Pink Floyd vs. Joy Division

I hate Waters' voice. I really really really really hate Waters voice. Just saying. I have to get these things out of my system sometimes.

I hate Waters' voice. I really really really really hate Waters voice.

Fixed.

Joy Division folks on this poll are my heroes.

Count me in!

just like there's a bunch of tired fifty-somethings spouting the same crap about post-Barrett Floyd

i won't be 50 for another quarter century but that doesn't keep me from seeing that post-barrett floyd are godawful played-into-the-dirt dirgerock that don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath with, like, steely dan or led zeppelin or robert wyatt or any number of bands/artists of their era that were just as ambitious but didn't blow. or, yeah, joy division.

that said, i have a soft spot for "have a cigar," which is so flamboyantly oily and self-righteous and whiny (look how mean and nasty those records exects are!) that it's funny, like a randy newman parody of pink floyd or something.

TBH, I'm not sure I even know who's singing which Pink Floyd songs. Of all the things to dislike, their vocal parts seem pretty inoffensive, even a bit unremarkable.

That's sort of my point. It just sounds like some blokes.

Ha, I can sort of understand that. It's Bimble's "I really really hate Waters' voice" that throws me.

The thread has made me listen to Wish You Were Here, I hope you're happy now etc etc

this is about as good as stadium rock gets...dig the travesty of the lord's prayer sat down right in the middle...

PF fans in general seem a bit blinkered. I really like a lot of Floyd now, but I can still see what's shit about them...

― Autumn Almanac

This is one of the things that makes the question interesting to me. By modernist standards, Pink Floyd's "failures of taste" are many and glaring. Barret so overplayed his cutie-pie teatime psyche tropes that they frequently became a grating, mincing sort of kitsch. Waters, on the other hand, emotes hideously, painfully, and his lyric reach for significance in a manner that's more embarassing than enlightening. Over the length of their career, the band seems to have indulged (and overindulged) every wayward idea that entered their heads, no matter how trivial or buffoonish. While they're all "tasteful" musicians, they rarely understate that which could be overstated, rarely choose concision or elegance over inflation and grandiosity. None of this makes them bad by any means, but it does make their taste extremely suspect, especially when evaluated relative to a coolly modern band like Joy Division.

Joy Division eschew decoration. Their music is stripped down, clean, reduced to mechanical functionality, never more than it needs to be. They emphasize the materiality and physicality of their instruments, rarely pushing them outside a narrow range of effects. As a result, their music is raw yet restrained, coldly monochromatic, even sterile. More than anything else, it is coherent. It is of a piece. In this, it is, perhaps, the purest pop embodiment of modernist ideals, and it rigidly obeys the dictates of its own, spartan aesthetic. The fact that they existed for such a short time only makes their artistic thumbprint that much sharper.

One thing you can say for modernism is that it simplifies the business of having good taste. When you make "less is more" your guiding principle, you make it much easier to keep all the elements of your art harmoniously aligned -- especially in comparison with an approach as messy and aesthetically risky as Pink Floyd's romantic maximalism.

ian curtis' voice is so horrible

I love Joy Division but because

No results found for "joy division laser show".

I voted for Floyd.

xxp I knew this thread was going to turn into TS: Victor Hugo vs. Charles Baudelaire

am wondering at this point if I'll go to my grave without having read Hugo

Hugo v. Baudelaire (re Valery's essay on Baudelaire)

Hugo = romanticism, values scope, breadth, vision, immensity, seeks to contain universes, no one work is perfect, often find clumsy patches, but the sheer immensity of the oeuvre is astouding

Baudelaire (in deliberate contrast) = classicism, values unity, formal perfection, free from glaring errors of taste, smaller in scale but more realistic/cynical, whole life's work can fit easily in a book (or two compact discs, as it were)

ian curtis' voice is so horrible

― Lingbert, Monday, January 19, 2009 4:40 PM (1 hour ago)

A bit embarassed to admit that not only have I never read Hugo, I'm unfamiliar with the essay in question. But yeah, I guess I'm paraphrasing Valery.

oh no embarrassment necessary...just found this collection of essays on Baudelaire at some college library fire-sale & picked it up for like 25 cents...I don't think I've read much more of Hugo than a few excerpts myself (I take it you all have read Baudelaire, though, hmmm?)

okay i'll admit it...not only have I not read any real amount of Hugo, not only have I not finished Les Fleurs du Mal, I haven't even heard Closer yet...which is why I haven't voted yet...I was just happy abt posting "Sheep", alright!

Went through a Baudelaire & Rimbaud phase during the unlamented poetry years.

Anyway, I overstated the Joy Div = pop modernism thing. That crown rightly belongs to Kraftwerk and Gary Numan, both of whom had the good sense not be Ian Curtis.

i think JD fits as far a sPopl Modernism goes, though this prolley has more to do with Messrs. Hannett than anything (I'm guessing, since yknow I've never heard Closer and have heard UP only a few times...)

sPopl = pop (Wow!)

Oh yah, they totally fit, it's just that I don't think they ran the game. Curtis' lyrics and delivery erred too far on the side of tortured-artist emotionalism.

George, please stop saying you haven't heard Closer. It breaks my heart every time you say that.

Joy Division could have done a terrific cover of "Let There Be More Light" or any of the More soundtrack songs.

alright Bimble lol

please stop pigeon-holing Barrett as being all cutey-pie twee. And even some of the twee shit still fucking rocks as hard and noisy as anything did back then.

Couldn't quite get my head around Pink Floyd as Victor Hugo, I always tend to think of them more in terms of Salvador Dali - the early avant garde experiments, the collabs with filmmakers, all the iconic classic period works - 'The Dark Side of the Moon' vs 'The Persistence of Memory', flying pigs vs lobster phones, all of that major stuff pretty much kitsch at this stage. Dunno who this makes Joy Division though. Alberto Giacometti?

joy division is terrible, but I bet they get lots of votes

Yah. Assume they'll win by a huge margin.

Not that they're terrible, mind, just that they'll win.

Pink Floyd = Victor Hugo = lotsa albums, long songs = Goliath
Joy Division = Charles Baudelaire = few shorts songs, two albums = David

that was it...any real cogent details or insights about either band were conveniently ignored in order to make these vague generalizations work...

the thing is Joy Division's inevitable victory really really is the romanticized-past gesture that Pink Floyd's would have been circa 1985 when everybody would have been saying "sure Joy Division was a good band but they only made a couple of albums"

also, dan otm in re: Barrett, to call him "twee" is to say "I haven't really listened v. hard"

Eh, I've been listening to PF & Barret for nearly 30 years now, sometimes hard, sometimes not. And fucker really was twee as shit a lot of the time (See Emily Play, Matilda Mother, The Gnome, Jugband Blues, freaking Bike, tons of stuff on the solo LPs), not that Engwish whimsey was the only thing he had going on.

And, hey, "twee" wasn't even my word in the 1st place.

it's only the singer that makes me hate Joy Division, I beleive

Engwish whimsey

Bike is twee, but it's visionary twee...but hurrah for Lucifer Sam which is nowhere near twee...

also, whatever the romanticizing tendencies of the fans, I was basically going by Valery's framework that Romanticism = sweeping gestures & grand statements, whereas Classicism = unity, focus, a small perfection.

I wonder if Valery's essay is on the Internet...

And they said this thread was stupid.

I couldn't find it...

Valery = not stupid in the least
Valery filtered thru Drugs A. Money = quite possibly verging on stupid :)

Your take on Valery's making me think that if PF's Dali then JD's not Giacometti but de Chirico.

kind of works...wiki describes him (de Chirico) as being influenced by Schopenhauer (not to mention his influence on Sylvia Plath, who certainly has affinities with Joy Division, and certainly would've been a huge fan had she been born in, say, 1962)

all i know is SOMEONE was listening to The Wall pretty heavy in 1979:

"Mother I tried please belief me
I'm doing the best that I can
I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through
I'm ashamed of the person I am
Isolation, isolation, isolation"

but hurrah for Lucifer Sam which is nowhere near twee.

Well it is about a kitty...

uhhhhhhhhhh joy division duh

i agree with geir (!), james polk, and sonofstan upthread -- this really ought to be a pink floyd vs. joy division/new order poll. the way it's set up now, pink floyd ought to be handicapped by lopping off the roger waters era ... or by tacking on the bernard sumner/new order years to joy division. otherwise, it's just counting on the fact that pink floyd didn't change their name after syd barrett left and overlooking the fact that new order WAS joy division (except without ian curtis).

Saucerful of Secrets vs. Movement

And fucker really was twee as shit a lot of the time (See Emily Play, Matilda Mother, The Gnome, Jugband Blues, freaking Bike, tons of stuff on the solo LPs)

Excuse me, "Jugband Blues" twee?!??!?!?

he was awfully apologetic for speaking his mind on "jugband blues," you know ... which is kinda twee if one overlooks the possibility that syd was being really sarcastic (which I for one think that he was).

Your take on Valery's making me think that if PF's Dali then JD's not Giacometti but de Chirico.

Yeah, that works a bit better doesn't it? That whole aura of creeping dread. And used on the cover of 'Thieves Like Us' obviously. We just need him to have pulled a Jacques Vaché for us before he went all neo-classicist.