New Order - 316

This DVD features two of the best New Order concerts ever. You know what? I don't even own it. I still have to buy a DVD player actually. But of course I already have the video tapes of the concerts, that's what's important to me as a fan (I'm not a collector of every item if I already own the content).
316 is not a random number. Apparently it must be read as "Three-sixteen", because it means there are three Joy Division songs and sixteen New Order songs between these concerts. It could be a coincidence, but it isn't, as the rule is followed on 511, the DVD with the Finsbury Park concert.

The first concert is early New Order at the Ukranian National Home in New York, 1981, and was released by Factory as Taras Sevchenko. So, it's ealry New Order at their best, from the start, with a powerful Chosen Time (mistitled as ICB), you already see they're on great shape, Barney's guitar, Gillian's keyboard (probably the prototype of the chords which will be used, in various sequences, on Everything's Gone Green, 586, Ecstasy and Blue Monday, I definitely see thread between these five songs), Steve's drums and Hooky's bass.
The early, wild and experimental performances of Everything's Gone Green are my all time favourite New Order moments (the best ever is the live video at the Ancienne Belgique, pure electro punk madness). This is one of those, though the song had already taken the definite shape.
Here the Movement songs sound even better, much more powerful, just like Truth, touching and fierce at the same time (Bernard especially, is amazing both as a singer and as a guitarist). And how is absolutely excellent when you have a storming Senses collapsing into a solemn Procession... One of the best things ever made in music is this earliest version of Temptation, with its pulsating minimal keyboard and the spacey, noisey grand finale, when New Order leave the stage one by one leaving the keyboard on auto-play.

The second concert is New Order at the Reading Festival, 1998. It's their triumphant public comeback (since 1993), after the secret gig at the Apollo, and the best thing is I've been at both. Unfortunately I was too young to see the early New Order at their best, but I saw the older Order, still at their best, even today, 21 years later. There are the greatest hits they had after the early period, like Blue Monday and Regret, there are some hits in new, wonderful versions, like True Faith, there are Joy Division songs, like Atmosphere, and even an amazing new version of Isolation, and a grand finale with 50,000 people (including me) singing along and jumping to World In Motion.