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Love Torn Apart: Joy Division butchered, ruined, and made almost unlistenable
05.31.2020
04:16 pm
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Last year, Uberphawx created a bit of stir with his psychotic version of the Beatles “Eleanor Rigby” where all the notes were E or F. It was like a tune that had escaped from the confines of Arkham Asylum.

Now, Uberphawx has been ruining the delights of Radiohead’s “Karma Police” and taking the carving knife to Joy Division. Diabolical torture has been carried out on some of Joy Division’s most iconic tracks like “Decades” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” The result is wholesale carnage like the aftermath of Leatherface picnicking on befuddled youngsters with a chainsaw. Someone should give Uberphawx a job making horror movie soundtracks.

Take a listen, Joy Division will never be the same.
 

 
More Joy Division carnage, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.31.2020
04:16 pm
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Get your hands on Peter Hook’s personal Joy Division and punk memorabilia

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Over the years, legendary New Order and Joy Division bassman, Peter “Hooky” Hook has been collecting almost every single piece of memorabilia relating to his long career in music. From early club and concert tickets to his own numbered ticket, photograph, and recording of the famous Sex Pistols gig at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1976 that kickstarted the Buzzcocks, the Fall, Joy Division and would you believe? Mick Hucknell. Thru to the original master tapes of singles, 7” test pressings, artwork, bass guitars, amps, clothes, records, limited edition boxsets, CDs, right up to the scripts, publicity material, and posters for movies featuring the Manchester music scene (24-Hour Party People) and the Ian Curtis biopic Closer.

Now Hooky has decided to auction off all his prized personal collection of Joy Division and punk memorabilia to raise money for charity for the likes of CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), the Epilepsy Society, and The Christie. A total of 291 lots are up for grabs consisting of some of the finest punk/new wave memorabilia ever made available in one auction. As Hooky told Louder than War:

Every single piece that I own is in the catalogue. There is nothing else. This is every single thing I own. I only kept one thing back that a wonderful kid I met years ago gave me an art piece – a black felt square with hand wired Unknown Pleasures on it and it’s the only thing I kept and it’s in my office. All the proceeds go to charity. I don’t want to insult the people by keeping the money. I didn’t want to end up like a King Midas figure sitting there on my own cackling, look what I got! That feels nuts.

If you want Hook’s original bass guitar, or the original handwritten lyrics to Joy Division songs, or studio master tapes then get your bid in NOW for Peter Hook: The Joy Division Signature Collection.

The auction commences on 20th March, at 13:00hours (UK time) at Omega Auctions, Sankey Valley Industrial Estate, Newton-Le-Willows. Viewing takes place on 25th February—1st March. However, if you can’t get along have a swatch at some of the items for sale below or check the whole catalog here.
 
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Lot 1: 1970s Club Tickets.
 
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Lot 3: Hooky’s 7” singles including his first two punk singles.
 
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Lot 5: Sex Pistols collection.
 
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Lot 6: Sex Pistols Free Trade Hall ticket, recording, and photograph.
 
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Lot 10: Joy Division handwritten and signed lyrics.
 
See more of Hooky’s Joy Division Signature Collection, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.20.2019
08:44 am
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Was the Yorkshire Ripper serial killer a devoted Joy Division fan???


 
In his 2012 memoir, Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, Peter Hook tells the tale of how he and Joy Division drummer Steve Morris were questioned in 1979 by police investigating the then-unsolved Yorkshire Ripper murder case. That year, Peter Sutcliffe’s reign of terror was at its height and Joy Division’s touring itinerary took them to some of the very same neighborhoods where the serial killer had killed his victims. With their touring schedule not dissimilar to the murderer’s movements, they were questioned about their activities around the North West of England that year.

Interviewed on Xfm radio, Hook explained:

“What happened was that every club we played in was run by a dodgy promoter in some dodgy part of town. We managed to play in the red light districts of Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds, Manchester and probably London as well. The police had asked the public to note down the license plate numbers of any strange cars in the area, so they could investigate them later. Somehow mine and Steve’s cars had gone in the system a couple of times and basically we got picked out!”

“Steve was very very nervous in those days and when the police questioned him, he lost it. He got taken to the police station and his mum had to come and rescue him. It was very frightening – they basically asked you straight out if you were the Ripper.”

 

 
Sutcliffe, who was questioned and released an incredible ten times, was pulled over by police for driving with false license plates in January 1981, and he ultimately confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper. Now 72, he is serving 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment for murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven more.

This anecdote begs the question: Was Peter Sutcliffe was a devoted Joy Division fan? Perhaps he followed them around? Has anyone ever asked him?
 

Joy Division play “She’s Lost Control” live at Bowdon Vale Youth Club, Altrincham. Video by Malcolm Whitehead.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.28.2018
08:55 am
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Jäh Division return with ‘Dub Will Tear Us Apart…Again’
11.19.2018
01:37 pm
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Not to be mistaken for Dread Zeppelin, our own Ron Kretsch described Jäh Division—Brad Truax and Barry London’s Joy Division-covering improv collective—as “the gimmick band that transcendeth all.” Jäh Division’s sole recorded output, 2004’s 12-inch Dub Will Tear Us Apart earned them an underground notoriety for their tripped out, dubbed out interpretations of Joy Division’s dour post punk classics. The release was a very limited limited edition of just 600 copies pressed. Their live manifestations around Brooklyn incorporated vintage analog synth gear as well as rotating support from friends in Animal Collective, Awesome Color, and White Magic. (Additionally a guy nicknamed “Stony Tony” would simply show up and play the conga drums.)
 

 
And now they are back! With London on vintage keyboards, Truax on bass, Home’s Chris Millstein on drums, and Oneida’s Kid Millions playing London’s collection of synth percussion (including trash-salvaged electronic drum pads), the heart and soul—see what I did there?—of the dreary Manchester doomlords gets run through dubby delays, effects and even a Farfisa reverb. The expanded re-release of the 2004 EP includes Joy Division songs recorded during the original sessions.

Have a listen to the latest from Jäh Division below. Note preorder link to the Ernest Jenning Record Co. The group is playing a reunion show on January 26 at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn. I think we can presume that Stony Tony will be there, jah mon?
 

 

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2018
01:37 pm
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Russell MacEwan’s evocative portraits of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis
08.31.2017
02:20 pm
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Russell MacEwan was a member of the Canadian House of Commons from the late 1950s to the early 1970s before passing away in 2008.

Actually, that is not the Russell MacEwan we’re interested in today. That Russell MacEwan is a Scottish artist who is neither a politician nor dead and has produced a great deal of high-quality work of sci-fi subjects as well as portraits of postpunk and experimental music heroes.

MacEwan is an extraordinarily skilled draftsman, as you can see for yourself, who is currently Professor Emeritus at the City of Glasgow College. Virtually all of his output is black-and white, and he works in oils, charcoal, and pencils—his pencil drawings often resemble sketches that on other days might get “filled out” to form a painting, but he just leaves it as is for the viewer to contemplate.

The artist has mentioned that Joy Division is his favorite musical subject as well as the band he’d most like to be compared to, but he also has an abiding interest in the world of Coil, particularly How to Destroy Angels, the band’s first release from 1984. We’ve selected a few of the images of Curtis (whatever was available online, in fact) for your perusal.

MacEwan has an abiding interest in World War I topics and often draws inspiration from Hollywood and comic books, as his images of Logan, Clint Eastwood, and Catwoman indicate.

MacEwan has a book out called Black Sun: Art of Russell MacEwan and you can see much more of his portfolio here.
 

 

 
Much more after the jump…....
 

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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08.31.2017
02:20 pm
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Insane footage of The Clash, Joy Division, The Jam & The Specials on UK TV


An early shot of “the only band that matters,” The Clash.
 
According to what I was able to dig up about the footage you are about to see from UK television show Something Else, the performance by The Clash that was filmed in 1978 was allegedly their one and only live contribution to be televised by the BBC. Strummer and his bandmates never appeared on Top of the Pops because they refused to lip-synch their songs. In addition to that cool piece of punk history, Joy Division’s appearance on the show, during which they played “Transmission” and “She’s Lost Control” would be the last videotaped-for-TV footage of the band when it was shot in the studio for the show in 1979.

It’s important to clear up the possible misconception that all of the bands in the footage below appeared at the same time on Something Else, though The Jam and Joy Division performances were aired on the same show. It’s also safe to assume that appearances by all four of these bands on one singular TV show might have caused viewers to spontaneously combust into flames after witnessing the adrenalin charged performances by four of the greatest bands to ever come out of the UK. The program itself was a precursor to other notable shows like The Tube and Oxford Road Show which integrated the format used by Something Else. The show’s “vibe” was also famously parodied by the strangely ribald BBC comedy/music series The Young Ones. The dig was also said to be directed at the Oxford Road Show which as I mentioned borrowed heavily from Something Else.

The episode in question, Demolition, was the first show of season one which aired on November 9th, 1982. During the episode we see Rick, played by the late Rik Mayall, frantically “shushing” his roomies so he can watch the faux television show “Nosin’ Around” which later causes him to kick in the TV screen in frustration because someone purporting to “speak for the youth” was wearing “flared trousers.” I can’t say that I blame him for his reaction either as I feel the much the same way anytime I see someone wearing white shoes. While I’m sure the footage I’ve posted won’t make you want to stick your foot up your television’s “ass” so it shits size eights, it will make you want to smash something. So perhaps have an easily breakable item close by that you won’t miss just to be safe. Posers get LOST!
 
Watch after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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06.19.2017
03:32 pm
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‘Ceremony’: Peter Hook reanimates New Order’s classic first single
04.12.2017
11:36 am
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I’d hardly be the first to observe that “Ceremony” is THE emblematic song of Joy Division’s sometimes shaky transition to New Order after the suicide of JD singer Ian Curtis. It was a JD song that, tragically, was never properly recorded during the singer’s lifetime; only the live version on Still—from which half the vocals are absent—and a really crummy rehearsal tape are known to have survived, but the song became New Order’s first single.

While that single is imperfect, it preserves a magnificent song that could have ended up lost. The instrumental performances and production are excellent, but vocals were handled by guitarist Bernard Sumner, who’d go on to become the band’s main singer. His tentative, mannered, flat-affect singing style was a good fit for NO’s later work, but his rookie effort couldn’t approach Ian Curtis’ expressive depth, and so lines like “I’ll break them all/No mercy shown” land weightlessly. The song’s excellence still being amply evident, it went on to become one of the most-covered songs the band ever released, and it’s a badge for their determination to persevere in the face of tragedy, however wobbly their very public march towards their own post-Curtis identity was.

In recent years, estranged from his former New Order bandmates, JD/NO’s Peter Hook, the architect of a post-punk bass style so singular and genre-defining it’s still being copied 40 years later, has eschewed original music for a while to devote himself to the project of reanimating his bands’ earliest works. He formed Peter Hook and the Light with members purloined from his prior band Monaco, and they’ve spent the last several years producing concerts in which they’ll play an early JD or NO album in its entirety. They’re currently on tour performing both bands’ ‘80s best-of compilations, both titled Substance. (That tour’s schedule is why multiple attempts to interview Hook for this post fell through, to my lasting regret—his is a brain I’d love to pick.)
 

 
Doing the best-ofs sounds almost like an endcap to the project, as does the series of releases Hook is issuing this year, documenting live versions of Joy Divisions’ Unknown Pleasures and Closer, and New Order’s Movement and Power, Corruption, and Lies, but audiences are reportedly LOVING the shows, so while it’s a shame that Hook is no longer pursuing original music (all the more a shame given how very so-so the Hookless New Order album Music Complete was), who’s to say they shouldn’t/won’t continue?

On the album honoring Movement Peter Hook and the Light included the non-LP “Ceremony,” and it’s quite a good version. Hook’s vocals are far rougher than Sumner’s, which is surely why Sumner became the default singer as the band solidified it’s slick, synth-based identity, but Hook’s rawness better conveys the emotive strength of Ian Curtis’ lyrics. I’d stop WAY short of calling this version definitive, but it’s good to have available a well-recorded version other than Sumner’s.

Joy Division debuted the song at what ended up being their final concert (the one released on Still), and the only other recording ever made was the crummy-sounding rehearsal tape released on Heart and Soul, made four days before Curtis’ death. In his book Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division, Hook talks about where “Ceremony” fit in when the band decided to carry on:

The only thing we took from Joy Division—the only two things, actually—were the songs Ian had left us: “Ceremony” and “In a Lonely Place.” To one another we said, “See you on Monday,” and that was it. Me, Barney, and Steve got together on the Monday to work on the songs. I took the riff for “Dreams Never End” into rehearsal. It was weird because I was looking for Ian to tell me if it was any good or not. Realizing that we’d lost our spotter, our mentor. Realizing that suddenly we had to find a new way of working that didn’t rely on him. We had to learn to record everything, play it back, and pick out the good bits ourselves.

In Substance: Inside New Order, Hook details the how the recording of the “Ceremony” single with Martin Hannett solidified New Order’s division (sorry) of labor:

Despite the fact that Steve, to say the least, wasn’t keen on singing, he still tried out, and so did me and Barney. I think secretly both of us fancied being the frontman. But we were all shit according to Martin. At one point in Strawberry Studios we were recording “Ceremony” and Martin had decided to use all three of our vocals mixed together in the track at the same time. ‘The best of a bad bunch!’ he cried. Then he started cackling. But then Bernard insisted on having ‘just one more go’, and in doing so used up mine and Steve’s tracks, wiping them, so by the Time Martin finally threw up his hands and told us to fuck off, Barney’s was the only vocal left on tape. Which is pretty much how he became our singer.

Dangerous Minds is proud to premiere the stream of Peter Hook and the Light’s soon to be released version of “Ceremony,” after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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04.12.2017
11:36 am
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R-rated illustrated album covers & rare racy bootlegs from Joy Division, The Cure & Serge Gainsbourg


The cover of the 1987 single ‘Lachez les chiens!’ by French group Super Nana by artist Aslan (aka Alain Gourdon).
 
You may be familiar with the work of the French illustrator known as “Aslan” or Alain Gourdon. Best known for his pin-ups Aslan was a contributor to French magazine Lui starting in 1963 where he would illustrate a different, gorgeously realistic pin-up for Lui each month for nearly 20 years.

Aslan was not only an incredibly talented illustrator and painter but was also quite adept at the art of sculpture. His 1970 bust of French starlet Brigitte Bardot as “Marianne” (one of a number of female images that have been used as a symbol representing the French republic) was the first bust promoted by the Louvre Museum while the author/creator was still living. In the last thirty or so years “Marianne” has been portrayed in the image of other female French icons such as actress Catherine Deneuve model Laetitia Casta. Naturally Aslan’s bust of “Marianne” features a plunging neckline revealing a lot of eye-popping sculpted cleavage.

When it comes to Aslan’s pin-ups for Lui there aren’t very many I can show you here as they are all pretty much gorgeously done X-rated illustrations featuring full-frontal nudity (you can see them here if you’d like). That said, I’m barely going to get away with showing you Aslan’s cool album covers especially when it comes to a bootleg of a performance by The Cure in Amsterdam in 1979 (see bottom) which was apparently used without his permission. The rest—including the illustration that was used for a Joy Division bootleg called “Enigma” that was apparently sanctioned by Aslan (part of a cavalcade of unofficial Joy Division pressings from the 80s that were released following vocalist Ian Curtis’s suicide—are still about as cheeky as they come.

I’ve also included a nice selection of album covers done by Aslan for Fontana Records (an offshoot of Dutch music label Phillips) that were all part of Fontana’s Après Minuit releases that featured artists like Serge Gainsbourg, Johnny Hallyday and jazz great Chet Baker. Like I said, the images in this post, while gorgeous, are most definitely NSFW. If you’ve just become a fan of Aslan and want to see more, I highly recommend seeking out the many pulp novels with his naughty illustrations on the covers.
 

An illustration done by Aslan on the cover of ‘Enigma’ a Joy Division bootleg from 1980.
 

The Cure ‘The Spell’s Unbroken’ bootleg from a live performance from 1985 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK with pin-up art by Aslan.
 
Many more after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.02.2016
09:27 am
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Here it is, your ‘Unknown Pleasures’ waveform gif generator
10.10.2016
11:58 am
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Joy Division‘s first album Unknown Pleasures has long had one of the most iconic covers of the twentieth century. Serious JD fans know that Peter Saville designed the cover based on an image that Bernard Sumner had found in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy of radio waves from pulsar CP 1919.

Someone named Garrett Finucane has created an Unknown Pleasures waveform generator on Github. Here is some sample output:
 

 
You can clear it and make your own patterns on a field of more or less parallel horizontal lines, which will probably come out more unruly. I made one where the pattern resembles an upside-down cross:
 

 
After the jump, the full album that inspired this cool little toy to listen to while you play with it…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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10.10.2016
11:58 am
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This is it—the single greatest STUPID Joy Division mashup ever: ‘Ian Curtis Rides a Roller Coaster’
09.12.2016
12:43 pm
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Poking fun of Joy Division is like making someone giggle at a wake—it just shouldn’t be as easy as it is. But the combination of the band’s funereal sounds, the death-cult that followed the suicide of their lead singer Ian Curtis, and the incredible earnestness of its ever-growing fandom makes deflating them a fish-in-a-barrel matter. The iconic cover art for their debut LP Unknown Pleasures has been parodied on so many t-shrt designs that this very blog called for a moratorium, and their best-known songs have featured in too many sound and video mashups to list here. Our ongoing favorites have been “Love Will Freak Us,” Dsico’s band vs band mashup of their signature song “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with Missy Elliot’s “Get Ur Freak On,” and the wonderfully spooky, and strangely elegiac combination of their 1980 single “Atmosphere” with desaturated footage from Teletubbies.

But last week, a brilliant bastard on the internet won for all time. Now, this has been around for a minute, but to my surprise, I found that a ton of rock snob-types who should have known about it didn’t, so we’re sharing it here in case you missed it, too. It’s combines the Unknown Pleasures album closer “I Remember Nothing” with 15 seconds of head-cam footage from a roller coaster ride. If you know the song, you can probably already see the punchline coming, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve watched this dozens of times and it keeps making me laugh.

I swear to god, I’m not usually so easily amused.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Dub Will Tear us Apart’: Jäh Division, the gimmick band that transcendeth all
Known Pleasures: Joy Division Parody T-Shirt
You knew this would happen: The inevitable Worf-Joy Division mash-up T-shirt
The roller coaster stare down experience

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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09.12.2016
12:43 pm
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Ian Curtis of Joy Division, his final interview
07.15.2016
12:03 pm
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Ian Curtis would have turned 60 today. Two years ago, the website post-punk.com celebrated Curtis’ birthday with a fascinating contribution to Joy Division studies, a complete transcript of one of the few surviving interviews with Curtis that exist.

The interview took place on February 28, 1980, before JD’s gig at Preston Warehouse. (In 1999 a recording of that show was released as Preston 28 February 1980, as it happens.) “Spyda” from Burnley Musician’s Collective interviewed Curtis for a BBC Radio Blackburn program called “Spinoff.” You can actually hear the rest of the band doing a soundcheck in the background.
 

 
In 1988 the interview appeared on BBC Manchester with some previously unheard snippets. The interview is variously called the BBC Blackburn interview or the Radio Lancashire interview. This is actually considered to be the last interview Curtis ever gave.

In the interview Curtis, asked about “the current state of new wave,” replies thus:
 

Don’t know. I think it’s, a lot of it tends to have lost its edge really. There’s quite a few new groups that I’ve heard.. odd records. Record or have seen maybe such as, eh, I like, I think it’s mostly old Factory groups really, I like the groups on Factory; A Certain Ratio and Section 25. I tend not to listen, when I’m listening to records, I don’t listen to much new wave stuff, i tend to listen to the stuff I used to listen to a few years back but sort of odd singles. I know somebody who works in a record shop where I live and I’ll go in there and he’ll play me “have you heard this single?” singles by er the group called The Tights, so an obscure thing … and a group called, I think, er Bauhaus, a London group, that’s one single. There’s no one I completely like that I can say “well I’ve got all this person’s records. i think he’s great” or “this group’s records” it’s just, again, odd things

 
Bauhaus had released “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in 1979. Aside from that, the band released “Dark Entries” in January 1980 and that was the entire Bauhaus catalog when Curtis did that interview.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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07.15.2016
12:03 pm
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When Joy Division met William S. Burroughs


 
When you consider all of the famous and infamous people who William Burroughs met in his lifetime, maybe the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game should be adapted for the late Beat author. I’d have a “Burroughs” of one, as I met him (briefly) in Los Angeles in 1996 at his big art opening at LACMA.

At the Reality Studio blog, there’s a fascinating tale, told in great detail, about the time Joy Division shared the same stage with Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Cabaret Voltaire in Belgium. Ian Curtis was an avid reader and favored counterculture fare like J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse. William Burroughs was one of his biggest heroes.

Joy Division was given its first opportunity to play outside the United Kingdom on 16 October 1979. That alone would have distinguished the gig for the band, but of special interest to Curtis and his mates was the fact that they would be opening for Burroughs. The avant-garde theater troupe Plan K, which had made a specialty of interpreting Burroughs’ work, were founding a performance space in a former sugar refinery in Brussels, Belgium. The opening was conceived as a multimedia spectacle. Films were to be screened — among others, Nicholas Roeg’s Performance (starring Mick Jagger) and Burroughs’ own experiments with Antony Balch. The Plan K theater troupe were to perform “23 Skidoo.” Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire were to give “rock” concerts. And Burroughs and Brion Gysin were to read from their recently published book, The Third Mind.

Before the evening’s events, Burroughs and Joy Division gave separate interviews to the culture magazine En Attendant. Graciously provided to RealityStudio by the interviewer and the organizer of the Plan K opening, Michel Duval, these have been translated from the French and are reproduced here for the first time since their publication in November 1979. You can read the French original or the English translation of Duval’s interview with Joy Division, as well as the French original or the English translation of Duval’s interview with William Burroughs.

After Burroughs’ reading brought the opening of Plan K to its climax, Curtis attempted to introduce himself to his literary idol. This meeting, like so many things about both Curtis and Burroughs, has already become legend — which is another way of saying that its factual basis may have receded into darkness. If you search around the internet, you’ll see sites describing the encounter in terms like this: “Unfortunately when Ian went up to talk to him the author told Ian to get lost.” And this: “Burroughs probably was tired and bored with the concerts and when Ian went up to talk with him the author told Ian to get lost. Ian got lost immediately, not a little hurt by the rebuff.” Chris Ott’s book Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures repeats the story, and Mark Johnson’s book An Ideal for Living asserts that Burroughs refused to speak to Curtis.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.28.2016
12:43 pm
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Ian Curtis’ favorite reggae song, ‘Turn The Heater On’
04.07.2016
07:17 am
Topics:
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One of Keith Hudson’s nicknames was “the Ghetto Dentist,” because—unlike, let’s say, Suge Knight—he funded his Inbidimts label and shop (a/k/a Imbidimts) by filling teeth. Hudson died in 1984, but an impression of his basic decency remains. Dennis Alcapone, who made his first recordings with Hudson and remembers him as “a nice bredda who try ‘im bes’ to point you in a right direction,” says Hudson didn’t just give him a break in the record business, but set the DJ up with his first bank account and “a wicked tuxedo outfit” to wear on stage, too.

Caps and crowns also paid for Hudson-produced singles by Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, U-Roy, Big Youth, Alton Ellis, and Augustus Pablo, and, before Virgin signed him, much of Hudson’s own formidable solo discography. His Pick A Dub is Jon Savage’s choice for “the greatest dub album ever.” The first track on side two of Hudson’s 1975 LP Torch of Freedom was reportedly the favorite song of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, whose bereaved bandmates recorded their own chilly version of “Turn The Heater On” during a Peel session two years after Curtis’ suicide.
 

 
In her memoir Touching From a Distance, Curtis’ widow Deborah writes that the singer immersed himself in reggae in 1975, after the newlyweds moved in with Curtis’ grandparents in Hulme:

Ian always had an interest in reggae music; Bob Marley and Toots and the Maytals already figured in his diverse record collection. Moving into that area of Manchester gave Ian the opportunity to throw himself into the local culture. He began to spend much of his time in a record shop in Moss Side shopping centre, listening to different reggae bands - although, as our cheap record player was packed away ready to move to the new house, he spent very little money there. Once again Ian became obsessed with a lifestyle different from his own. He began to infiltrate the places where white people didn’t usually go. He took me to the Mayflower in Belle Vue, which at best was a seedy version of the Cotton Club and at worst a place where they held tawdry wrestling matches.

But when the Curtises got their own place in Chadderton, actually turning the heater on was something you could count on Ian Curtis never to do:

It didn’t take long to realize that married life was not going to be as comfortable as we had expected. We had very little spare cash for socializing and trying to keep the heating bills to a minimum meant that only the living room was warm. There were storage heaters in the house, but Ian refused to use them; in fact he disconnected one of them and lugged it into the back yard. The only thing he didn’t economize on were cigarettes.

After the jump, hear Hudson’s upful original and New Order’s somewhat more dour take on “Turn The Heater On”...

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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04.07.2016
07:17 am
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Between Joy Division and ‘Blue Monday’: New Order live in the East Village, NYC, 1981
03.31.2016
12:33 pm
Topics:
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New Order, NYC, 1981 by Eugene Mironov
 
Before they recorded their classic 1983 album Power Corruption & Lies, New Order made an extended trip to New York and absorbed some of the city’s more upbeat sounds into their own morose and world-weary music. Latin salsa, 12” remix culture and the electronic beats they heard in nightclubs like Danceteria and the Roxy were obvious inspirations for the music they would soon come to make.

But at the time this was videotaped—live at the Ukrainian National Home in New York’s East Village on November 18, 1981—New Order were still largely Joy Division minus Ian Curtis, a post punk band, not the electronic dance quartet they would soon become. It’s a fascinating document of the group during what is perhaps the least documented era of their long career. As I would personally chose Movement over anything else in their catalog, this was a real treat to watch.
 

 
Low lights, the intense musicians saying almost nothing to the audience, a concert held in a hot sweaty dance hall—there’s an extremely underground quality to this show.

Tim Sommers reviewed the gig in the Sounds newspaper:

Standing around the Ukrainian National Home on Manhattan’s lower Second Avenue puts me in a sour mood. This is a prestigious gig in an odd venue, and the audience, like the hall, is truly pretentious in its self-conscious unpretentiousness. The place is full of the cream of New York’s pseudo-Continentals, the transparent and ridiculous ‘80’s would-be bohemians with their long dark coats, scarves and faces. Unfortunately, very much the crowd you would expect for New Order. The evening’s whole mood has been strongly anti-rock, so it’s refreshing and pleasantly surprising when New Order’s set begins brightly, with real strength and power.

“Truly pretentious in its self-conscious unpretentiousness”?

New Order? The group who parodied a poster by Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero pretentious?
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.31.2016
12:33 pm
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Watch Joy Division live on 1979 BBC youth documentary ‘Something Else’


 
Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on May 4, 1979. The Manchester episode of Something Else, a youth program produced by the BBC with the mandate of offering teenagers “something else” to watch, was first broadcast on September 15, 1979, so it makes for a fascinating shapshot of the conditions that led to her becoming the head of state.

The program features live performances from Joy Division (“Transmisson” and “She’s Lost Control”) and the Jam (”Eton Rifles” and “When You’re Young”).

It might not need saying that it’s strange to have the Jam on the program, because Manchester was on the cusp of a truly singular wave of musical talent and the Jam were a London outfit—still, their bits are suitably vital. The clips of JD are top-notch, they’ve have been floating around the Internet for ages (there’s an excellent Playmobil stop-motion re-creation of “Transmission,” for instance), but the full program is encountered considerably less often.

The absolute best thing on this entire video, by far, are Ian Curtis’ dance moves during the guitar parts of “She’s Lost Control.”

Something Else was done in a magazine format with shorter segments. So there’s a brief documentary of an 18-year-old single parent in Salford as well as an interview with Cyril Smith, presented as “Rochdale’s only MP,” about underage drinking. (Smith is utterly indistinguishable from a Monty Python character, must be seen to be believed.) There’s also an awkward exchange with two uniformed police constables who must defend the premise that they hassle kids too much (which they deny).

There’s also a round table featuring Factory Records honcho Tony Wilson, Radio One DJ Paul Burnett, and Joy Division’s drummer Stephen Morris about why the radio never plays anything good. John Cooper Clarke is shown wandering around a shopping mall reciting his signature poem “Evidently Chickentown” and, late in the program, there’s a heavily censored reading of “Twat.”
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The punk poetry of John Cooper Clarke
‘Here are the Young Men’: Classic Joy Division live footage, 1979-1980

Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.01.2016
09:02 am
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