Joy Division: Classic Or Dud?

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.

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).

-- Spencer Chow (spencercho...), September 17th, 2004.

those bands might not be goth but c'mon, the 'goth' aesthetic (in rock music) as we know it wouldn't exist the way it does without those bands.

JOY DIVISION WERE FRANZ FERDINAND!

i guess it prolly differs from goth to goth (heh). all the goths i've known personally were DEFINITELY into Joy Division.

"Good, good..."

blood test, dude.

x-post

The "Futurist" tag appeared in September 1980, as follows:

From George Gimarc's Post-Punk Diary for Monday September 15 1980:

STEVO the DJ at Billy's club and general provider of the soundtrack to the new scene brewing in the electronic underground, has his top 20 current records
list published in Sounds under the heading "Futurist Playlist". Top tracks are Joy Division "Isolation", Gary Numan and "I Die You Die", Bowie's "Ashes to
Ashes", Bauhaus with "Terror Couple Kill Colonel" and Gina X and "Do It Yourself". At #6 is Fad Gadget and "Fireside Favourite", B-Movie with "Soldier
Stood Still", Gary Numan's "Aircrash Bureau" and "Telekon", and a demo from Blancmange of "I've Seen The Word". Other groups present are Modern
English, Pere Ubu, Throbbing Gristle, Human League, YMO, Iggy Pop and Last Dance. Several months from now Stevo will confess to the NME that "...the
tag Futurist is a bunch of crap. I took a chart of the most popular electronic music I was playing as a DJ into Sounds and said to them 'put it in but don't call it
'Eurorock' or anything like that'. I grab hold of the paper a week later and it says 'Futurist'. I hate all this stopid tagging."

Despite Stevo's disclaimer, "Futurist" was seen by some as a useful tag for an emerging movement, and there were actually "Futurist" nights
at some nightclubs. The movement was seen by some as an avant-garde version of/reaction to the "pop" New Romantic scene, with the most
important bands being John Foxx-era Ultravox and Gary Numan. However, the movement seems to have suffered from the lack of a coherent
identity and never became a subculture as such.

The tag, however, became popular for a while- in an interview in Sounds in January 1981, Blancmange denied being Futurist ("I'm not a
Futurist. I hate that word. What we do is more like experimental new music") whilst Depeche Mode laid claim to the term in an attempt to evade a
worse one ("OK, we're Futurists. We've always been Futurists. For me, Futurusts were an extension of punk rock. We never had anything to do with New
Romantics. They all looked the same. Bunch of flaming sissies! But call us what you like. Ultra pop. Fiturist, Disco. Anything so long as it's not New
Romantic").

ha ha ha ha! I assume this was meant in jest, and if so, good one.

Latebloomer, while I sympathise with your point of view in other respects, I believe goth would have existed without JAMC - in fact, it did.

Thanks to Scott Seward for pointing out that when JD were going there WAS no goth scene to speak of. If there was, JD might have dressed differently. MIGHT have. Instead they dressed pretty normally and forced you to concentrate on their music. Another reason why they're ace. I pulled out U.P. last night, spurred by the person here who kept saying he thought the bass line from Disorder was out of tune (on another thread somewhere). He (she?) regretted and retracted it later, but wow. Hooky out of tune is like...he can't be out of tune because more often than not he calls the tune everyone else seems to play around. If he were out of tune the whole thing would fall apart.

I warn you guys, though I tend to get hysterical at goth-related jokes, so try to keep it at a minimum. I'm rather horrified at the way Franz Ferdinand singer has copied Stephen Morris' striped shirt above.

But Radiohead can often be brooding no? They certainly have made some pretty depressing music. When I think of happy music, RH is not the first to come to mind.

Just came across the lyrics for George Harrison's "Only a Northern Song" and realized they were strangely appropriate for this thread:

If you're listening to this song
You may think the chords are going wrong
But they're not
He just wrote it like that

When you're listening late at night
You may feel the bands are not quite right
But they are
They just play it like that

It doesn't really matter what chords I play
What words I say
Or time of day it is
As it's only a Northern Song

It doesn't really matter what clothes I wear
Or how I fare
Or if my hair is brown
When it's only a Northern Song

If you think the harmony
Is a little dark and out of key
You're correct
There's nobody there

And I told you there's no one there