I must begin with a line in the Eagles' classic rock tune "Hotel California." The line in question is this: "Some dance to remember, some dance to forget." Why is this a useful place to begin a piece about the British band New Order? Because the kind of dancing one does to their music (which is a blend of dance music, new wave, and rock) is not for forgetting. You dance to forget when you listen to A Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie," or Madonna's "Holiday," or Rihanna's "Birthday Cake." These dance tunes annihilate not only the past but also the future. (Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," for example, annihilates the past but opens the future.) When you move to this kind of music, the kind that forgets, you are very present, very much in the now. You're "just happy," you've "left your cares behind," you "don't have a trouble in the world." That is dancing to forget. Now, what is dancing to remember? This happens when a dance tune makes you kind of sad or reflective at the same time you are getting down. New Order make this kind of dance music, and there is a good reason why. The thing we always remember in the dance music they made during their peak years (which is almost every year in the '80s) is the death of Ian Curtis...

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