Defend The Indefensible: Joy Division

Its sad but my fave album is the comp substance and an old peel sessions that i have. As for fave song LWTUA is great but they have so many other songs that were great in wholly other ways.

(doh! xp)

I've always found this song to be "undanceable." Any tips?

There's more to JoyDiv (if you want to look at historically) than reverby depression and LWTUA. Check out BBC sessions and live shows.

JD=17.44New Order
JD=98.36Smiths
Therefore New Order=5.6399082Smiths

Most annoying thing about JD: Tony Wilson insisting on calling Rob Gretton 'Robert Leo Gretton'.

My peener goes up when I listen to Unknown Pleasures but does not when I listen to Closer so that is why I say hooray for Unknown Pleasures!
-- Shooty's Groove, Sunday, October 5, 2003 8:24 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

why, I couldn't have said it better myself...

This thread is hilarious, I must say. I was once partial to acid when I was around 20-21. Now, speaking of Joy Division ...

My girlfriend at the time (this would be around 1987) worshipped JD. I always found them to be dreary and rather boring. Well, to cut a long story short, we were tripping one night and she insisted on putting on her all-time favorite record, Closer. The minute the needle hit side one and the voice came on, we both could not stop laughing. In fact, we laughed maniacally through both sides, particularly the last track ("Decades"?). That pompous voice gravely intoning "Here are the young men ..." was just too much! What struck me as unbearably funny was when I realized at that very moment that Ian Curtis sounded not at all like Jim Morrison (I guess that's what he was aiming for in this song) but rather ended up sounding - and I was literally rolling on the floor laughing, exhorting ... WHY HE SOUNDS LIKE A DRUNK OLD VICTORIAN STAGE ACTOR IMITATING BUCK OWENS! And I'll be damned if my girlfriend - she who hitherto unquestionably worshipped at the altar of all things JD didn't hear it exactly as I did. To this day, whenever I hear Ian Curtis I can't help but giggle.

Even more side-splitting was when she burst out saying, "Man! To think that he killed himself over THIS!" Hahaha. Call us insesntivie, if you wish, but, upon reflection, the point is a serious and valid one: the notion of Curtis (not to mention many of the fans who bought into the "myth"), really just a troubled young man with the set of usual angst-ridden problems ever 20 year old goes through (and which will assuredly seem trivially naive/stupid when you look back at it when you're 30) bought it - meaning his own myth-weaving - hook, line and sinker. And, yeah, it's tragic, but at that moment, whilst tripping, it just seemed ... impossible to take at all seriously. Stupid. Pompous. And the fact that that guy was nowhere near the mark of what he was aiming at.

(When I went and saw 24 Hour Party People, I just couldn't stop laughing, watching the Ian Curtis character doing his spastic dance on stage. And that "doomy" vocal - still sounds like a shit Victorian actor imitating Buck Owens! Just where did that faux-Southern US drawl come from anyway?!)

After this particular epiphany, well, she never could listen to them again, unless she wanted to hear a comedy record, that is. But there was an even more beneficial and pressing result. Upon realizing how angst-riddenly teenage DUMB it all was, that marked the end of her received notions and learned behavior (some call it "attitude") re: Joy Division popular depression cult.

Or let's put it this way: better to laugh at this shit than kill yourself over it.

So, er, I suppose this is a bit of a defense for acid, as in certain circumstances it may allow you to hear/something as it TRULY is - laid threadbare, the media and peer definitions stripped completely away.

-- Kjoerup, Friday, November 7, 2003 9:51 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

that's from here:

hahahaha i remember that post. i <3 both jd and lsd.

that post pretty much encapsulates what I feel about Joy Division sober.

I've just finished watching Control. Never been a huge fan of Joy Div, but always assumed they were something I'd come round to. But watching the film, it kind of put me off them even more. The musicianship (apart from maybe the rhythm section) is terrible. It sounds like a garage band having an awkward jam for the first time, and for all his touted poetics, Ian Curtis's lyrics are pretty dull and he sounds like everything I've come to hate about Goth music.

You do know that's the actors playing in the film, right?

The musicianship (apart from maybe the rhythm section) is terrible

Errrrrrrr, so what you're saying is you don't like the guitar playing?

I've always thought they were pretty dull.

The actors weren't exactly playing very differently from the original. I get half way through a JD song and I'm already bored. They really do sound like a band having a jam together.

It's called punk rock

meh...

i still think they were great.

Anticipate "Control" - The Ian Curtis biopic...

<i>The actors weren't exactly playing very differently from the original.</i>
they were doing quite a good job. but they didn't really sound like joy division. there wasn't the obsession, intensity and force of the original band. not a good introduction to joy div, i'd say. though it was a decent music film. did you already listen to the concert cds, grozart? <i>les bains douches</i> or <i>preston</i> capture their live power rather well. though both weren't particularly successful gigs. in preston everything went wrong, the equipment broke more or less totally down, in paris there were not more than 100 people in teh audience, i think, and they didn't react to the music. maybe they were awestruck.

fuck the special formatting at ilx. my brain refuses to learn it.

I'll check their live stuff. Yes, I guess it's a bit unfair to slag them off based on a biopic - they looked incredibly bored in Control, particularly Barney who looked like he'd never seen a guitar in his life.

He still does.

One of the reasons he'll always remain one of my favourite-ever guitarists

but barney wasn't in the film. there was just an actor trying to look as bored as barney. which is not the same thing by any means.

Grozart is dog latin or something right? I've not been keeping up.

Approximately when did Ian Curtis make the jump from sad story from secular sainthood? Each year, more and more people seem to treat the day of his death as some kind of sacred thing.

Approximately as soon as news of his death first got out

The anniversary has certainly picked up more steam recently, though.

i blame facebook and tumblr.

I blame Werner Herzog

and iggy pop

I trust you've all seen this by now:

http://www.adamjkurtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/tumblr_mmwss5444R1qz5r5lo1_500-1.png

BTW the full story behind the pulsar image is pretty amazing:

http://adamcap.com/2011/05/19/history-of-joy-division-unknown-pleasures-album-art/

i did end up pre-ordering that shirt, btw, in a moment of drunk weakness

Oh I'm going to do the same, fully sober.

i like that shirt but wouldn't wearing it just be like saying the same joke, over and over, all day long?

"Dear god, you STILL like that band? I saw you that morning with that shirt!"

plus, if i can manage to hold onto to it until 2030, it'll be like having a 1995 shirt that references netscape navigator!

http://sphotos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/936522_10151358994211822_1184880608_n.jpg

this version on white with the caption above it would be a cool shirt

http://i2.wp.com/adamcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/cp1919-joy-division.jpg

"It was compiled by that dude in the Black Flag T-shirt under an untucked, unsnapped cowboy shirt."

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/21173_10152261036067137_575485006_n.jpg

Approximately as soon as news of his death first got out

this is pretty true iirc. the first time I heard The Story of Joy Division from a friend who had the main two albums, it was already drenched in myth. however then by the time I went to college in my mid-twenties, eight years later or so, I had the great good fortune to be in a class where there's a couple sophomores talking before the professor gets to class, right, and so they're like 20 or so - I would have been 26 I guess at this point - and one of them was telling the other about this crazy guy, Ian Curtis, from this band called Joy Division, and they were, like, really depressing, and into death, right, so he got a giant ice block brought to his house and put a noose around his neck and tied it to the ceiling and then sat on top of the ice block and waited for the ice to melt.

hand to God the one was telling the other one this story as "have you heard this amazing but true story." no I did not go to college at the University of Dumb People these were like normal college kids

are you sure it wasn't a seven sisters cross-registration kind of arrangement

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/A_man_is_hanging_by_a_rope_in_a_room_and_the_only_thing_in_the_room_is_water_on_the_floor_how_did_he_die

resisting impulse to "improve this answer" by changing it to "He is Ian Curtis"

hahaha

so he got a giant ice block brought to his house and put a noose around his neck and tied it to the ceiling and then sat on top of the ice block and waited for the ice to melt.

"Then the band put a photo of it on the cover of their single 'Can't Stand Losing You'."

remember this joke?

http://i.imgur.com/Rd6WVNv.jpg

i keep cracking myself up imagining various old movie stars saying "what is this? I've seen it on tumbler". myrna loy, bogart, liz taylor, claude rains. I am easily amused.

I have one that says "JOY" instead of "JOY DIVISION" along the bottom, and in the radio wave mountains are tiny, brightly colored primary shape-creatures flying a kite, riding a dirt bike, and skiing happily. Most people don't even parse it as anything but a Joy Division t-shirt, I don't think.