Joy Division Day By Day - Part 2

Edit: Paradiso Amsterdam has seen an unofficial Italian release and is available on vinyl and also CD. The vinyl drops the last 5 tracks due to space limitations, however the CD versions I have seen available have the full concert. More discussion about this tomorrow.

The vinyl is available quite cheaply on Discogs, and the CD is also quite easily obtained through various sellers including Amazon.

 

Les Bains Douches

I have no hesitation at all in saying that as far as live JD goes, LBD is an essential purchase. Whilst the 3 songs from Paradiso, Amsterdam and the 4 songs from Effenaar, Eindhoven are good (especially Effenaar to me, and the awesome Autosuggestion), the main content of the 9 LBD Paris songs is superb, and probably the best quality live JD recordings in existence. They capture the raw energy of the band live and showcase just how different a proposition live JD was compared to Hannett recorded JD. Not saying one is better than the other, just very different.

The main frustration with this release is that 7 tracks were performed at LBD that aren’t on this album. I’m not entirely sure why these were held back and I wonder if the album will ever be reissued with the concert in full. It would be nice to see something special like this finally come out around the 40th anniversary of Unknown Pleasures. Heck, Jimi Hendrix’ unreleased music still comes out 50 years after his death!

Anyway, the LBD tracks sound fantastic. They really leap out of the speakers and grab you by the throat. I really would love them to put out the whole gig. Also played at LBD but not on the official CD were :

Passover
Wilderness
Colony
She’s Lost Control
Atrocity Exhibition
Interzone
Warsaw

I agree that it would have been great to have the entire LBD show on one disc. They could have always put out Effenaar or Paradiso in full too. Perhaps it might happen one day. We can but hope. I only recently acquired the Paradiso gig, and have only played it a couple of times, but I'm sure what I have is better quality than the 3 tracks on this LBD disc.

 

I hate that song. That and The Caterpillar are 2 of their worst songs ever. Apart from Lament which I quite like, I mostly dislike the 1983 Japanese Whispers stuff. I didn't listen to The Top for years, just couldn't get into it. I appreciate bits of it now but it will never be a favourite.

 

Ceremony is Joy Division's greatest song IMO. A shame that we don't have a high quality recording but I guess it adds to the mystique!

Tim

 

Forgot to add, regarding LBD, probably my favourite version of Autosuggestion is on there, live from Effenaar, Eindhoven. Shorter, more direct and frantic than the comparatively lacklustre studio version. The band are going at it hell for leather towards the end of this. It gives me the chills when the video footage of this comes on, during the Grant Gee documentary.

 

Their greatest?..... High praise for what is essentially a bad rehearsal recording, but i'm not 100% it is their greatest song. It's good, and was made better by New Order but I honestly think there's better songs that Joy Division did that are much better than Ceremony.

 

That's also the same footage as on the Here Are The Young Men VHS................ I wonder if we'll ever see an official re-release of that on DVD? I don't really see the point of putting it on Blu-Ray due to the quality of the source tapes, there's nothing to be gained in releasing it in Hi-Def, except with maybe some bonus footage and also maybe some 5.1 stuff going on..... 5.1 Closer or Unknown Pleasures anyone??

 

It's subjective of course but it has everything really. The driving beat and catchy riff. Classic Joy Division sonic texture. And an incredibly deep and moving lyric (that we can only half hear). The ceremony is both wedding and funeral. Thematically it seems to be linked to Love will tear us apart.

The lyrics are of course different to those recorded by New Order, and after listening intently I'm pretty sure they are different in the various extant Joy Division versions as well, since Ian Curtis was actively working on them.

Tim

 

So, for anyone that's interested Peter Hook And The Light are playing 2 gigs next May to mark the anniversary of Ian Curtis' death and also to celebrate 40 years since the release of Closer and 41 years for Unknown Pleasures. It's being touted as An Evening with Peter Hook & The Light – Joy Division: A Celebration

He'll be playing an opening set of New order, then Unknown Pleasures and Closer in their entirety's

Tickets go on sale tomorrow 26th April

May 15th 2020 - O2 Academy Brixton, London, UK
May 16th 2020 - O2 Apollo, Manchester, UK

Peter Hook to play Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' and 'Closer' in full at UK shows

 

Greatest song I wouldn’t go that far, but it definitely had potential for a big JD song.

 

Day 50

Paradiso, Amsterdam 11th January 1980



Set 1
Passover
Wilderness
Digital
Day of the Lords
Insight
New Dawn Fades
Disorder
Transmission

Set 2
Love Will Tear Us Apart
These Days
A Means To An End
Twenty Four Hours
Shadowplay
She's Lost Control
Atrocity Exhibition

Encore
Atmosphere
Interzone


The Paradiso concert is likely the most bootlegged concert by Joy Division, It's certainly one of the best sounding coming straight from the venue master tape. Back in the 80's there were lower quality versions on this recording being sold which were taken from the original Dutch radio broadcast, however nowadays it's been unofficially released via various sources, most notably an Italian record company on vinyl and also CD. It's also now officially available on the Re-Fractured Box Set.

The night of the concert was a strange one, the local support band didn't want to play for some reason so Joy Division stood in for them and played two completely different sets for the price of one. This is one of my favourite live recordings of Joy Division, the sound on the unofficial releases are quite dead sounding with just a small amount of reverb on Ian's voice. However the 2 tracks from Paradiso on Les Baines have been given post production to beef them up and make them sound more akin to the Les Baines concert. I'd like to hear the Cd on the Re-Fractured release to see what that sounds like in comparison to the raw master tape recording. Either way, the performances on Paradiso are great with stand out tracks being Transmission, New Dawn Fades and Day of The Lords. They are of course only my favs, and likely you'll have very different ones to me.

If you haven't got this CD you need it, along with Preston and Les Baines these 3 CD's give you a brilliant insight into how brutal and brilliant Joy Division were live. Martin Hannett polished them up for the studio, but live they were a totally different beast. Raw with emotion, and playing in most cases like their lives depended on it. Steve Morris is like a freight train, driving the songs to conclusion like a machine along with Peter Hook. Hookys bass just growls while Barneys guitar cuts through the mix. Ian Curtis was on fine form vocally this particular night, maybe because the support band had decided not to play Joy Division were allowed to flex their muscles more and in front of a much smaller audience... The majority of the regulars having stayed away from Paradiso that night..... They missed a treat.

 

The holy grail of JD live. Great SQ and killer performance. The entire band is at a super high energy level and right on the edge of going off the rails every second. Just riding that razor's edge so perfectly. Few bands are brave enough to go near that edge live for fear of screwing up royally. Not this band. Not this night.

Where do I start? Morris is the driving force here and he's somehow even more relentless in his attack than usual. Sumner's guitar tone is devastating and at times positively metal in it's power and majesty. Throughout the sonic maelstrom Hook holds everything down courageously enough despite a few wrong notes. And Ian... well Ian has never sounded more intense than he does here. The sense of urgency in his voice pushes the emotion and pain of his lyrics further than ever into the listener's mind. The sound of a man at the breaking point but still holding on somehow. For the moment.

Highlights for me: Day Of The Lords, New Dawn Fades, Twenty Four Hours, Shadowplay, She's Lost Control and Interzone. These tracks give me ASMR chills whenever I hear them. Also These Days and Atrocity Exhibition never sounded so powerful. All in all a stellar performance. Wish I'd been there that night.

 

Apparently, I've just read that the venue lowered the ceiling the night of the gig to make it more intimate....... I didn't realise they could do that at Paradiso. That might answer why the sound from the master tape is quite dead sounding. A while ago I loaded Paradiso into Cubase and added a slight bit of hall reverb to the whole performance, it actually improved it to be honest and added an airy quality that's missing from the other sources.

 

Joy Division didn't play in the main hall... It's massive, and holds 1500 people.....




They played the small hall, which holds a more conservative 250......



This is the only image I can find of them playing in The Paradiso....

 

Yes, I became a Joy Division fan after being overpowered by them during (allegedly) their worse gig.........

 

Really? To me there's a noticeable drop-off in quality on the LBD disc when the last Paris track ends (A Means To An End) and the first of the 3 Paradiso tracks begins (Passover). Quite honestly, I've skipped all 3 of them a few times. Paradiso may be an official release, but its certainly not easy to acquire for a reasonable price. Hence I don't have Refractured, which I believe stupidly has 2 second gaps between each song anyway. I do have Paradiso though by 'other' means. My copy does sound a bit better than the 3 songs on LBD do, so perhaps I have the master tape version. Funny that the support band didn't bother showing up. A good claim to fame really, "We were meant to support Joy Division but couldn't be bothered in the end." I wonder if whoever those band members are, regret this decision now. I suppose its good for JD fans though as we get a double dose of them in one (fairly) well recorded gig. Thanks for the venue pics, the main hall looks superb. Reminds me of Manchester's Albert Hall, which looks very similar with the tiered balconies, just with the stained glass windows to the side & not behind the stage. So if the small hall they played in holds 250 people, and 'many of the regulars stayed away', its amazing to think that maybe only a hundred or so people watched this gig (and from books I've read, they played some gigs to far less than that as well).

To me this is a just a good live recording, but not a great one. The bum notes from the bass are really annoying on some of these songs, and whilst the sound quality is overall pretty good, the performance doesn't match up to it, and it sounds a little dull in places. Not long ago I googled and read lots of topics over a few sites to find out what were generally considered the best JD live shows. I mostly agree with these comments from a JD fan site, relating to Paradiso:

"Personally I find sound quality an inadequate measure. The soundmix of the 'superior' Paradiso gig is lacking in dynamics. Flat and dull. The drums sound weak as a punch in a pack of butter. By comparison, the 1979 Bains-Douches FM recording blows it out of the water, both in sound as performance."

"Possibly contentious, and with apologies, but I've never liked the Paradiso gig. I'm only going off the recording obviously, but I think it's quite dull and poorly played. I don't know if Hooky was pissed that night, but I think his bass playing is well off the mark. Never really understood why it's such a popular gig. I've always much preferred Effenaar from a week later."

"I don't like Paradiso's performance so much, and the mixing on Ian's vocals is disgraceful, but I do like the massive setlist and the excellent sound quality. It's a good gig, and I've found myself listening to it several times in its entirety."

"The Paradiso gig reminds of Hendrix's Isle of Wight 8/31/70 gig,or Nirvana's Rome 2/22/94 show.The recording quality of those gigs are probably some of the best quality from each of the artists's careers,but the actual performances of said shows were rather craptacular. Sigh."

I mostly agree with those comments. Of course, compared to many JD live recordings out there, Paradiso will always rank quite highly. It mostly sounds good, but those bum bass notes are really bad, and I think there are better performances out there, such as Effenaar, Eindhoven. To me, that is easily worthy of a full release, beyond just the 4 tracks officially released on the LBD disc. I'm not slating Paradiso, and I do enjoy it generally, but for me its not the be all and end all of live JD that some would make it out to be.

 

When i said post production, I didn't necessarily mean in a good way..... I agree, the master tape version is cleaner and easier on the ear. The Paradiso tracks on LBD are awful soundwise, too much distortion i think.

 

The whole concert has been officially released as part of the refractured box set.I'm not saying for one minute that we buy that piece of crap, because that's exactly what it is apparently from the inferior packaging down to the 3 second gap in-between every track on all 3 CD's. But I would love to hear what the sound quality of the Paradiso concert is like on that box set.

I'm going to seek it out....... If I don't return in an hour or so, send a search party

 

Quick adhoc announcement:

Tomorrow will be a post that's not expected.... It wasn't planned but I've just come across some information regarding a remaster of a concert that was part of the 2007 collectors edition releases. namely the University of London Union concert. All will be revealed tomorrow

 

Read my post back, I was referring to Effenaar hopefully being released in full. It was the full Paradiso on Refractured, yes

 

Day 51

University of london Union 8th February 1980



01 Dead Souls
02 Glass
03 A Means To An End
04 Twenty Four Hours
05 Passover
06 Insight
07 Colony
08 These Days
09 Love Will Tear Us Apart
10 Isolation
11 - encore break -
12 The Eternal
13 Digital

back in 2006 Drew Crumbaugh otherwise known as Analog Loyalist on the RoIO community remastered an old C45 cassette tape to present to Warners for inclusion on the Closer Collectors edition double CD set. At this point I'll let Drew take over the narrative:

In August 2006 I was approached to assist with the sourcing, cleanup and mastering of various Joy Division gigs for inclusion in the then-upcoming double-CD deluxe edition reissues. The in-between story, between first being drafted into the project and then September 2007's Warner Brothers/Rhino release of the Unknown Pleasures, Closer and Still Collector's Editions, is boring and not really worth rehashing.

What is relevant is that six years is a long time ago, with regards to my skill set and general knowledge of audio theory and mastering. I listen to the stuff I turned in to the band and Rhino in late 2006 and essentially cringe. Not because it's bad, because it's not, but with where I've advanced to today my 2006 work sounds amateur to these ears. And while it's out there for the world to enjoy (and the two sets I did, for Closer and Still, all got great reviews), I can no longer listen without wishing for a mulligan. Well, with my blog avenue, I can finally take that mulligan.

I went back to the original raw transfers from Duncan Haysom's 1980 master cassette tapes, the very tapes on which he recorded the Joy Division gigs that we released. I started from scratch - essentially, if Warners came knocking today and asked me to master these gigs, I did what I'd do for them with the skills, techniques, secret sauces and magic I've either advanced or flat-out learned anew since 2006.

They are spectacular. Not to toot my own horn, but these now simply crush what was used on the 2007 releases. Even the most hearing-challenged of listeners can tell the difference, and not just by minutiae. Cymbals ring, drums go THWACK and not "thwop", guitars slice through the murk.

If there were any justice in this world, Rhino would pull the 2007 sets off the market and reissue with these masterings. One can dream...

So we start, chronologically by performance date, with the set used in association with the Closer Collector's Edition. Recorded by Duncan, this set from the University of London Union is a stormer. You get the still in-development Closer tracks (which had yet to be recorded by Martin Hannett) mixed in with stridently-performed Unknown Pleasuresand other pre-Closer choices. You get "Dead Souls" brilliantly leading off the set, and you get "Digital" taking us out. And thanks to Duncan, it's magically captured on C45 tape for us to enjoy 32+ years on.
​

Drew then offered them for free download on his blog site via Mediafire, however someone didn't like that and made a DMCA complaint against him.

Dear MediaFire User:

MediaFire has received notification under the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that your usage of a file is allegedly infringing on the file creator's copyright protection.

The file named JD - 1980_02-08 ULU (2012 master) part 2.zip is identified by the key (8nwbdu0xrzkvyge).

As a result of this notice, pursuant to Section 512(c)(1)(C) of the DMCA, we have suspended access to the file.

The reason for suspension was:

I have a good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

Information about the party that filed the report:

Company Name: GrayZone, Inc
Contact Address:
Contact Name: GrayZone, Inc.
Contact Phone: (718) 360-9941
Contact Email: [email protected]

Copyright infringement violates MediaFire's Terms of Service. MediaFire accounts that experience multiple incidents of alleged copyright infringement without viable counterclaims may be terminated.

If you feel this suspension was in error, please submit a counterclaim by following the process below.
​

Drew's response to this:

I have no idea who GrayZone is.

This is very frustrating. This material, while released at one point, was given to the label by US. We enter the questionable area of ROIO (Recordings of Independent Origin) copyright. Is it worth it for me to file a counterclaim? Do I - as an "originator" of this work, have any grounds to do so?

I am not re-upping the files. I also am not going to post High Wycombe (Still's CD2 from the 2007 reissues), also freshly mastered by me after discarding my 2006 work as-released. That said, punters who did not download ULU yet can find it on the darker sides of the internet; I know at least one site that might be known as why.cd or some similar name has the FLACs available.
​

You can read Drews original blog post here The Power of Independent Trucking: Joy Division 8 Feb 1980 Univ of London Union 2012 master

These remasters are still being shared quite openly on the internet via Soundcloud and have been since 2012, so here for you I present Drew Crumbaugh's remaster of the University of London Union concert.

Click here to download the full concert in flac format click the song then the download button for each song on the soundcloud interface.

​

 

I've done an A/B test between the 2 versions, the officially released version on the Closer Collectors Edition and this new remaster and the difference is chalk and cheese. This concert was always a good sounding bootleg, and to think Joy Division and Warner/Rhino sanctioned the use of bootlegs for the reissue campaign back in 2007. Not only that, they worked with a bootlegger to polish the tapes up...... good job if you can get it.

He's worked wonders on this when you consider it's just a cassette tape, likely in mono too. This remaster features the 2 minutes between the last song and the encore separately instead of being tagged onto the end of Isolation.

 

Thanks for the info. I vaguely recall reading about a better version of the ULU gig coming out since the 2007 remasters but it’s not something I’ve heard. Was gonna try and listen to the 2007 version later. Will have to try and download the improved version soon too.

So he also re-did High Wycombe but didn’t post it for fear of legal action? Or is that ‘out there’ in some form too?

 

I've sent him a message via Twitter... Waiting for him to respond... If he has got it i'll let you know

 

Heart & Soul (Box Set)




Heart and Soul is a Joy Division box set containing nearly every track the band recorded. The first two discs contain almost their entire studio output, including the albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer, along with singles and compilation appearances. Discs three and four collect rare demos and live recordings, many of which were previously unreleased. All tracks are digitally remastered. It reached #70 in the UK.


Day 52

Ceremony (Tour Rehearsal Session - Manchester, April 1980)
In A Lonely Place (Detail) (Tour Rehearsal Session - Manchester, April 1980)




Ahead of the bands first tour of the United States they decamped to TJ Davidson's rehearsal studios in April 1980 to get some new material ready for the tour. 2 of these songs were Ceremony, and In A Lonely Place both of which were recorded on a tape recorder for posterity and released as part of the Heart And Soul box set back in 1997.