Joy Division: Classic Or Dud?

The synths that come in on the verses make it.

i'm almost completely musicially illiterate, so i don't think my efforts to explain how "love will tear us apart" works contributed very much to anyone's understanding of the song. so i'm not sure i should posit my own posts as any kind of positive example. but i know that "love will tear us apart" has always struck me as a very involving song (such that i will often listen to it several times in a row). yet most criticism about it tends to adopt very very vague impressionistic, almost mystical language to explain its power and the charms of joy division in general. but i think that's dodging the real "problem." to quote tim on the "formalist criticism" thread, from one of my favorite posts ever made on ilm:

How does a given piece of music "cast a spell" over us? Too much non-formal music resorts to quasi-mythic terminology at that point, but the spell in question is really a piece of elaborate charlatanism, a confluence of sonic tactics which, in the mind or the body of the listener, appears to be something more than a series of discrete sounds. What is it that is allowing to a piece of music to do this to us (both at a "textual" and contextual level)?

to be fair i think your comment falls somewhere a little bit closer on the spectrum to stylistic description than tim's "quasi-mythic terminology." but it doesn't really help me *hear* "transmission." i find a lot of criticism like that. (including my own informal criticism.)

You can't separate the two things. The tightness of the groove in James Brown or whatever is a concrete phenomenon that can be measured and analyzed. The "spell" is not a metaphysical thing; it's made up of real components

That said, there's something about JD's sound that lends itself to being heard as gray or grayish blue (as opposed to, say, purple or pink). I'm not sure why, offhand, one hears the guitar and bass sounds this way. Perhaps the "starkness" of the production makes the listener feel like he or she is in some large, urban space. There's also the robotic character of the music. Ian Curtis' voice is very robotic on that track. And robots, of course, are gray (or silver).

http://www.totalmetal.ru/upload/reviews/pic226.jpg

Check it:

Numbness

Vainly I search the snow
For the footprint she left
When arm in arm with me
She passed along the green meadow

I long to kiss the ground
Pierce both ice and snow
With my burning tears
Until I see the soil beneath

Where shall I find a blossom
Where find green grass?
The flowers are dead
And the turf has a wan look

Is there then no memory
That I may take from here?
When my sorrow is stilled
Who shall tell me of her?

My heart feels dead
Within it her image gazes coldly
When my heart thaws again
Her image too will flow away

I used to follow them around the country and there were various gangs, mainly from Manc/Burnley/Preston/Macclesfield areas + a few of us from the other side of the pennines like me. There were no goths whatsoever, but hang on...were there really goths in 1979/80?? Didn't that all coalesce 3 or 4 years later. All the folks I used to talk to that followed JD were either the long overcoat brigade, football hooligans/beer boys + the odd mad Belgian.

**"Love Will Tear Us Apart" is the one Joy Division song I don't "get" all the hype about because it's a good melody but there's NO HARMONY WHATSOEVER IN THE HOOK WTF WHY ARE THE BASSLINE, SYNTH, AND IAN CURTIS' VOICE ALL FOLLOWING THE SAME MELODY LINE **

Bollocks! Listen to the second synth line (playing 5ths I think)

*Gulp*

Taking Sides: The Mission v. The Sisters of Mercy

Too right. They definitely sold out by then. I like 'Gutz' best. Thx Bye.

There were certainly proto-goths about then - people taking stylistic cues from Siouxsie and Dave Vanian and starting to add make-up and vampire chic to the basic punk look and I'm pretty sure the word goth(ic) was in use to decribe them.

As I recall there were generally a lot of different movements starting to emerge in the wake of punk - the long overcoat brigade, the new brutalists, the futurists, the Blitz kids, the proto-crusty / proto-traveller hippy / anarchist punks.

A lot of these movements split up and merged with eachother in diffrenet combinations and disappeared and Goth was one of the ones that emerged out of these different elements.

Of course The Batcave didn't appear 'til a little later and I'm not sure there were any bands actually describing themselves as goth at the time - although there certainly were some who were subsequently adopted by the goths and some that would later describe themselves as goth.

I was busy flapping around in a long overcoat.

We do go to an awful lot of the same gigs 'though....