Joy Division

[Adam]

This must be the final chapter now, the music, the books and now the film have all been done.

Nope.  New documentary pending - though the interviews were all done a while before 'Control'.  Read about this somewhere this weekend, can't remember where.

Saw 'Control' today.  Thought it alright.  Some aspects of it were great - great evocation of 70s England, in as much as I remember it; great gig scenes; Samantha Morton.  There was one moment where the guy who was playing Ian seemed to go method-mental, at the first gig, I swear he was doing Ian-doing-Iggy - as Ian himself probably did before he found his own voice.  That was ace.

On the downside, I'm not really sure what this film is  for.  It's not a long story and anyone who cares enough to see the film will surely know it fairly well already.  Maybe it's cathartic for Corbijn.  Spotted a continuity blooper as well  - in the bar at the Free Trade Hall before the Pistols gig, 'Sister Midnight' was on the PA, or on the soundtrack at least, but 'The idiot' didn't come out until  6+ months after the Pistols played there for the second time which is when Ian saw them.   *gets coat*

[Urpal]

On the downside, I'm not really sure what this film is  for. 

Well, there are plenty of under thirty year olds out there for whom Joy Division mean very little and who are more likely to make a striking connection through seeing the film than taking the music cold.

At one of the screenings I saw there were people beside me of roughly my age who commented at the end that they'd enjoyed the film and knew little about the band before - so that covers the majority of our generation who were more influenced by Saturday Night Fever and Grease than anything happening down their street.

A lot of us are getting older and, leaving aside the basic need for occasional wallowing in "melancholic nostalgia", are rapidly losing brain cells and need to be reminded regularly of the significant events in our lives in order to remember what happened

I thought the film revealed a clearer and closer (no pun intended) connection between Curtis' lyrics and his life than I had made previously. I've listened to the music with fresh ears myself as a consequence and realised how much of his own predicament Curtis was ruminating on in them. So the film may tell a well trod story but remains revelatory.

Apart from that, I thought it was pitch perfect as a lasting tribute to the band, unlike most things which have gone before.

[Adam]

Well, ok.  Maybe I was just winched out the wrong side of the 4-poster yesterday.

[Eke]

Competition on the Mojo website. Identify 17 bands covering Love will Tear Us Apart from snippets on a youtube clip. I know two

[Bro]

Good article on Joy Division and Curtis's literary influences here:

http://music.guardian.co.uk/rock/story/0,,2279170,00.html

Apparently there's yet another film out, this time a doco written by Jon Savage. Anyone seen it already? Control still haunts me, in a good way.

[Gazza]

Nope.  New documentary pending - though the interviews were all done a while before 'Control'.

Apparently there's yet another film out, this time a doco written by Jon Savage. Anyone seen it already?

Saw it at the weekend. Well worth a look even if you've seen Control. It took the local ultra art-house cinema rather by surprise: the place was sold out and there was still a throng of people milling around in the foyer and out onto the street. Think they sometimes count themselves lucky if anyone other than the projectionist and the usher turn up.

The one thing it manages to do far better than Control is to capture how the band felt about Curtis's death, since you get that in the interviews, which are generally pretty good and often unflinchingly honest. Very difficult to know which was sadder: Annik talking about her concerns (confirmed by Wilson) or everyone else talking about their lack of them. A few marks off for it being topped and tailed with a pair of Wilson's rants about Manchester.

[Jonathan Alley]

Here's a review I've penned for the magazine I edit during the day
cheers, Jonathan Alley

“The four of us didn’t know what we were doing, and we didn’t know why we were doing it, and the chemistry was unbelievable” says Joy Division bassist Peter Hook in Grant Gee’s Joy Division. Gee’s last music film Meeting People is Easy depicted Radiohead’s transformation from hit act to global phenomenon, utilising all manner of onscreen motifs; text, symbols and overlaid images. This device is used more effectively here:  Joy Division were active thirty years ago, the audio archives sound as DIY as the era’s music. Symbols – a sine wave accompanying an interview with late producer Martin Hannett for example – are striking in their simplicity. Where Anton Corbijn’s Control told the late Ian Curtis’s life story, this is a story of band – and a city – Manchester. Most fans know Joy Division’s icy, anthenmic, futuristic precision from their albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer; yet here are several  live TV appearances that showcase how riveting, and purely original they were up loud, in the flesh. Gee doesn’t tell you, he shows you; overlaying archival footage of important places from the Joy Division story – the old Factory Records building or Curtis’s house for example –with how they look today. As opposed to the comic romp of 24 Hour Party People, this is a gritty, first hand report of seriously heady times. Jonathan Alley

[Urpal]

Thanks for the positive reviews. Having dwelt on the Control movie to an almost obsessional extent last year (I think I saw it three times in the cinema and at least once on DVD), and also visited in and around Macclesfield for homagey type purposes as well as unrelated ones since, I was doubtful a documentary film could add much to the TV ones I have already seen. But I'm now considering looking at going to the cinema again if I haven't missed the boat....

I see there is the obligatory website, which looks good in itself though not particularly helpful when you are looking for a local cinema screening:

http://www.joydivisionmovie.co.uk/

There is supposed to be a "Tony Wilson" tribute event here in Manchester on 21 June:

http://www.tonywilsonexperience.com/

It seems a bit of a mystery, even after some research, as to what exactly the event will involve, but, as I have heard close associates suggest, that perhaps befits the man concerned..

[Adam]

Without wishing to insult anyone's intelligence, there's enough on the front page to imply it will at least involve some sort of conversation with the participation of, among others, Peter Hook, Steve Coogan, Kevin Cummins, Peter Saville, Mark Radcliffe, Paul Morley and Alan McGee (good of them to build in an obvious fagbreak). Talking for 24 hours seems like the ideal tribute doesn't it?

[Adam]

Ian Curtis's headstone stolen 

All 178 news reports here
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=uk&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1225634702

[Urpal]

...and before you ask, it wasn't me, guv. I last saw it somewhere on the edge of a macclesfield cemetary a few months past.

It's a bit of a strange thing to nick really. It was in substance just a bit of pavement curbing with an inscription on it - one of many commemorative stones which form the pathway edge through a section of the Macclesfield crematorium/cemetary. Not much bigger than a brick. I suppose that made it more easily transportable than a fullscale gravestone or statue. Perhaps that would be the solution?

I saw the Joy Division documentary movie over the weekend. I thought it was excellently put together. Well paced and edited. Very honest and not too indulgent. The available live footage is well used and doesn't feel as bootleg quality as it actually is. The venue was full and many there seemed to be drawn from a curious younger generation rather than the usual suspects.

[stevenl]

I realise I'm coming to this conversation late but it also took me a while to get around to seeing Control.
Anyway I wrote this for another forum I post on:

Control - Interesting but disappointing.
It's well shot and the use of black and white stock is commendable but it's probably not moody enough.
The subject lends itself to being under lit and if he wanted to emphasise that Macclesfield was grey, the harsh daylight scenes didn't work.
The other thing that didn't work for me was the fact it was Deborah's version of Ian Curtis' life.
The things I've read about Curtis and his relationship with his wife are the complete opposite to how she was portrayed as the victim in Control.
Every story has two sides but it was interesting to watch the reaction of my lass who watched it with me but knows nothing about Joy Division other than a few songs, she naturally sided with the poor wife!!!
In the end it's less a story about Ian Curtis, it's the tale of how Debbie Curtis husband cheated on her!
Shame because the whole story would of made a better film!
Glad to see they at least got the Hooky character right and he was still a cunt.

I bought the doco the other day but I'm yet to watch it.

[Eke]

For those of you who bought the re-issue of Still and are still waiting for the pitch corrected version of Ice Age to be posted online (as promised in the sleeve notes) then you can find it here. Along with pitch corrected versions of Colony and Dead Souls as a little bonus.

They were posted back in December so I'm a little late to the party.

[Eke]

This blog has been going for a while with a series of New Order singles but with that complete has now moved on to Joy Division.

It's a very nice attempt at putting together the "Recycle" box set that was mooted at one point to collect all the New Order singles in a box set. They've done a really good job of not only finding the best versions of every track for the singles but also putting together some artwork for you to make your own bespoke CD sleeves in different formats - there's a link to a flickr slideshow somewhere to talk you through the process if you need it.

Anyway - An Ideal For Living and A Factory Sample/Earcom 2 are now up with more to follow at a later date (do you see what I did there?)

[Urpal]

It's 30 years since Ian Curtis died. That certainly makes you feel old.

I went to see Peter Hook's personal anniversary tribute, involving the live performance by him and a few young uns of Unknown Pleasures, last night. I'd been umming and ahhing about going for a while, questioning whether Hooky without the rest of the band could do the songs justice and worried it might have tarnished my image of the glory days. Yesterday I happened to pass by Fac 251s website and 50 tickets for the previously sold out show had been released so I decided to snaffle one and go along.

I'm glad I did because it was a surprisingly excellent show - I say surprising because I went along with low expectations and, if I'm honest, more than half expected them to be fulfilled.

Emotional meanderings were kept to a minimum and the music was given full throttle. I think Hooky having a support band of younger fellas helped keep the pace up to scratch and the songs were all faithfully rendered. It was also surprising that Hooky has a singing voice more proximate to Ian's than most (though obviously not with as much strength or range) - certainly it's closer than Bernard Sumner's. He'd obviously been practising quite hard to get the delivery right and only made a few mistimed vocal entries or shouty over eggings of the vocal peaks of songs.

The venue is quite small and was packed to the rafters to the point you stood literally shoulder to shoulder and back to front on all sides with other audience members without room to manoevre in any direction. As it was a warm early Summer's day in Manchester, the atmosphere was hot and sticky in a way that seemed to conjure some nostalgic feelings of itself.

The setlist steered well away from being a commercial "greatest hits" extravaganza and on the right side of being a serious musical tribute. A handful of Warsaw era tracks opened proceedings leading swiftly into the more complex and dark Unknown Pleasures run through. The show only got around to pandering to populism with Transmission and LWTUA as the encores. Anyone along for a hit parade would have had to have been patient. There wouldn't have been many people who had heard all the songs, or indeed many (I only saw JD in the Closer era), on the setlist performed live before, and I'm pleased I took the rare opportunity.

I also went to the free "Joy Division" exhibition that has been set up in the former Factory boardroom at the club over the last few days. Ian Curtis' futuristic white "cricket bat" bodied guitar was on display there with rusty stringwork alongside a range of original JD band equipment from back in the day, including the dusty synth that would have served for live performances of Atmosphere around the time I saw them.  A small but pretty cool display.