Saturday night I saw New Order in concert in Philadelphia! I can't even begin to describe how amazing it was, definitely one of the best experiences of my entire life. Hearing your favorite band perform your favorite songs in person... actually feeling the music, your heartbeat changing to match the beat, it's overwhelming in the best possible way. When my favorite song (Your Silent Face) started I randomly jumped in the air, I was so excited! I watched through watery eyes, my brain kept jumping back and forth between being in the moment and enjoying the song to thinking "oh my god, that is New Order right in front of me, they are right there playing my favorite song, how is this POSSIBLE, how am I this lucky"
They played a perfect mix of old standbys and songs from their new album (which is outstanding, by the way) A lot of their new songs have already become favorites of mine, so I was really excited to hear them in person (Singularity, Academic, and Restless were all on the set list. You can listen to their new album on youtube here btw.) For the encore they played two Joy Division songs; Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart. (At the end the words "Joy Division Forever" appeared on the screen behind them. Excuse me while I go sob for eternity.) I knew they had played Atmosphere at the Radio City show a few days earlier, and I was really unsure whether or not I wanted to see them perform it at the Philadelphia show. It's one of my absolute favorite songs, but a huge part of why I love it is Ian Curtis' painful vocals. But any trepidation I felt about that was erased immediately when I heard the song start at the show. Bernard Sumner did an excellent job with the lyrics and they projected the 1988 music video that paid tribute to Ian Curtis while they played. Goosebumps.
Okay, onto my outfit! Pretty much within minutes of securing tickets to the show, I came up with this outfit idea. The cover of my favorite New Order album, Power, Corruption & Lies, features the painting A Basket of Roses by French painter Henri Fantin-Latour, with a colored code that represents the title & track listing in the upper right corner. The painting has a creative commons license, so I found a high quality image online and had it printed onto a dress. Then I got square wooden beads and painted them to match the color code from the album cover. My mom (who is basically super-woman when it comes to... well, everything, but especially working with jewelry supplies) turned the beads into a necklace for me. I don't know if I've ever been more thrilled with an outfit before! It came out even better than I imagined. And I love that the dress just looks like a normal floral dress, the necklace just looks like a geometric piece of jewelry, it's not super obvious that I'm theme dressing unless you're a fan of New Order.
