Last night my wife said, “No more Joy Division. No more.”
This last week we watched both Anton Corbijn’s biopic Control and Grant Gee’s documentary Joy Division. I’d recommend both if you’re a fan.
Some notes:
- How essential Manchester was to the sound, and how much Joy Division’s music was rooted in place. One interviewee called their music “ambient noise” for the Manchester environment. Another said they took the landscape of Manchester and “made it cosmic.” Make it cosmic. That might be a good rule of thumb for writing about place…
- Ian Curtis had a box of words that he’d bring to rehearsals, and when they needed lyrics, he would pull words out the box.
- Remembered David Lynch talking about the myth of the suffering artist: in order to portray suffering, an artist doesn’t need to BE suffering, he just has to UNDERSTAND suffering. Suffering is often counterproductive to creativity. (Ian Curtis killed himself on the eve of their breakthrough US tour.)
Here’s my favorite performance — “Transmission” live on the BBC:
No language, just sound, is all we need know
To synchronize love to the beat of the show
And we could dance
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio
I was just sitting down to write a blog entry about “Control”, and I happened to glance at my feedreader and saw this post! So I’m linking to it, I hope that’s ok!
-bonnie
Bonnie — of course, it’s okay! Thanks for pointing out this cool batch of shots from the film.
Also, as this article suggests, it’s best to watch CONTROL first, and then the documentary!
Austin,
my name´s Deborah and im from Brazil.
Recently i watched Control and then Joy Division, the documentary. I also posted some notes in my blog about them, especially about Control.
Both touched me.
My boyfriend found your notes and send me the blog address. I loved to read it and always think about the possibilitie of anyone else in the world be thinkink about the same issue as me.
I would like you to read what i posted and send me comments. Unfortunatly it is written in portuguese. I’ll try to make the translation.
Best!
Deborah
“Touching from a distance“?
:-D
Thanks, Deborah!