Before they recorded their classic 1983 album Power Corruption And Lies, New Order made an extended trip to New York and absorbed some of the city’s sound into their own world-weary music. Latin salsa, 12” remix culture and the 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, New Order were still largely Joy Division minus Ian Curtis, a post punk band, not the electronic dance quartet they would soon become. This is a fascinating document of the group during 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.
Recorded live at The Ukranian National Home in New York’s East Village on November 18 1981. Low lights, the musicians saying nearly nothing to the audience, a concert held in a hot sweaty dance hall—there’s an extremely underground quality to this show,
Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album, this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey’s image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That’s appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!
No, this is not merely another lame meme, this is something that is actually manufactured and sold by the Walt Disney Corporation! Reedonkulous. Buy yours at the Disney store...
So, dear readers, this is one of the things I do when I am not busy scribbling and posting here on DM - I am part of a Joy Division tribute act called Joyce D’Vision. As the name would suggest, it’s not just any run-of-the-mill tribute act - it’s a drag queen tribute, fusing those two quintessentially Northern English traits of woe-is-me miserableism and end-of-the-pier transvestitism.
Before you ask, no, I am not Joyce D’Vision herself, but rather Noel Order, keyboard whizz extraordinaire and Bontempi aficionado. Joyce is played by the very talented Joe Spencer, and we are often joined on stage by other queens such as Sheela Blige, Kurt Dirt and Sahara Dolce. Joyce has been lucky enough to share the stage with British queer performance legends like David Hoyle (The Divine David) and Scottee Scottee (Eat Your Heart Out), but those were just warm-ups for what happened last week…
A few months ago Joe took part in a reality competition show May The Best House Win, where Joyce and friends had a cameo near the end. The program was finally broadcast last Tuesday, and seen by the comedian Harry Hill, himself a fan of Joy Division. Harry hosts a show called TV Burp, which looks over the best bits of the last week’s telly, and he invited Joyce and her friends to London to sing live on the show. Joyce performed as the final segment on the final show of the series, which was broadcast right before X Factor. Meaning that this went out on a Saturday evening, just after dinner time when everyone’s getting ready to watch the biggest show of the week. Seriously - that’s prime fucking time.
The reaction since (mostly gauged through Twitter) has been interesting - some people really get it, while others have stated that Ian Curtis would be rolling in his grave. I like to think Curtis would have seen the funny side, as would Tony Wilson I’m sure, and we have heard through the grapevine that there are even Joyce fans in the New Order camp.
Joyce D’Vision is not done out of hatred of the band or the man, but rather from love - and a simple desire to deflate the pomposity that surrounds JD and their legend, as perpetuated by magazines like NME and high street stores like Primark (currently selling an Ian Curtis t-shirt). So while the idea (and sight) of a fat, bearded man in a wig singing a boss nova version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” is definitely going to rub some people up the wrong way, I’m pretty sure our readers here at DM can handle it:
Pix and sound. Grant Gee’s impressive 2007 documentary Joy Divsion definitively brings together all the elements of the band’s story (some parts of which has been heard in other films, in other documentaries) together into one complete and engrossing film. Written by Jon Savage and containing interviews from Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Peter Hook, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton, Peter Saville, Anton Corbijn, Genesis P. Orridge, together with archive footage of Joy Division, Martin Hannett, John Peel and Ian Curtis.
This version is in English with sub-titles in Spanish.
Oki has put together a collection of Joy Division mashups with female singers like Cher, Katy Perry and Beyonce called Divas Of Joy Division which you can download for free here.
I’m a massive Joy Division fan so I approached Oki’s concept with trepidation, but was surprised to find that some of the tracks have an eerily appealing vibe.
This particular cut which combines “She’s Lost Control” with Nancy Sinatra singing “Bang, Bang” took a couple of listens before it got its hooks in me. But it did.
Sinatra’s flanged vocal not sitting right in the pocket (which is wobbly as it is) creates the unsettling atmosphere of a dark drug experience which seems perfect for songs about madness and homicide.
I mashed up the mashup with some video so you’d have something to look at.
Taken from the upcoming New Order/Joy Division greatest hits album “Total,” this rocky track has been played on Irish radio and since found its way onto the web. This brings up two questions in my mind - how can this be described as a “leak” if it has been played (presumably officially) on the radio? And why the hell do these two different bands need a combined “best of”?
We’ve posted before about both South African artist Spoek Mathambo and amazing photographer Pieter Hugo (his book Nollywood is sitting on a coffeetable 10 feet away from me as I type this) and wow, their new collobaoration on this video for Spoek’s fucking brilliant cover of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control” is nothing short of simply astonishing.
You think there’s nothing new under the sun, jaded reader? That every good idea has already been used up by music video directors? Guess again because this will knock your socks off!
‘Control’, the fourth single from Spoek Mathambo‘s debut album Mshini Wam, is a ‘darkwave township house’ cover of the Joy Division classic ‘She’s Lost Control’. In collaboration with one of South Africa’s most influential photographers Pieter Hugo, and cinematographer Michael Cleary, the new video explores township cults and teen gangs. Shot on location in a squatted train boarding house in Langa, Cape Town, the video features a cast mostly made up of local neighborhood kids who run their own dance troop, Happy Feet. Spoek Mathambo has been pioneering a progressive take on African music for the last few years via his DJing (as HIVIP), solo and live band projects, having featured on Boysnoize Records and Top Billin.
Directed and shot by Pieter Hugo & Michael Cleary. Edited by Richard Starkey
YouTuber SoftwareDR says, “This is Joy Division live on Something Else Studio. Recorded Transmission in this John Peel session. My first try to create a stop motion film. Hope you like it.”
This track “Chance” by Joy Division popped up on You Tube today - it’s listed as an “Unofficial Release - from the Piccadilly Radio session 4th June 1979.” “Chance” is an early version of the song that would later become “Atmosphere”.
According to Shadowplay a website dedicated to all of Joy Division’s recordings, the lyrics to “Chance” vary from “Atmosphere”:
“Chance”
Walk in silence
Walk away in silence
See the danger - always danger
Endless talking - life rebuilding
Don’t walk away - face the danger
Walk in silence
Don’t walk away in silence
See the danger - always danger
Rules are broken - false emotions
Don’t walk away
People like you find it easy
Always in tune - walking on air
They’re hunting in packs
By the rivers, through the streets
It may happen soon
Then maybe you’ll care
Walk away
Walk away from danger
“Atmosphere”
Walk in silence
Don’t walk away in silence
See the danger - always danger
Endless talking - life rebuilding
Don’t walk away
Walk in silence
Don’t turn away in silence
Your confusion - my illusion
Worn like a mask of self-hate
Confronts and then dies
[or on the Effenaar live version:
Corrupts and then dies]
Don’t walk away
People like you find it easy
Naked to see - walking on air
Hunting by the rivers
Through the streets, every corner
Abandoned too soon
Set down with due care
Don’t walk away - in silence
Don’t walk away
The Piccadilly Radio also version has the following additional words:
I’m - I’m just crossing the line - just crossing the line
Trying to get back - right where I was
Back where I was - see me crossing the line
Don’t walk away—
Peter Hook allegedly claimed “Atmosphere” was Joy Division’s best song, not surprising then that it was voted the Greatest Song of the Millennium by listeners to the late and lamented John Peel’s BBC radio show.
Bonus clips of ‘Atmosphere’ and ‘Digital’ after the jump…
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 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:
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.
To anyone familiar with Burroughs, the thought of him telling a fan to get lost is perplexing. Burroughs tended to be unfailingly courteous, even a touch “old world” in his manners. Typically he was generous with fans and admirers, particularly with young men as handsome as Ian Curtis. What could have prompted such an exchange? Was Curtis insulting? Burroughs in a bad mood? Were there mitigating circumstances?
Find out in William S. Burroughs and Joy Division (Reality Studio)
Attention Obama family (or those who do their shopping for them): this Joy Division cloak will make the perfect Christmas gift for those Zapatero daughters!
is sitting on a coffeetable 10 feet away from me as I type this) and wow, their new collobaoration on this video for Spoek’s fucking brilliant cover of Joy Division’s “She’s Lost Control” is nothing short of simply astonishing.
