It’s 40 years today since Joy Division’s Ian Curtis died. Hooky is apparently streaming a three hour gig that his band did in 2015 which includes every JD song ever recorded.
Barney and Steve Morris are hosting an online event ‘Moving Through the Silence: Celebrating The Life and Legacy of Ian Curtis‘ and raising money for mental health charities.
I daresay there will be other tributes to. I shall give Unknown Pleasures and Closer a listen today. I rarely play them despite them being at the top of my top 10.
I’m surprised there isn’t more of a thing being made of it, to be honest.
Rhino are re-releasing Closer (again) on clear vinyl, to go with last year’s red vinyl Unknown Pleasures, and the three Factory 12″ singles. The announcement was made last week which shows either a previously-unknown level of respect or, more likely, a cock-up in the marketing department.
I might actually buy some of these (although not the coloured vinyl). I don’t often play them either, I have to be in the right (wrong) mood, but Factory notoriously had cashflow problems and some of the original pressings were not great. Mastering engineer Frank Arkwright at Abbey Road knows his onions.
Thanks for the heads up, as I otherwise wouldn’t have realised. I had the living room to myself this afternoon, so took the chance to blast the live disc from the Unknown Pleasures set out at a volume that would otherwise have got me told off!
I had a civilian work friend who met and had a lengthy chat with Ian Curtis. He said he was a very nice guy. The work friend wasn’t name dropping, he’d never mentioned it because music wasn’t really his thing so it never came up – it’s only when we made a chance reference to Joy Division, that he remembered the encounter.