4 DECADES IS A LONG TIME. in a few short months, I will have been alive for what at one time seemed like forever.
40 is Old. I Recall when My parents turned 40. I thought they were old.
Unknown Pleasures. The Debut album by the young Mancurian band ‘Joy Division’ was released 40 years ago today.
I was 14 when I discovered Joy Division. in 1994. After a band I was obsessed with in my teens recorded a cover for
a gothic little soundtrack called “The Crow”
Dad told me to go back and discover my hero’s hero’s
This is how I discovered Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division.
I didn’t get it right away. I hadn’t yet learned that you didn’t need perfect pitch and perfect timing to pour your perfect self out onto a record.
I had not yet reconciled with the fact that although we are flawed, we are humans and it’s ok to create flawed art.
Then I heard Joy Division.
I was confused.
I was annoyed.
I was surprised.
I was in Love.
Joy Division is the first band I had to really listen to over and over to understand. Little did I know that this would leave a scar on my artistic output for life. That perfect imperfection. That despair and beautiful humanity had tainted
my musical tastes.
Teenage angst is a funny thing. Parents don’t understand it, even though they more than likely experienced it at some point.
My family was, essentially a country band. At 14, I had already begun to stroll down my own path musically, much to the chagrin of some of my elderly kin.
Joy Division was a band that pushed everything over the line. I barely understood it. How on earth would they understand it.
“Unknowns Pleasures? Whats that supposed to mean?”
I didn’t comprehend a very young Ian Curtis was mimicking David Bowie and Lou Reed. I hadn’t discovered Bowies Berlin trilogy at that point.
I probably wouldn’t have comprehended those records either. Instead i found Ians voice to be comical at times, because it was “So Bad”
In hindsight, Ian had a voice which was perfect.
Ian’s perfectly human voice allowed me to focus on his words. If someone with a voice like this felt the need to be a singer, they must have had
something important to say. Important words indeed. Ian didn’t write songs. He wrote poems.
There are a billion poets that will never be heard. How did Ian get so lucky?
The music of Joy Division. Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, all played with a desperation that fueled Ian’s words. It gave these words the perfect atmosphere to exist outside of a young mans diary. It made these words matter. It made these words
count. It made these words perfect.
The boys didn’t know how to play their instruments. They were young men who started a band. They figured it out as they went.
Peter Hooks bass lines (and his tone) have gone onto be some of the most memorable bass lines in rock and roll history. Bernard Sumners guitar taught me that I don’t have to be blasting a power chord through the entire song to be a guitarist. Atmosphere. I learned about atmosphere from Bernards
guitar. Steven Morris Drums were rarely on time, but they were perfectly in sync with the feeling of fleeting time and missed opportunity
that Joy Division created so effortlessly.
Joy Divisions music taught me that you don’t have to be perfect to be an artist. Unknown Pleasures taught me that my feelings could be made into art. Even if I didn’t understand them. Even if nobody else understood them. They could be art.
The zeitgeist of our current time carries a heavy dissatisfaction with a perfectly computerized everything.
On the 40th anniversary of this album. I am listening. It sounds more relevant, pure and perfectly imperfect than ever.
Dead Channel 