Joy Division: Classic Or Dud?

If I find extra, I will steal them and auction them here.

It hasn't.

I love the writing in box set.

did you ignore this bit form that mark s post amt:

''actually i suspect a *lot* of writers do something very like this, but morley is the only one i'm aware of who uses such nakedly useless stretches of deliberately(?) tiresome "literary" playfulness to mark the Three Chilling Dots (like [INSERT REALITY HERE] , and not using words which merely divert or move or distort to do so...])''

To answer yr first q: why shouldn't it be in a box set?

Its so sincere by being insincere. I read the liner notes to the boxset many years ago - got a copy from my record library, taped some of it and gave it back - but I remember being baffled by it, but I didn't mind that. It was prob the first time I read morley.

Ha ha actually now that I think on it, I bought Closer because I read an interview with Thom Yorke saying that Radiohead based "Street Spirit" on a Joy Division template. When I got the album and it was so (to my ears) drudgy and leaden I felt very betrayed. The whole thing sounds a lot more beautiful and shimmering to my ears now though. That two chord guitar riff in "Heart & Soul"!

Re: the synthesisers on the Warsaw demos mentioned upthread - I had heard that they were added by some meddling studio engineer, that the band hated them and that it was part of why they didn't release the album on RCA. Whereas from reading 24 Hour Party People I get the sense that the band just let M.H. dictate to them soundwise.

That live gig is very poorly recorded and I wasn't surprised when another live set wz released separately.

I got far more out of Closer than unknown pleasures, which I always seemed to lose interest in after the first couple of songs. The guitars fade into the background a lot more throughout 'closer', as I recall, which kind of follows onto new order.

They sound (to me) as if they were genuinely despairing as opposed to sounding as if they were just feeling sory for themselves and wanting attention.

"The manic depressive who used to call me at 2am threatening to kill herself certainly wasn't a spotty teenager, but that doesn't make her "better" than one.

I think you're going way beyond / beneath how either band sound now.

Lest there be any misunderstanding though, let me make it absolutely clear that I was a fan of Joy Division while they were going and (to extend your comparison in the direction that it appears to me to be going) I most certainly don't believe that Ian Curtis having hanged himself is in any way "better" than Thom Yorke not having done so!

Mind you, The Cure didn't have much of a "goth" following in those days either as far as I can recall!

Whether or not the reason that the goths subsequently became interested in JD was a direct consequence of Ian Curtis death or the manner thereof I really wouldn't wish to speculate....

The clothes?

I think not!

Goth pin-ups?

I can't see too many goths being over-enamoured of Steven Morris' nice smart striped shirt either.

let's play word association! interpol... acne!

Joy Division are not usually thought of as being goth, despite being referred to as "gothic" at the time, but their influence on goth bands was
considerable. Their sparse, haunting sound was quite unlike anything else around at the time and spawned a host of imitators, especially after
Ian Curtis' death (Bauhaus' first album and the Sisters' first single were both slammed as being the work of poor Joy Division copyists, which
was rather unfair on Bauhaus). Their use of minimalist and gothic art on record covers also had a lasting influence (for instance, the cover to
the March Violets "Grooving in Green", designed by Andrew Eldritch, has definite similarities to the cover of "Closer").

Additionally, they were a major source of the term "gothic" as applied to post-punk music.

However, Joy Division were never a part of the goth scene; the goth scene proper started to emerge around 81/82, by which time Ian Curtis was
long dead.

They were never really regarded as "goth" musically by goths, either, despite the obvious debts owed to them by a lot of goth bands. A lot of
first-era goths viewed them as too "mainstream" owing to their posthumous popularity; also, their image was rather too bleak (from a Batcave
point of view, they were decidedly unsexy). And they had their own following, the "long raincoat brigade".

I completely disagree, Joy Division = Urban Decay, VU = Heroin/S&M, JAMC = Motorcycles/Oral Sex. None of them = vampires/lace/eyeliner. I mean they all wear black, but so do The Raiders (who are actually more goth than those bands).

are you a very very old person?

They're great! Or I should say she's great, one woman band.

Can someone do a friendster search on JD? then we can see what else their fans like.

I think amt's pinefox impression wz worse than when raggett did it on some other thread. Can't blame you tho' - its hard to do.