Toy Division Performs Transmission

Here's an awesome clip of a Playmobil stop-motion Joy Division doing "Transmission" on John Peel's show back in '79. I love the attention to detail: Hooky's beard, Ian's spastic shuffle and the full-on whirlwind arms of Stephen Morris behind the kit.

Control

I finally watched Anton Corbijn’s Control last night. It was better than I expected. At the end of the day, I would put it in the same category as other biopics like Ray or Walk The Line-probably putting it ahead of those two pictures, actually-but not much in terms of actually learning anything new about Ian Curtis or Joy Division.
Not that I expected the movie to teach me anything, but I wanted to get into the head of Curtis a bit more, even if it was a fictionalized account. Instead, it took the path of least resistance in the hopes of using two elements of Curtis’ short life-his relationship with his wife Deborah and his mistress Annik and his epilepsy-and created it into an easy to follow movie that can be enjoyed by non-fans.
Deborah Curtis’ autobiography Touching From A Distance is obviously used as the movie’s blueprint. I have the book and it was not an enjoyable read for me. It provided a lot of insight into Debbie and how much of an asshole Ian was, but it offered little sympathy into her husband’s genius. There’s an air of bitterness throughout Touching From A Distance and a little of it permeated into the film. Indeed, my wife’s first reaction to Ian Curtis was to think of him as a “jerk” and to completely overlook the talent that he had. She is not familiar with Joy Division’s work, whereas I was able to overlook some of the man’s fidelity issues because his work is complete genius.
The other focal point is Curtis’ epilepsy. It’s strange to consider that just thirty years ago there was a strong stigma attached to such ailments, to the point where they would present such a devastating event to the person it impacts. Control seems to suggest that Curtis’ “fits” were of such embarrassment that the mental recovery took longer than the physical. It also suggests that immediately before his suicide, Curtis experience a seizure that contributed to his decision to end his own life.
Of course, these are the liberties that a fictionalized account can take on a project like this. Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris acknowledged the discrepancy between the truth and Control, but admitted that the truth was probably too boring for film anyway.
Looking at the film from that perspective-an enjoyable piece of visual art-Control wins. Filmed in black and white, Corbijn has created a visually stunning piece of work. He has a keen eye and there are scenes where you see his talent as a photographer clearly at work. It’s his first feature film and Corbijn has entered the arena with a winner.
Sam Riley’s depiction of Ian Curtis is simply amazing. With little-to-no interview footage of Curtis available, Riley studied Joy Division’s performances from archival material and melded it with his interpretation of how the man presented himself off stage. At no point in time did I not believe his performance. I could not say the same thing about Joaquin Phoenix’s role as Johnny Cash or Jamie Foxx’s portrayal of Ray Charles.
Then there are the music performances. Corbijn had Riley and the rest of the fictional Joy Division learn the music and perform live, understanding how the chemistry of becoming a band would not only build credibility to their performance, but build a relationship between each other. The end result is an impressive working unit that adds just enough reality to make even a hard-line Joy Division fan like me to not get sidetracked into fixating on the fact that we’re watching nothing more than a Joy Division cover band.
With no new information provided, questionable source material, and a penchant for the more dramatic parts of Curtis’ life as focal points, Control is not to replace any true documentaries on the band. When you understand that-and you will after a few minutes into the film-Control becomes an enjoyable night at the movies that ranks ahead of similarly crafted films. The only real problem isn’t one with the film, but how you know it’s going to end.

Joy Division - Closer

If I’m counting correctly, we’re up to the fourth edition of Joy Division’s two proper releases, Unknown Pleasures and Closer, with the latest being pegged as a “Collector’s Edition.” I did give pause about buying into these latest editions, figuring that they were nothing more than a blatant attempt at milking Anton Corbijn’s film Control.
And believe me, as a Joy Division fan-boy, I know all too well about feeling used. A few years ago, I forked over a hefty sum for a limited edition import box set (Refractured) only to discover that my hard-earned money went to some cheap collectibles, two cds of poorly mastered live recordings, and a few supposedly “rarer” live tracks tacked on the end of one of those aforementioned recordings.
I bring this up because both of Joy Division’s reissued studio albums contain another pair of live recordings, meant to entice saps like me who have already purchased said studio albums in three prior editions. So that leaves the live recordings as the sole reason to consider this new package, which in itself presents some debate.
I can vouch that the majority of Joy Division’s live records are nothing more than audience recordings, often plagued by faulty equipment in addition to the low fidelity. Even the legitimate releases sound as shoddy as the boots, no mater what the packaging or catalog number, so an obligatory pause is always in order when considering “new” or “unreleased” or “live” Joy Division output.
Closer, in any form or any editions, is one of the greatest rock albums of all times. The album’s original nine tracks not only managed to surpass Unknown Pleasure’s lofty wake, it provided an unachievable benchmark for anyone considering using the word “dark” in their band bio. “Unachievable” because Joy Division’s leader, Ian Curtis, lived every shade of black that he put on paper, and Closer is the sound of a band (and, to be entirely fair, the sound was enormously treated by producer Martin Hannett) providing a musical backdrop for a man who was literally contemplating ending his own life. It is one thing to suggest such a notion, but Ian Curtis meant it. A month-and-a-half after completing Closer, Ian Curtis proved the extent of his written discord by hanging himself.
It’s impossible not to talk about the tragedy when discussing Closer and, when you get down to it, its entire foundation is built upon Curtis’ unstable state of mind. This doesn’t in anyway discount the dark, atmospheric treatments and overall melancholia that runs throughout the album. Instead, the tragedy puts an additional layer of heaviness on each minor chord, every nervous synthesizer, and every resigned phrase that creeps from the speaker. Joy Division made a masterpiece with Closer but it took Curtis’ suicide to have everyone realize it.
The album is filled with clues. None of them sounds like a cry for help, but instead, they provide an exasperated eulogy of words that never manage to conceal the author’s magnitude of discontent.
Then there’s Curtis’ delivery itself, a weary baritone that sounds decades older than it actually was. Producer Martin Hannett wisely puts his treatments on almost every instrument except Curtis’ voice, understanding that it holds a deeper power on its own. He effectively captures the nuances of Ian’s performance rather than trying to add gradation to the mix.
Speaking of: the “Collector’s Edition” mix is a marked improvement over previous releases. I did notice a wider spectrum and, as a result, a few hidden performances that I hadn’t heard before. It seems to have been meticulously attended to, rather than just blindly “enhanced” with louder compression and slapshot mastering techniques.
The packaging provides a nice reproduction of the old Factory Records label and some thorough accounts of the album’s recording process and obligatory remembrances from all of the surviving members, who now seem to acknowledge Closer’s greatness while admitting that they weren’t too keen on how the record sounded both during and after the sessions had ended. The biggest complaint was how different the band came across, particularly when compared to their live performances.
This is exactly why someone like me starts salivating at every fucking J.D. live recording that I come across. Joy Division was a less refined unit on stage and the live documents, regardless of how shitty the recordings are, clearly demonstrate this. There is less atmospherics and much more blunt trauma happening, occasionally transforming a track into a completely different beast.
Closer: The Collector’s Edition includes a show recorded in February of 1980, a few months before the album was released. The concert was recorded at the London University Union (Killing Joke was the supporting act) and the performance was previously made available as a bootleg entitled They Keep Calling Me. Again, there is no real improvement to the fidelity of that unauthorized released, but the band is very tight and aggressive. There are only a few examples of equipment problems and the crowd is very vocal. Since this is an audience recording, a “vocal” crowd means you’ll be noticing a few conversations and endure the never-ending barrage of song requests that occur between each song. With that being said, the performance is a worthy release that’s sure to please any hardcore fan of Joy Division while not being much of a requirement for anyone else.
But Closer, the proper album, is required listening by anyone who prides themselves on learning more about rock music’s array of genres and essential starting points of it even wider array of sub-genres. Joy Division is one of those bands who’re probably responsible for a good three or four of those sub-genres today while directly impacting about a half dozen more.
And from that enormous black cloud of influence lies Closer, the band’s final offering. The “Collector’s Edition” release is exactly that: an edition created to entice those Joy Division collectors who already own it, but won’t be able to pass up the additional material that they probably know they don’t really need.
The single disc edition is enough for those who’ve yet to experience the most honestly bleak album ever put to tape by an ephemeral band who’s leader meant every word he sang.
This is the way. Step inside.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise.

Happy Birthday, Ian Curtis

It’s Ian Curtis birthday today. He would have turned 51 years old, but as we all know, Ian Curtis was not destined to become a middle-aged man. His will allowed him to only to live to the age of 23, while some would argue that his words rivaled those of a man twice his age.
2007 may be the year, nearly thirty years after his suicide, in which Ian’s iconic stature reaches epic proportion. Photographer Anton Corbijn recently completed Control, the film based on Deborah Curtis’ book Touching From A Distance. I will confess to not being a big fan of Ms. Curtis’ biography of Ian and was therefore a little concerned when I learned a movie would be made from it. At the same time, Control won three awards at the Cannes Film Festival this year, so it may be that Mr. Corbijn has indeed created a definitive celluloid statement about Ian Curtis.

Joy Division: Here Are The Young Men

It’s hard to imagine my life without Joy Division. By my calculations, however, at least half of my life was spent “joyless” while the last twenty have been under their depressive spell.
The initial exposure came on the turntable of a friend who fortunately brought a tremendously influential record collection with him to college. He tolerated my fairly milquetoast catalogue and unpretentiously advised me on how to make some necessary changes towards my perception of what alternative music really was. What I found out was that there was an “alternative” to my own “alternative” and a history that I still needed exposure to.
My knowledge of Manchester, England started and ended with The Smiths. But there was another Mancurian band as equally influential that the collegiate mentor introduced me to. The introduction came while he meticulously made mix tapes for other eager music students on campus. On many of these cassettes, he frequently included a song called “She’s Lost Control.”
Initially, the sparse arrangement and heavily reverbed vocals didn’t do it for me. It probably had something to do with the context of the song in relation to the other tracks on his compilations. Plus, the knowledge that New Order, a band I wasn’t really appreciative of at the time, actually formed from the ashes of Joy Division, it probably triggered my obligatory Midwestern mathematics of England + Synthesizers ≠ Rock. But when he made a mix tape that contained nothing but Joy Division tracks, it finally registered in me that this was a band of seminal importance and an unprecedented dark streak.
It might have helped that he told me about the circumstances surrounding Joy Division’s lead vocalist, Ian Curtis. After all, the idea of a young man committing suicide days before his band’s first U.S. tour seemed positively cool to a similarly aged college student without a clue on how he planned to handle to confines of adulthood.
While the appeal of Jim Morrison might indeed be a phase that every high-schooled kid goes through, the story of Ian Curtis should be required listening to any college student who’s a fan of real rock ‘n roll pathos.
Because the band only released 3 albums (1 posthumously), there was a challenge for my friend to fill a full 90 minute cassette of only Joy Division music. To make matters worse, we had both foolishly ingested a large amount of L.S.D. making simple tasks like pausing the tape and placing the needle on the track dividing grooves the mental equivalent of an algebraic equation.
Motor functions aside, the music provided a perfect soundtrack to the experience; within the grooves of those imports (Joy Division’s catalogue had yet to find a domestic label to release them) was a voice, perfectly captured by Martin Hannett’s outstanding production that seemed to legitimately live in the shadows it created.
“This is the crisis I knew had to come/Destroying the balance I kept” became the first Joy Division lyrics that I memorized. It happened because my friend put the song that those lyrics came from (“Passover” from Closer) on the Joy Division compilation tape no less than three or four times in his lysergic state. He did manage to juggle the source material, however (one version came from Closer while the other, a live version, came from the posthumous Still release), so perhaps it wasn’t an oversight, but an intentionally metaphoric gauge of our mental state that evening.
He wisely kept the completed results for himself and, years later, provided me a perfectly suited low-fidelity dub of it that challenges any compilation that Factory Records has put out.
There have been numerous examples of music that sound positively brilliant under psychedelic states (Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma being one that comes to mind) only to have the reality of their flaws come out after sobriety takes hold.
Joy Division wasn’t like that. In fact, they’re a band that most people can probably figure out without the addition of entheogenic substances, although a slight case of depression would most certainly aide in a listener’s comprehension of them.
It’s important for me to explain that, although the actual story of Ian Curtis and Joy Division certainly attracted me to the band’s music, the greater influence came from how honest the music was.
This is important to consider, particularly when examining bands that travel a fairly gothic path. Does Siouxsie Sioux look like that every day? Did Bauhaus really lament the death of Bela Lugosi? How does Sisters of Mercy adequately distance themselves from the Goth culture when they regularly make appearances in gothic festivals? Joy Division seemed to be the only band that was cut from the same cloth as their subject matter.
Curtis’ topics were dark because his opinions were fairly bleak. The day before he was set to tour America with his band for the first time, a dream that most bands would (metaphorically) die for, he quietly stayed home, watched Herzog’s “Stroszek” on TV, listened to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, and then hung himself in the kitchen.
The band itself was comprised of fairly weak musicians, so they complemented the drawbacks with their strengths: bassist Peter Hook became the primary source of melody, drummer Stephen Morris used an array of percussion sources to widen the band’s tonal pallets, while guitarist Bernard Sumner expanded the group’s shadows by incorporating synthesizers into the mix which increased their insular imagery. These limitations may have produced some fairly dismal results in the wrong hands, but for Joy Division, the end result was an honest representation of a fairly bleak outlook on living during the end of the twentieth century.
All of this was helped with Ian Curtis perfectly executing his haunting baritone and evocative lyrics. To this day, I am taken at how he consistently amazed me as a songwriter and how he was able to do it at such a young age.
With everything combined, the end results are perfectly captured on their two studio albums (Unknown Pleasures and Closer) and various outtakes (available on the Heart And Soul box set), but what is sorely lacking is live material that eloquently captures how good the band could be on stage. I’m going off of personal accounts here, as some of the live recordings (a lot are of extremely poor fidelity) do capture the band in peak performances, but they don’t transcend the band much.
Perhaps it’s a case of “you had to be there,” and eye-witness accounts certainly point to this. From them, one can only imagine of the band, dressed in almost business casual attire, plugging away with efficient precision allowing your eyes to focus on Curtis.
And what a vision that must have been:

“Curtis, who suffered from epilepsy, would often have onstage tonic-clonic seizures that resulted in unconsciousness and convulsions, or absence seizures that would cause brief trance-like pauses.”

Unfortunately, video footage of Joy Division is hard to come by, so fans like me have to settle on written recollections and (perhaps) the upcoming biopic from Anton Corbijn to help satisfy the desire to learn more about this incredibly mysterious band.
As it stands, live audio proof is frustratingly limited and the quality of it is quickly diminishing.
Like that has ever stopped me before.

Factory Worker: Tony Wilson

Earlier this month, Tony Wilson announced that he had cancer. I don't know how bad the illness is; Tony apparently has been fairly coy about it, so there's a feeling that it may be worse that what is known. For a guy that's had a lot of ups and downs in his life, there's a sense that Mr. Wilson will overcome this obstacle and live for many more years.
I'm hoping for this.
The ups and downs are fairly notorious and well documented in one of my favorite rock and roll movies of all time, "Twenty-Four Hour Party People." Highly recommended. Put it on your Netflix list immediately if you haven't seen it, or better yet, buy it.
Tony's initial notoriety was as a television personality in Britain. But on June 4th, 1976, Tony was with about 40 other people at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England to witness the Sex Pistols perform live. He wasn't the only one on that night who walked away inspired. Indeed, the small crowd present seems like almost a "who's who" of rock history: Howard Devoto (The Buzzcocks/Magazine), Pete Shelly (The Buzzcocks), Morrissey (The Smiths), Ian Curtis (Joy Division), Bernard Sumner (Joy Division/New Order/Electronic), Peter Hook (Joy Division/New Order), Mark E. Smith (The Fall), and others all saw the show and, more importantly, did something about it afterwards.
What Tony did was start the independent record company known as Factory Records.
The band that Factory Records first signed was Joy Division.
When the label experienced financial problems (an occurrence that happened more than once), they were approached by a larger company for a potential buy-out. When it came time to discuss the legalese that comes with any merger, Tony explained that none of his artists ever signed a contract with Factory. The bands on Factory, it seemed, were the ones that owned the label.
Tony also started the legendary Hacienda club in Manchester. The club, which was essentially ground zero for the rave culture back in the late 80's and, despite having little trouble drawing sold out crowds, it too faced financial issues and subsequently closed. On the final night of operation, Tony encouraged the patrons to loot the place on their way out.
On every step of the way, it seems that Mr. Wilson finds no problem picking up the pieces and starting over. This is most assuredly a characteristic that many of us should strive to emulate.
But cancer is a tough broad, and in many cases, thoughts and well-wishes are what's needed to help overcome such an adversary.
After losing Ian Curtis. After losing Martin Hannett. I wanted to make sure my own well-wishes were heard before some online epitaph was created. This isn't a eulogy and I don't know Tony Wilson personally. I do know what he's done for me personally, and if his actions have made an impact in your own life, that verbal strength can be shared with him in the hopes of a speedy recovery.

Factory Records
Anthony Wilson
The Loft, 10A, Little Peter Street
Manchester, England M15 4PS
ahw@factory.u-net.com

One of these days, I'm going to get around to writing that massive undertaking of how fucking brilliant Joy Division were to me.
And I just want Tony to be around to read it.

Joy Division - No More Ceremonies (bootleg)

On February 29th, 1980, Joy Division joined the band Killing Joke for a leap year performance at the Lyceum Theatre in London. This performance, or at least some of it, has been available on various vinyl bootlegs throughout the years under the titles “Komackino” (sic) and “Isolation.” In 1997, five of the songs from this Lyceum set were made available on the official Heart & Soul box set with much improved sound quality. No More Ceremonies marks the first time the entire Lyceum performance is available on compact disc with a limited edition run of 500 copies.
The set features a list that heavily borrowed from their then unreleased Closer album. As important as that album turned out to be, it’s nice to hear many of those song titles translated into a live setting. At the same time, there isn’t a lot of difference from the studio versions and the ones presented on this document. “Heart & Soul,” “Isolation,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” all suffer from lack of fidelity. The audience seems more enthusiastic with the familiar material like “She’s Lost Control” while one concertgoer seems to exclaim that the newer songs “sound the same.” Martin Hannett’s production would change that, of course, and according to accounts from the spring of 1980, Ian’s behavior became even more erratic to the point in which dates were cancelled. We know about the suicide that took place that May, which makes any document (especially a complete concert) even more enticing to fans looking for evidence of a downward spiral. They won’t find it here, but instead, a typical bootleg quality concert recording of an enormously influential band on the verge of releasing a landmark album and facing tragedy at the same time. For fanatics, that won’t prevent them from seeking out this unofficial release but for fans with a certain amount of control, the Heart & Soul box set is enough to satisfy their thirst for live material.

Joy Division - Refractured (box set)

Like many other fans, Joy Division’s music spoke to me at a pivotal moment in my life. Their influence continues to this day, and they have become a band that I’ve consciously continued to pursue to become what curious onlookers have called “completists.” It’s not an easy task, considering the band had only two proper studio albums, a posthumous odds & sods that did a nice job of sealing any loose ends, and an excellent greatest hits compilation (Substance, 1987) that provided novices with a nice introduction to the unit’s too brief career. Add to this, a top-notch box set (Heart & Soul, 1997) was released with the intention of completely cleaning out the vaults of any material worthy of release while collecting the band’s entire commercial output in one centralized location.
Given the facts around the band’s material and Ian Curtis’ suicide securing the group’s role as purveyors of darkness, it really should come as no surprise that fans continue to witness a virtual grave robbing of additional compilations as well as additional newfound concert documentations. The first effort came in the form of yet another greatest hits compilation (Permanent, 1995) that only signaled a new owner of the band’s masters and failed to come close to its 1987 counterpart. I could live without this release, however, as I already owned the material presented and felt no desire to add it to my own collection simply on the basis of updated packaging.
But fans such as me are saps when it comes to “new” live material presented to us, regardless of how many times a song title is repeated. This trend started with an authorized Factory release (Preston 28 February 1980, 1999), a document with such piss-poor fidelity and continual equipment problems, one could only assume the reason for its issue was to circumvent the floodgate of bootlegs of this performance that have been available for more than a decade.
Factory then issued another live document (Les Bains Douches 18 December 1979, 2001) of what sounds to be from a broadcast source that, again, was available on bootlegs prior to the official release. The performance at this date, however, proved to be an inspiring set that came as close to a definitive live document as one could hope for: tense, urgent, and tight. If you’ve ever felt that Joy Division was a band more at home in the studio, or if you’ve read about the power that they supposedly possessed on stage (but have yet to find proof of it) this is the album that denies and confirms these statements respectively.
Later that same year, Factory Records combined these two performances in a limited-edition set under the title Fractured. The fact that fans now had to choose between the original single disc sets as well as the Fractured compilation seemed to point towards cashing in and the “limited edition” appeal certainly secured that conception. Indeed, the pressings were limited to only 1,000 copies that hardcore fans quickly snagged.
So what to do? If you’re into milking Joy Division fans for all they’re worth, you simply “dress up” the Fractured box set again, up the limited edition quotient to 3,000 copies, and price it all a little bit higher. And that’s exactly what Alchemy Records has done with 2004’s Refractured box set. You get the Preston Warehouse performance and the original single-disc artwork, three live performances from Holland that were originally on the Les Bains Douches disc have been moved to the end of the Preston disc. You get the show from Paris and the original single-disc artwork and (here’s the draw for J.D. fans) you also get another often bootlegged performance from Amsterdam as a bonus third disc, making the whole thing qualify to be a “box” set and, therefore, become more expensive. Just in case you’re not completely sold on shelling out the cash, the “generous” folks at Alchemy Entertainment Ltd. have even included a reproduction of the Bains Douches concert poster, a t-shirt, and the limited edition box itself to store the entire contents. The problem is the concert poster is a small reproduction of the original and the t-shirt merely says “refractured” on it and has no reference to Joy Division whatsoever. I’ve also heard that the Amsterdam show was to have its own jewel case and original artwork as well, but finished product simply adds this disc to the Les Bains Douches case and contains no new artwork for the Amsterdam cd at all.
Since the bonus material does nothing to really entice Joy Division fans, the main draw would have to be the third disc, recorded at the Paradiso on 1/11/1980 in Amsterdam. As stated before, this performance has been the subject of several bootlegs for years, and the official Alchemy release does nothing to raise the fidelity or sound quality. The performance itself is a lackluster one that is hands-down better than the Preston fiasco but not as energetic as the Paris show.
Finally, and this is extremely important, it must be noted that all three of these live performance discs contain an unbelievably infuriating two second gap in between all of the songs. If you were thinking of getting at least an aural document of a Joy Division performance, you would be mistaken. Instead, what’s presented are live audio samples along the same lines as if you were to individually download each song by itself.
Without any sort of true collector appeal, without any evidence of professionalism in the mastering, and without any attention to detail in both packaging and liner notes, Refractured reeks of taking sheepish Joy Division fans for a ride. If Alchemy Records’ intentions were indeed pure, this would have been a perfect opportunity, even considering the low-fi source material, to properly compile a new aural view of how Joy Division approached their emotional conflict on stage. Because underneath all of the technical faults, there lays a sense of humility in the performances: imperfection, fear, anger, drama and talent are all prevalent here. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence of any redeeming human qualities found on Refractured. The entire release merely seems to settle on just trotting out the body of Ian Curtis for a fast buck once again.