One recent afternoon, while ambling through the rock vinyl aisles of Amoeba Berkeley, my eye caught that great Joy Division album cover Unknown Pleasures. Wow, I thought, just how perfect is that cover artwork that was actually taken from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy? And how even more perfect is that whole album - originally released on June 15th, 1979? I could listen to it and everything by Joy Division a million times over and never get tired of hearing it . Even the over-played and over-covered "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (released a month after Curtis' suicide) never ages in my head. Perhaps part of the greatness of all this music is that it is frozen in time, never having to be matched by later releases from a band that came to an abrupt early end after the tragically troubled lead-singer Ian Curtis had literally kicked the bucket - instantly making him and Joy Division stuff of music legend, to be forever admired and romanticized in pop culture from afar.
But what (let's just imagine) if Ian Kevin Curtis hadn't hung himself back on May 18th, 1980, at the young age of 23? What, if instead, he had kept on living and making music with Joy Division (meaning of course that there would have been no New Order) cranking out (increasingly weaker and weaker) albums throughout the eighties and up until an ugly break-up in 1997 followed by Ian Curtis completely disappearing for many years up until, lets again pretend, in 2004 when the producers of VH1's Band Reunited tracks him down - finding him old, fat, bald, bitter and living in a bedsit in Birmingham. Then, encouraged by VH1's intervention, he officially pulls himself together, temporarily kicks his age old habit, and tours small clubs with a new Joy Division lineup doing at best average covers of his old songs. Not pretty, eh? Not compared to the perfectly preserved, romantically tragic Ian Curtis that is the pop culture icon today.
also love this band like he had. So my first introduction was "The Troubled Sleep of Piano Magic" back in 2003. I quickly discovered they were one of the bands that were made for people like me. I was excited for their next excellent album "Disaffected" in 2005. It is always exciting to discover a new band that has already been around for a while. It is like they somehow kept themselves hidden and their fans kept them a secret. Once you find about them, you want to keep them to yourself for a little bit. Until you just can't take it anymore and you to share them with everyone. When I always think I have already heard everything, it is nice to know there are still some great bands out there for me to discover. It's exciting.
They have just released their new album "Part Monster" on Important Records. They have been on about 7 different labels and have had many different members. They are currently Glen Johnson, Jerome Tcherneyan, Alasdair Steer, Franck Alba and Cedric Pin. They are of course from England. They sort of fit into that ambient rock category. Dreamy and ethereal but still a rock band. Sad and emotional and all tragic. The vocalist sometimes reminds me of a mix of Jesus & Mary Chain and The Tindersticks. Sort of like what Slowdive sounded like as they were transitioning into Mojave 3. They also remind me a bit of bands like Field Mice but just with a little Black Heart Procession. That is enough band comparisons. They are just awesome and do sort of have their unique little sound.
Once upon a time in ye olde, pre-digital days, music fans would have to trek to their local record store on a certain day, usually a Tuesday, to acquire new music It was the only way. And in the great new documentary "Good Copy Bad Copy" the sample-happy artist Girl Talk reminisces on those long gone days when some of his fondest memories were formed. In the film he recalls when as a kid being accompanied to the record store with his parents to buy the then new Nirvana CD Nevermind and how sadly that this nostalgic relationship no longer exists for most young blossoming music fans today. 