I saw Joy Division before I heard them.<\/p>\n
Rummaging through a Washington, D.C. record store, I looked up and there it was \u2014 a large poster of \u201cUnknown Pleasures,\u201d the British band\u2019s first album. The distinctive image, a series of radio waves in white on a black background, immediately lured me in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho is Joy Division?\u201d I asked the guy behind the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys from New Order,\u201d he said, in the dismissive way record store guys can be. You have to remember this was the 1980s, before Al Gore invented the Internet \u2014 it was not so easy to find out everything you wanted to know about bands that intrigued you.<\/p>\n
I loved New Order, so I bought \u201cUnknown Pleasures\u201d on the spot. I spent the following weeks learning about what happened to the band (also not so easy to find), bought \u201cCloser,\u201d and became lost in a band that was gone far too early.<\/p>\n
This was not uncommon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to find Joy Division, I don\u2019t know how I found them but I did and it changed my life,\u201d said Timothy Showalter, the man behind the band Strand of Oaks. \u201cI didn\u2019t find it because 400 different torrant sites were offering it up for a massive download.\u201d<\/p>\n
It’s been more than 30 years, but today we\u2019re still talking about Joy Division and the stunning creations from Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris. Three Athens events slated in the next two weeks celebrate the band, culminating with a performance at the Georgia Theatre from Hook and his band The Light, performing \u201cUnknown Pleasures\u201d and \u201cCloser.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, Cine shows Control, the 2007 Joy Division biopic directed by Anton Corbijn, as well as a series of music videos and performances from Factory Records, the band\u2019s legendary record label. After the show, Athens punk masters Muuy Biien pays tribute to the band with a cover set at The World Famous.<\/p>\n
Why the continued support for a band whose last album came out 35 years ago?<\/p>\n
Hook, the bassist widely known as Hooky, has had plenty to do with it. His 2013 autobiographical book \u201cUnknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division\u201d is a fine account of his time in the band, detailing his pain over Curtis\u2019 death and the struggles to move forward with Sumner in New Order.<\/p>\n
A surprising element about the book was Hook’s belief that Joy Division’s music was vastly better than anything created by New Order, a testament to the power Curtis had as a front man. I can’t say I fully agree with him \u2014 New Order’s \u201cLow Life\u201d is sublime \u2014 but I can understand lamenting the loss of a great voice so young.<\/p>\n
In 2010 Hook sought to celebrate Curtis’ life with a live performance of Joy Division’s two albums at the Factory club in Manchester. The response was overwhelming, spurring Hook to take the homage on the road. Five years later, it’s still finding audiences.<\/p>\n
It comes down to this: What’s good is good. In another 30 years someone will discover \u201cUnknown Pleasures\u201d and be as captivated as I was 30 years ago.Excellence doesn’t have a time stamp.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I saw Joy Division before I heard them. Rummaging through a Washington, D.C. record store, I looked up and there it was \u2014 a large poster of \u201cUnknown Pleasures,\u201d the British band\u2019s first album. The distinctive image, a series of radio waves in white on a black background, immediately lured me in. \u201cWho is Joy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1126,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,28],"tags":[229,230,231,232],"class_list":["post-1125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","category-feature","tag-joy-division","tag-new-order","tag-peter-hook","tag-unknown-pleasures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}