A where-did-that-come-from masterpiece I’ve been listening to all day; I haven’t played it for a few years and it’s easily the best record I’ve heard in months.
I’m sure it wasn’t the only record I listened to aged about 15-17, but I sort of remember it that way.
Recently I’ve been eaten up with jealously of all the people on here who saw them supporting Buzzcocks.
I saw Stephen Morris last week at a literary festival and he signed my copy of Atmosphere – the kids have been squabbling ever since about who gets it when I shuffle off.
He told a great story about having to play a spray can to make the ooof sound in She’s Lost Control.
Unknown Pleasures is 40 years old today
Hannett’s decision to put that eerie reverb on everything has to be one of the greatest simple production decisions in the history of rock. Most effects of this kind put distance between us and the music by surrounding it, for better or worse, in artificiality: here the effect is perversely to create more intimacy, while putting the band in an an immediately recognisable space.
I was 12 so probably a little too young to get it. As 8 remember at school we all loved the t shirt before the album. Come to think of it, although I’ve owned a copy of the album for decades I do have the t shirt too now. Win win.
It’s the most t-shirt friendly cover image ever, because it looks a bit like ribs (cf Nigel St Hubbins’s t-shirt… squint and he’s a JD fan)
Except that on the LP it’s very small of course.
I have this
https://www.redbubble.com/people/goodgoodgoofboy/works/31496082-joy-division-kitties?body_color=black&p=t-shirt&print_location=front&size=medium&style=mens&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=g.pla+notset&country_code=GB&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI4a2R4qTs4gIVw4jVCh3vhQoLEAQYAyABEgIT4_D_BwE
I wish mine was that slim fitting
Ha, it’s not that exact one. More of a generous straight fit really.
There’s enough information on that shirt to win a pub quiz.
The bloke behind me at Friday’s gig had one but the image was large and distorted as it stretched around his rotund belly. I’m sure that’s what Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell would have wanted.
As well as being a shamefully un-Nobeled scientist, she is also a national figure among UK Quakers, having given the annual ‘Swarthmore’ lecture in 1989. The title she chose was ‘Broken for Life’, which may not be a Joy Division reference or song, but it could so easily have been.
I too did the “40th Anniversary Must Listen” thing today.
I own both a vinyl and CD copy of the album, and Unknown Pleasures is one of the very few I can say sounds better on Vinyl (same applies to Closer).
Ironic really considering one of their first recordings was called Digital …
I think many albums sound better on vinyl especially ones from the 60s to the 80s. Does depend on your turntable, CD player erc.
My pal the hi-fi reviewer has a theory: music sounds best on the format it was made for. So anything originally mastered for vinyl sounds best on vinyl.
What’s the point of pressing vinyl for anything recorded ‘in the box’ on ProTools?
I have that theory too. Vinyl was mastered differently to accommodate limitations and benefits of the medium which are irrelevant with CD. Masters intended for CD which are then used for vinyl are compromised and vice versa. If the original mix is remastered for CD that’s the way to do it. I don’t buy vinyl of CD releases unless it’s been remastered for vinyl.
Mastered correctly for the medium you’re listening to, it shouldn’t make any difference at all. In theory.
A hell of a lot of CD masters of vinyl originals just haven’t had the required work put in. Especially when they don’t expect a lot of sales.
As I type I’m listening to the Mary Anne Hobbs show from yesterday on which she played the album in full. First time I’ve heard it for a while and given that they are my favourite band I do find all their albums quite difficult to listen to.
When I discovered Joy Division in the sixth form around 86/87, the copy of Unknown Pleasures I purchased had no track listing, either on the back or on the inner sleeve, and no side a and side b, just ‘inside’ and ‘outside’. I assume this was the case for all copies of the album. Anyway, from early listens I came to what I thought was the perfectly reasonable conclusion that She’s Lost Control was the opening track of the album and I proceeded to listen to the album in that order until I eventually bought it on CD. It still seems a bit strange today to hear it the other way around.
Great record, brilliant songs, brilliant production. When I first heard it it sounded like it came from the future and it still does to me. Closer is quite different but also as good. Two perfect albums and a few masterpieces on singles too that didn’t make the albums. What else would Ian Curtis have done? What a tragedy.
On my way home from a little gig in Manchester, I saw the Unknown Pleasures pulsar wave was projected onto the Town Hall which was a nice touch (and unexpected, as Manchester doesn’t do as much civic celebratory stuff around it’s musical history as you might think)
My gig finished quite early and I was glad to get away before the 50,000 people behind me who would have been heading back from Heaton Park for a massive show by a band called the Courteeners.
For that band and their fans (20-30 somethings mostly) Oasis and Stone Roses are their cultural reference points -beer-chucking hug-yer-mates Ladrock that represents a very different Manchester than the one Ian Curtis was writing about. They all know the words to ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ I’m sure.
I was moved by seeing the Pulsar projection though – Ian’s music and that image is still powerful and just as relevant now – I was in Manchester today a lot and it felt as edgy, exciting, scuzzy and tough as it did when I arrived in the 80s – and it was still pissing down with rain – and Unknown Pleasures felt like the perfect soundtrack rather.
I saw them at Erics in Liverpool in 1978 (apparently 9th September – isnt the internet great), supporting Tanz der Youth at the under-age matinee gig. I remember nothing of Tanz der Youth but me and my mates were much taken with JD. I bought this album as soon as I could get hold of it. The soundtrack of my last year at school.
In case you missed it, here’s the 6music show Smudger refers to above:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005vss
I loved Closer the first time I heard it. UP took me years to properly ‘get’. Glad I kept on returning to it.
*I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand”
– best opening line to a debut album ever, I’m sayin’.
I knew boy scouts helped old ladies cross the road, I had no idea guides helped lost musicians.
0ooooh.
Yep. Despite Mr Curtis helpfully kicking off the first LP with a perfect opening line and the second with an obvious introductory refrain “This is the way, step inside”, just like Smudger above, I listened to Closer in the wrong order for so long that I simply can’t accept that it doesn’t open with Hooky’s ominous rumbling bass and finish as A Means To An END comes to a grinding halt..
This all makes feel so very old. Fucking hell!
“Lost boy” Ian would have been 52 by now, probably a grandad.
Actually 63 next month, Moose …
That’s what he said. Mind you, he’d have been 53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60 and 61 by now as well
I know, Tiggs. Not only is UP 40 years old, but also this week Mrs F has been tolerating my presence for 24 years and we have a 16-y-o daughter. Where does the time go?
I said to a colleague over lunch last week that I knew by age 11 what makes me happy, and I’ve stuck with it. Which either means I showed great foresight, or I have still yet to grow up.
Music. Pies. Naked ladies.
Yep, good theory.
Only the order changes
Ian Curtis Rides A Rollercoaster