Last Sunday, at the same record fair booth where I found Marc Almond’s fantastic “Melancholy Rose” 12” single, I came across an Italian copy of Quando Quango’s 12” “Two From Quando,” featuring the song “Atom Rock,” released on a Bologna label called Base Record, although it’s still marked with the Factory Records catalog number FAC 102. Sweet! There was no way I was leaving the record fair without this record, even if I *technically* already have the song on vinyl. 

Quando Quango first came into my orbit thanks to a compilation called Cool As Ice: The Be Music Productions. Released in 2003, it’s a collection of music produced by members of New Order as Be Music between 1983 and 1985. There are two tracks from Quando Quango on there, “Love Tempo” and “Atom Rock,” both of which were produced by the dream team of Bernard Sumner, using the name Be Music, and A Certain Ratio’s Donald Johnson, under the name DoJo. At the time that copies of Cool As Ice landed in the bins at Amoeba, I was promoting and DJing a Wednesday night party at a now long-gone West Hollywood bar called The Parlour called Transmission. If the name weren’t a total giveaway, I was pretty obsessed with everything related to Joy Division and New Order, as were a lot of the regulars, so I played both those songs often. And, since one of the few constants in this world is that I’m still a little on the Joy Division/New Order obsessive side and still play for people who are riding the same wave, “Love Tempo” and “Atom Rock” still turn up in my sets. All of this a super tl;dr way of justifying my purchase, btw.