its natural role as quasi percussion at the back of the band. It sounds great! Weird.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:19 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is excellent. Thank you, internet! Thank you, The Whelk!
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:24 AM on March 8, 2016

I could pull this open and try to secretly listen to it in this meeting I'm only half-paying attention to. But this seems like something I need to give my full heart and soul and attention.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:27 AM on March 8, 2016

Now do Fine Time.
posted by the bricabrac man at 10:29 AM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

From the instrumentation to the performers to the recording to the lighting, this musical vignette is just wonderful. Perfectly captures the tone of the original (which came out in 1983? what the?!?).

I'm really curious about how they processed the vocals. Nowadays there are zillions of effects that could create that sort of cold compression, but everything else in this performance is period authentic so I'm just going to guess that they have some kind of tube-powered thingy.
posted by vverse23 at 10:30 AM on March 8, 2016

Almost lost in the noise was this little factoid that kinda blew my mind:

Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time.

posted by the painkiller at 10:44 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wow, I thought I was going to be the perfect audience for this -- my love of New Order and my love of Raymond Scott-type swing is virtually without limits -- but it left me feeling a bit meh.
posted by saintjoe at 10:53 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time.


And Factory Records lost money on each one!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:54 AM on March 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Blue Monday by New Order is the biggest selling 12” single of all time.

Peter Saville's sleeve design was so expensive to manufacture Factory lost money on each one... Until they updated it with a less expensive version - they never expected it to be a hit and Saville's artwork was so late (as usual) no one could check it before it went to production

And White Skull beat me to it
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:56 AM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

though had Blue monday been released in 1933, by a band called New Order, hmmm, the implications might've been slightly different in that context...
posted by MartinWisse at 11:07 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

This was great - do they do requests? I'd like to hear their take on Joy Division's atmosphere.
posted by piyushnz at 11:20 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I can't think of any other '80s songs, by New Order/Joy Division or anyone else, better suited to interpretation by the variety of instruments used in that performance.

However, it's my second favorite New Order song of the '80s ... "True Faith" still floats my boat... "I feel so extraordinary..."
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:29 AM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is awesome. I first saw it on my FB feed which then took me to this 2013 Swedish tv documentary on the making of Blue Monday.
posted by praiseb at 12:14 PM on March 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

If I sing aloud, among a gathering of people, "An-y-time-I-see-you-fall-ing" and pause, I can expect more than one person between, say, 16-55 or so to respond, "I-...-get-down-on-my-knees-and-pray."

It's just that kind of powerful, connecting sort of song.
posted by droplet at 12:15 PM on March 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

This was great - do they do requests? I'd like to hear their take on Joy Division's atmosphere.

I suspect it would sound exactly the same.
posted by srboisvert at 12:19 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you try changing the volume on the player, it goes up to 11.
posted by Birriwell at 1:04 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'll hold out for the mandolin/trombone/kazoo cover of "Dead Souls"
posted by blucevalo at 1:10 PM on March 8, 2016

I think they cheated a bit from the 1930s by using that newfangled signal generator. Great music though.
posted by exogenous at 1:28 PM on March 8, 2016

That's phenomenal, fantastic, wonderful: my favorite thing today. I want more!

It's not uniformly as good as this (maybe never as good as this) but you might enjoy the Postmodern Jukebox.
posted by Rock Steady at 1:38 PM on March 8, 2016

I also dig the Nouvelle Vague bossa-nova style cover.

(alternate live version)
posted by dnash at 1:57 PM on March 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is fantastic.
posted by rtha at 2:11 PM on March 8, 2016

For some reason, I was reflexively ready to hate this, and OHMYGODTHISISREALLYGOOD

thanks for posting!
posted by schmod at 2:26 PM on March 8, 2016

I had never heard of a diddley bow, a prepared piano, or I guess slit drums. This was an education!
posted by Naib at 5:24 PM on March 8, 2016

I recorded a bunch of lo-fi acoustic porta-studio New Order/Joy Division covers many years ago, some of them recited in messy Italian of off the translations on an Italian Joy Division fanzine lyric sheet.
This version sounds much better than mine did.
posted by ovvl at 5:37 PM on March 8, 2016

If you enjoyed this, let me recommend the face book page for the WEIRD INSTRUMENT TRIBE.
posted by charlesminus at 7:46 PM on March 8, 2016

This prompted a delicious memory of the not knowing what the Blue Monday sleeve was for some time, then finding out and aaaahh!!!
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 9:25 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Have they got a download or CD? I want more! I have all of Max Raabe's music , this would make a great companion.
posted by pywacket at 6:25 AM on March 9, 2016

I'd definitely listen to a cover album by these folks.
posted by a halcyon day at 1:22 PM on March 9, 2016

This is great.
posted by Artw at 11:09 AM on March 10, 2016