Pink Floyd vs. Joy Division

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.

Twee of Jugband most apparent in the delivery of "I'll do my loving in the winter."

Still don't see it

that's okay

All this earnest chatter and no-one has made a Joy Division Bell gag yet? Sheesh guys!

joy division's a great band but come on

joy division was the shit for 2 albums but pink floyd was the shit for 10 or something and yeah i can only listen to ian curtis for so long before i just want to listen to new order instead.

i used to hate Atom Heart Mother and now it makes sense to me. Suddenly unfocused orchestrations sound pretty cool. And Joy Division became a greater revelation to me when I heard the pre-Hannett recordings on Disc 3 of the box...and I always liked the albums...and The Final Cut remains one of my faves, so apparently my taste is fucked but maybe later I'll listen to Ummagumma and really get confused.

smurfherder, "the narrow way" parts 2 & 3 on 'umma gumma' are the jam

Tee hee. I love it when people get on an "I HATE [BAND]" tip, it's so young teenage girl isn't it? I mean when I was 14 I had an "I HATE CULTURE CLUB" badge, god only knows why, they didn't consume me with rage I just thought it was cool to have something to hate on.

And every era will have something of the previous that people will brickbat, tbh its suprising Floyd still have milage in that regard seeing as these days its cool to like Genesis and suchlike.

BTW, FWIW I'm not much of a fan of Pink Floyd *or* Joy Division. I only own one JD album and I dont think theyre much cop.

And Ian Curtis really was a dreaful singer.

hey now. ian curtis was the scott walker of manchester

And?

and nothing. pink floyd's still better

Okay. I'm with you there.

FWIW, i don't think much of syd barrett or roger waters as singers either. david gilmour and rick wright had good voices though.

Which songs are sung by whom? I seriously can't tell!

the one that goes "HOW DOES IT FEEALL" isn't Ian Curtis.

syd = sings most of the songs on piper and "jugband blues"
roger = sings most of the songs on animals, the wall, and "brain damage/eclipse"
rick wright and david gilmour sound a bit alike -- wright's voice is higher and softer, gilmour's is lower and gruffer. e.g., gilmour sings lead on the verses, and wright sings backup on the bridges, for "time" and "us and them."

I love David Gilmour's voice but his guitar playing is even better. I think we all know who the real genius of the two from the second version of Pink Floyd is and it is not Roger Waters. Amused To Death showed the truth of his second banana ability.

"Learning To Fly" is a surprisingly durable and awesome song from swansong-era Floyd.

Just remember that every time you listen to Joy Division vocals you are also listening to Interpol and She Wants Revenge vocals...
Joy Division fans must have similar voices themselves.. there has to be some Freudian explanation to why people enjoy that kind of singing or else people must be really good at tuning out all the vocal parts.

it took me a long time to be able to deal with Ian's vocals but it was worth the wait.

IC's vocals, like Morrissey's, are a huge barrier for some people. But, as with Morrissey, once it clicks, you realize that he's an amazing and original singer.

well I was able to get into The Smiths and Arthur Russell - so I dunno about that theory (but maybe I just understand those vocals on a Freudian level? - I mean I do think they are quite good) - I'll quit posting about this

Ian Curtis never had the opportunity to grow out of his awkward phase the way Morrissey did (the singing on the Smiths' debut is markedly different from what he was doing on The Queen Is Dead), so it makes sense that people would have lingering issues with Joy Division on those grounds. It is definitely worth getting past that, though, as a lot of Joy Division's songs are just staggering.