TRANSMISSION

joy division 1979

This election is depressing, and when you're depressed there's nothing like joy division. The music is deathly dark, dark as a drum of pitch, and you've already had a couple pints with your mates and these rain-slick streets are slippery sideways and you catch yourself falling but right yourself and laugh but when you close your eyes there are messages, short wave radio transmissions, codes just beyond your understanding, strange signals, squelch, wow and flutter, and this is joy division. Close your eyes and see sparks fly in the darkness. Ian Curtis hangs himself but the band new order carries on without him and this metronomic cold soul clock tick tocks on the midnight bedstand and oh this is chilly stuff this english rain.



new order 1981

CEREMONY (1981)

"Ceremony" was written a couple weeks before Ian Curtis took his life in 1980, after which members of the band decided they could not continue as Joy Division -- so the song became the first single for New Order (backed by "In a Lonely Place"). This performance was recorded live at the Ukrainian National Home in New York City, in 1981. Mixing post-punk with electronic dance, which was to be their trajectory throughout the eighties, New Order had a string of solid hits. This was their first, but in a way it's really the last Joy Division song.

EVEN CLOSER

The candle sputters out, the wig sits by the door, the last trick or treater left an hour ago. Candy wrappers tell the tale. I doze off and I'm dreaming, floating over dirty, landlocked Manchester. There's the Free Trade Hall down there, where Dylan was branded "Judas!" in 1966.
The Sex Pistols played here ten years later, in 1976, and only about thirty people showed up. Every one of them formed a band. This is the best of the lot. Joy Division. Not exactly punk, but inspired by the energy. Dark, mechanical. Countless bands copied them, too, most recently Interpol, and the Editors. Depressed metronomic lead singer Ian Curtis eventually hung himself, providing the perfect Hollywood ending for some crap bio-pic, of which TWO are currently being released. I don't know; maybe the movies will be okay and I'm just a cynical bastard. Here is the real band in a crude video from 1980. A truly sad, brilliant song.