Joy Division - Transmission (Dance, Dance, Dance To The Radio)

There was always nervy energy to Joy Division’s music, an insistent pulse throughout their songs. Their first single, “Transmission,” is literally about electric signals: It opens with Ian Curtis chanting, “Radio, live transmission,” and its chorus advises letting radio waves propel your body into dance. At the end of the second verse, Curtis’ voice transmits directly into Bernard Sumner’s wiry guitar solo.

Curtis knew something about physical electricity: he suffered from epilepsy and frequent seizures, and the frenetic build of “Transmission” has the feel of an uncontrollable short circuit. But there’s a subtext about conformity under it: To Curtis, society is an army of drones that “go on as though nothing was wrong” and are “staying in the same place.” Viewed through that lens, the heady chorus of “Transmission” is not a celebration so much as a warning: all the people who “dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio” are powerless followers led by whatever they’re fed. That Curtis and his bandmates delivered such a bleak message through such a heart-quickening sound (the kind that, ironically enough, is impossible not to move your body too) shows just how much power Joy Division could generate.

Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart 7"

Joy Division’s signature hit, Love Will Tear Us Apart, represents both triumph and tragedy. Arguably the band’s greatest achievement, it’s a shimmering beauty of a song with a timeless allure, yet it also stands as the group’s epitaph. By the time it saw release and sailed into the UK Top 20 in the summer of 1980, frontman Ian Curtis had taken his own life and Joy Division no longer existed.

Joy Division - Isolation

Not much to say about this one. It’s disc 10 from a ten disc box set of Joy Division - Singles 1978-80.

Joy Division - Atmosphere/She Lost Control 12"

In 1978, for those who cared to listen, a chilly, stripped-down sound could be heard in the north of England, signalling a new direction. Manchester’s Joy Division performed “She’s Lost Control” for the first time in June that year, playing to audiences of a few hundred people. The song appeared on Unknown Pleasures, and was re-recorded for the B-side of their 1980 single “Atmosphere”. This strange, dark song has intrigued artists and producers worldwide. It provided the title for Anton Corbijn’s 2007 Joy Division biopic Control. Ian Curtis sounded like the oldest soul. That such cold, forbidding vocals could come from a young man with lowered eyes, plain clothes and an odd, angular dance made them even eerier. Joy Division’s aim was to emulate the Sex Pistols, but they ended up sounding like nothing else; Peter Hook credits producer Martin Hannett with conjuring their arid, industrial sonics. Coupling a machine-cold drum beat with chilling (but sonically warm) words about a woman having a fit—a subject close to home for Curtis, who frequently went into epileptic convulsions during Joy Division gigs. “She’s Lost Control” is a striking song, both danceable and depressing, and an aural precursor to all sorts of things, both immediate and far in the future (hello, first Interpol album!).

Unknown Pleasures

It even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both; one of Peter Saville's earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve. If that were all Unknown Pleasures was, it wouldn't be discussed so much, but the ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair. The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production; emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub; as much a hallmark as the music itself. Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, and minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster; something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing. Even though this is Hannett's album, it is as much as anyone of the bands performers, the songs and performances are the true key. Bernard Sumner redefined heavy metal sludge as chilling feedback fear and explosive energy, Peter Hook's instantly recognizable bass work was at once warm and foreboding, and Stephen Morris' drumming smacked through the speakers above all else. Ian Curtis synthesizes and purifies every last impulse, his voice shot through with the desire first and foremost to connect, only connect; as "Candidate" plaintively states, "I tried to get to you/You treat me like this." Pick any song: the nervous death dance of "She's Lost Control"; the harrowing call for release "New Dawn Fades," all four members in perfect sync; the romance in hell of "Shadowplay"; "Insight" and its nervous drive toward some sort of apocalypse. All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect; still one of the best albums ever.

An Ideal For Living; Warsaw

What was planned to be Joy Division's first LP (unreleased until 1994, except in bootleg form) sounds like an album from the punk era…raw and edgy, undisciplined but tuneful, unlike the group's proper début, Unknown Pleasures. All of the tracks were later seen in different forms, but Warsaw still manages to captivate the listener through its pure energy. In addition to the original twelve tracks from the bootleg studio recordings, the album also includes five tracks from a recording session in July 1977, detailing the most punk-inspired songs in the group's discography.

I remember this album of early Joy Division recordings was one of those úber rare bootlegs you’d have to pay ransom prices for in the 90’s and, if you could find it at all in record fairs and bootleg traders stalls, it was only available on vinyl. I didn’t buy a copy until a few years ago when I picked it up for a reasonable and I’m pretty sure discounted price. Now not that Warsaw is a bad record, but it’s infinitely more “interesting” than it is “good” if you take my meaning.

It’s most interesting specifically from two different standpoints. The first is you often read interviews with ex-Joy Division members where they recount how they were unhappy with Martin Hannett’s famous productions. They’d considered themselves a punk band and weren’t happy with how he turned them into some kind of art project. But since Joy Division seemed so well suited to Hannett’s sound, I always wondered how much of a punk band they really were. It turns out they were a decent punk band (especially judging by the demo sessions recorded at Pennine Sound Studios). Though as a band Warsaw might not have had the lasting impact Joy Division has, they were still a lot more interesting than many other British punk bands from the 1977-78 years.

Which leads me onto the second quite interesting point, which is that this record suggests almost any punk band from the Manchester area, under the direction of Martin Hannett could have become Joy Division or something very much like they became. Ian Curtis‘s cult of personality aside, in some ways Warsaw proves that Hannett was as integral to Joy Division just as much as anyone else. He took a decent enough punk band and made them a phenomenal genre-defining post-punk band that would go on to have a lasting impact on alternative and indie rock for decades to come.

So for classic punk fans who always kind of liked Joy Divisions songs but were never keen on their chilly post-punk aesthetic, this album might prove to be quite enjoyable on its own merits. The production however is still a little thin to be a true punk classic.

For those interested in Joy Division, it’s probably more a curiosity for the completest than an essential album. It’s not a lost masterpiece, far from it.  A lot of these versions bear similarities in rawness to the band’s BBC sessions and higher-fidelity live recordings which is a good, bad or an indifferent thing depending on your personal views of the band’s studio recordings. It’s always a treat to hear “Interzone” played with more rage-fuelled garage-punk gusto than the 1979 Unknown Pleasures version.

If you own everything else by Joy Division, including a number of live bootlegs, you probably can’t get around the fact you pretty much need to pick this up at some point. And it’s actually a lot better (and more enjoyable) than similar semi-apocryphal records by seminal bands.

Beginnings Of The New Order

Borrowed from ThePowerOfIndependentTrucking blog, words spewed forth as ever by the Analog Loyalist:

As you know (or should know), Joy Division ceased as a living, breathing entity when singer Ian Curtis removed himself from existence early in the morning on May 18, 1980 - the day before the band was to fly to New York to start their first US tour. Having long had an internal pact to cease trading under the Joy Division name if any member was to leave the band (probably not expecting the harsh finality of Ian's leaving, but there you go), the band found themselves in another "having to change the name again" situation.

So after an appropriately short mourning period, the survivors regrouped and punched the big red RESET button. Finding themselves bereft of Ian-less material, they wrote a few new songs, tightened up a couple new "unrecorded" Joy Division tracks that had just been written in the weeks prior to Ian's death as "bridge" tracks, and played a few mostly-unannounced gigs in July/September 1980, prior to flying to the US for a very brief East Coast tour and recording session in late September.

As Joy Division, they were close with Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire, having shared several gigs and compilation records with the Cabs. At some point, JD was going to work with the Cabs in the Cabs' own Western Works Studio in Sheffield, but this opportunity had not yet come to pass at the time of Ian's death.

Suddenly with no lead singer and a wide-open new beginning, the survivors (now known as New Order) took the Cabs up on their offer and decamped to Western Works on 7 September 1980, just two days after their third gig post-Ian. Safely away from the spotlight, and with no Martin Hannett to impose his will on the session, the band laid down several tracks with the Cabs' Chris Watson engineering. (Due to a date mixup dating back to the early 1980s, this session had long been thought to have taken place in early July 1980. It was only with the release of Joy Division/New Order manager Rob Gretton's notebooks in 2008 that we learn this happened on 7 September 1980, and not July as previously thought. Which makes sense in a way; these are a lot of tracks to write from scratch in the few short weeks between Ian's death and early July.)

These tracks show the band's emotions - both musical and lyrical - laid out to bare themselves to the world. Hesitant yet brave, restrained yet oddly forward-looking, New Order find themselves seeking the path at this very early stage - a path that would not be truly explored publicly for at least another 12 months - that would lead them out of the Joy Divsion shadow into completely new realms of song craft.

This material has been circulating amongst New Order fans since the early 1980s but never before heard by the general public in this release-ready quality.

Kind souls, who wish to remain anonymous rescued this material from a 1/4" reel of tape that was up for auction on eBay, advertised as something else, and it was only in the reel transfer that it was discovered what this reel actually contained. It's been theorized that if this is not the master reel itself from the studio mixdown sessions, it's at the very least a direct, professional copy of it. The band could release this today, as-is. So I am honoured to present it here.

First we have two different mixes - but the same base recording - of "Dreams Never End". The first version is the common version that had already circulated - albeit in much poorer quality - amongst the fans. The second version, however, is a heretofore-unknown alternate mix featuring much louder guitars than the original take - but besides that, it's identical to the first take. Both takes slower than the version eventually recorded for the debut LP in 1981, this track even moreso sounds like bassist (and singer on this track) Peter Hook's own little memorial to Ian. "A long farewell to your love and soul", indeed.

Then we have the musically very JD-like "Homage", with Bernard Sumner on hesitant vocals, laying bare his emotions for all to see. It's blatantly obvious why this track didn't survive past September 1980 - all you have to do is listen to the very bare, emotional lyrics. Notably, you can understand them for the first time ever:

The next track is drummer Steve Morris' turn on lead vocals with a very interesting take on "Ceremony", one of the last two Joy Division tracks written just prior to Ian's death. Famously having no written lyrics they could use (if Ian wrote them down, they weren't available to the survivors at the time), New Order had to run the Joy Division rehearsal recording of this track (which you can hear in the previous post on the blog) through an equalizer to attempt to pick out Ian's lyrics. Considering that even with modern audio software it's nearly impossible to extract Ian's vocals, or at least make them clearer, it's impressive what they were able to pull out of it. Steve sings lead on the verses, with Hooky taking over a chorus as well. Interestingly enough, when the time came three weeks later to record this track "officially" in New Jersey's Eastern Artists Recording Studio with producer Martin Hannett, the lyrics Bernard Sumner sang started off markedly different - which makes one wonder if they were rewritten by New Order.

Steve continues on with the lead vocals on "Truth" which, even at this early stage, is remarkably similar to what they'd end up doing with the track when recording it for their debut LP in 1981 (except with Bernard on vocals). I particularly like this version though; it's much more poignant, fragile and spacious - as it should be - than the released variant.

And then we have the biggest revelation of the reel: A heretofore-unknown new New Order track, or rather, a collaboration with the Cabs and New Order, featuring none other than NO manager Rob Gretton on lead vocals! This has been confirmed by a New Order member directly to your humble blogger, and furthermore, this same member revealed that it was entitled "Are You Ready Are You Ready Are You Ready For This?" and was just one of two collaborations they recorded with the Cabs, with the other (still unknown) sounding much more New Order-ry than this track. What is special about "Are You Ready" though is that, Rob's vocals aside, musically it shows the band taking great liberties with the established Joy Division sound - and the early New Order sound - and is very much so a signpost to the musical path the band would further explore starting with fall 1981's "Everything's Gone Green".

Novelty

When you’ve waited nearly five years for something this good to pop back up on the interweb, I feel that it is our duty to share. This is the Analog Loyalist 2012 Remaster of Warsaw, in his own words;

I slightly divert from this blog's stated mission and bring to you my remastering attempt of Joy Division's legendary 1978 RCA album sessions bootleg Warsaw, from the original 1989 CD release on RZM.  It's critical to disregard any other known CD release of this bootleg, because the most common version, 1994's Movie Play Gold CD issue of this, is flat-out terrible.  Too bassy (FAR too bassy), low-quality source material, the works.  I suspect the best bootleg version of this session is the original 1981 LP issue (also on RZM), but I don't have a line on a decent transfer of it.

Legend has it that RZM is code for (Alan) Erasmus, an original Factory partner who, with Tony Wilson and Peter Saville, started Factory Records in 1978.  The legend states that Erasmus (say it aloud, and then say R-Z-M) arranged the 1981 bootleg release of the aborted 1978 album, and then further arranged for the material's first appearance on CD in 1989.  Frankly, I believe it.

None of the CD releases of this set have been spectacular in sound quality.  I think the problem is that the original tape was not that great, and that the mastering-for-CD process - possibly to disguise vinyl lineage, as I suspect that the original LP was the ultimate source for all the various CD issues - really clamped down on the upper midrange and higher frequencies.  It's always sounded muffled, and boomy (the 1994 Movie Play Gold release, with the baby on the cover, is the worst in this regard).  I've fixed this.  I've also fixed up some of the harsher song starts, as it's easy in the digital domain (ain't no ProToolin' in 1978!) and the CD has a few of the intros cut off.  Why did I fix them?  Because the missed intro into "Transmission" has always bugged me, among others.  "Interzone" too.

I think this is the best we're going to get with this material.  Already it blows the few tracks released on 1997's Heart and Soul box set away, and unless someone leaks the original mixdown tape from the 1978 session, we won't find better.  That said, I do have a line on a dub of a band member's personal cassette copy of this session, but I don't have it handy and what I remember from listening to it when I did was that it wasn't really all that much different or better than the '89 CD release.