Joy Division Appreciation
DOR
Two Ron Toe 9,899 Posts
I'm at work and I just had a convo with this 21 year old female I know (work related) and she was listening to the following song.
So, I was like "Oh are you listening to this because it's the 30 year anniversary of Ian Curtis death?"Her reply was naw, she was at some hipster club last night and the DJ dropped this song and she used Shazam on her iphone to find the song on youtube.Anyways, I didn't pick up on Joy Division til later in my high school days. Is the movie Control worth checking out?
So, I was like "Oh are you listening to this because it's the 30 year anniversary of Ian Curtis death?"Her reply was naw, she was at some hipster club last night and the DJ dropped this song and she used Shazam on her iphone to find the song on youtube.Anyways, I didn't pick up on Joy Division til later in my high school days. Is the movie Control worth checking out?
Comments
YES! Easily one of the best rock biopics ever made.
Hells yeah! Plus, there's live footage of Joy Division in the bonus features.
^^^^THIS
never looked back.
Yes. And the footage of the "band" from the movie is cool too. Mainly because you can appreciate how much Sam Riley was into the character. Dude nailed that shit.
That was the video I wanted to post. But I threw up Love because it was what the youth I was talking to was playing.
Thx for the recommendation on Control. Will check out soon.
Good for her I say. At least it wasn't some Lil' (insert random rapper name here) tune.
Sorry, old guy rant over.
Listening to live recordings of Joy Division, they sounded more like an electro-punk group in a sense. The mood on their studio albums are depressive and moody, but they're still great listens for when you're in that mood.
dudes are doing a service for fans, big time.
No doubt there are bootlegs I've never heard and there's a Strut opinion to counter this, but their live albums are solid.
"Who would you go back in time to see live?" is a fun game, but really, Joy Division is one band I truly smart over not being able to experience live.
I have mentioned it a few times here over the years - their version of Sister Ray is amazing and I will never tire of Warsaw.
Only found on that Peel Session EP, no?
Does anyone care to argue that Joy Division > New Order, though?
Not that I know of...? Link?
Sister Ray (live) is on post-death collection 'Still' - double LP with recordings from their last live show and studio cuts.
This is something I remember from the late 80's, looking at the Peel Session EPs in the CD Import section of Tower Records. But now, I'm not sure if it might've been New Order Peel Session that had the cover? I was fanatical about them both at one time, but it was more than 20 years ago.
agreed. I can't really compare the two since they were doing totally different things. I ride for both.
is this the new [no homo]?
Myself and Joe Bloke mates were a bit meh. We didn't think art, seminal, passion etc. We thought 'nutter'.
Plus we'd gone to drool over D.Harry and get raucous over Hanging On The Telephone.
Sorry.
I saw them three times; twice as headliners, and once opening for the Buzzcocks. A couple of friends of mine used to roadie for them occasionally, and through them I ended up with a bunch of bootleg cassettes of varying quality, all of which I managed to lose down the years.
Actually, one of the great things about Control is the performance sequences. I may have mentioned this in a previous thread about the movie, but if the dudes playing the respective members of Joy Division had decided to go out as a tribute act, they'd have cleaned up. The scene where they perform Dead Souls gave me chills at how absolutely dead-on they got it; moves, sound, phrasing, the lot.
I was talking to a couple of friends yesterday about the recent veneration of Curtis. Obviously, the music is a different matter, but I can't help but find it strange how his death seems to have become fetishised, especially by people to whom it can't possibly have meant anything at the time. I mean, I remember being pretty upset by the news, but it has to be said that the wider world didn't give a fuck. A friend told me how she'd been asked a few years ago by her 17-y-o nephew how the newspapers reacted to Curtis' death at the time, as if such a thing would have been a major story. The Manchester Evening News coverage consisted of a single column on page 5 or 6, which said something like "Local singer found dead on eve of tour". With the resurgence of interest in Joy Division over the last decade, it's easy to forget how comparatively marginal they were at the time. I've no doubt they were on the cusp of a commercial breakthrough that would have come even if Curtis hadn't topped himself, but they were nowhere remotely near, say, a Nirvana level of visibility and success at the time of his death.
I would say NO > JD. NO broke some ground with their product; you could see there was a nod to Moroder in there but it still had that cold vibe, no cheese. JD were tail-end punk as far as I was concerned. And basically very much a Curtis vehicle. IMHO, A Certain Ratio were more original; I liked their sound better. Cosine on the morose nature of the JD product. Sharing those sentiments on vinyl not particularly uplifting.
I lived in Manc for a while and bumped into a few of those heads. The Factory HQ was 100 yards from UMIST. I was told that NO had to come with something completely different as they were sick of being labelled as Curtis' ex-bandmates - as if they had nothing to offer themselves - which they all did. I think NO definitely worked; the side projects I've heard from the splinter outfits seem lacking.