Joy Division Day By Day - Part 2

The thing is I really like Insight..... But hate those noises.

 

Doing Satriani a huge disservice there, but hey... boat, floating....

Vai is the notes-a-bar guy, Satriani composes ‘songs’.

I’ll be looking for a friend of mine at lunch time...

 

True....

 

Yeah, its not that I dislike the entire song. Just that those noises really drag it down. They are just so un-JD like. Its not too bad on the LP version, but on the live ones including Peel, they are so over the top !

 

My least favorite song on UP. That straight ahead sound detracts from what they had become by this time. They had progressed to a higher writing level and this song just drags the album down to previous JD quality. Just my two cents. YMMV.

 

You’re talking about jumping off sunroofs, bettsaj, I just heard a rapper trying to rhyme ‘Mercedes’ with ‘babies’ on the local hiphop radio station over here which my co-workers in the woodshop love so much...
I gotta do something about that ordeal, post some stuff over here and play some Beatles afterwards at my seperate ‘saws-section’.

Here the Warsaw(RCA)-version of Interzone which also made the H&S set:

 

I do love the energy of Interzone, but can’t help but think about it as filler. Hook’s voice is given the Hannett-treatment and sounds remarkably like Ian.

I honestly think I prefer the RCA-version of this, even with the goofy noises at the start.
The recording just sounds more true to the song’s nature. I think it’s Ian singing all of it.

 

I also don't like the fact that Hook takes the lead vocals here, leaving Ian as basically a backing singer. And it makes little sense to have two different singers speaking from the exact same perspective. This differs greatly from Wilderness where it's only Ian in a split personality mode speaking for two different characters. That's what I was saying in a previous post regarding Wilderness. Ian is two people in that song. Perhaps Hook should have sung the repeated line "What did you see there?"

 

I agree... The RCA version is more true to the old pre-Hannett Joy Division.... I think is stands better, and also Ian does sing this version.

 

Joy Division - Live at The Apollo Manchester on the Buzzcocks tour. this is the whole of the second show, remastered. Barney on bass for Sound of Music, sitting on Hooky's bass amp head because Hooky's strap was so long LOL

 

Never thought I'd see Vai and Satriani mentioned in a Joy Division thread! Just to make things even more bizarre I will say that I'm a huge fan of Yngwie Malmsteem's early works. Those first few Polydor albums are killer. After that...well it's best not to talk about it.

As you were.

 

Question is, why have Hook sing it when Ian can do it 10.000 x better? I ask myself the same question when I listen to Wings At The Speed Of Sound (the Macca & Wings album). I don’t see the point.

 

Now we've had Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen and now Macca in a Joy Division thread..... good grief

 

I agree.
I saw Satriani last year, on tour with Uli Jon Roth and John Petrucci.
The other two were guitar show-offs, up and down the frets, guitar w***ers as I usually call them.
JS plays some OTT solos, but mostly it's good tunes played with verve.
Standard rock music is not my thing, but I've collected most of JS's albums, and like to play one now and again for an energy lift.

Talking of energy lifts, I used to play 'Atmosphere' just before a Friday or Saturday night out.
Most people cannot get past Ian's dour opening line, but for me it used to elevate me by the time it had finished.
None of my friends quite understood, but did I care?!

 

Ok, I wouldn’t mention that I listen to ABBA, Madonna, Zappa and Slayer sometimes...

I got quite an eclectic taste.

 

Day 22

I Remember Nothing......



We were strangers.
We were strangers, for way too long, for way too long,
We were strangers, for way too long.
Violent, violent,
Were strangers.
Get weak all the time, may just pass the time,
Me in my own world, yeah you there beside,
The gaps are enormous, we stare from each side,
We were strangers for way too long.
Violent, more violent, his hand cracks the chair,
Moves on reaction, then slumps in despair,
Trapped in a cage and surrendered too soon,
Me in my own world, the one that you knew,
For way too long.
We were strangers, for way too long.
We were strangers,
We were strangers, for way too long.
For way too long.


The last track on Unknown Pleasures, when I first bought the album I didn't really play this track after the first listening. In all honesty I found it too slow and maybe too dark, I really don't think I was ready for it at that time. 40 odd years later I love this track. Joy Division would sometimes close their set with this song live, before coming back to do an encore. The lyrics are standard Curtis fayre from this era, dark, loss, separation, depression, all the things that Curtis was channelling at this point in his life were summed up in this song.

 

It IS Ian Curtis who is singing both vocal lines in the UP version of Interzone. No studio wizardry there, apart from some good old-fashioned vocal overdubbing. For obvious reasons they couldn't replicate that in concert, which is why we have Hooky delivering the main lyric and Curtis the monologue interieur.
Furthermore, the goofy noises are also in the UP version, but more subdued.

The RCA version is a crude early demo version of the song, taken shortly after the band wrote it when they couldn't pull off a cover version of Nolan Porter's Keep On Keepin' On. For me the album version is a massive improvement in all respects and testament to the band's growth... Which didn't stop there!

 

I remember nothing is my favorite track on U.P and one of my favorite tracks of all time. From the first time I heard it when the album came out I was a massive fan, nothing has changed, when I played again the other day it still sends shivers up my spine.

The emotion held in that song is tangible and gets released from the speakers every time it’s played.

The smashing glass sample is beyond brilliant and the lyrics perfectly sum up a relationship in decline.

It was a sign of what was to come with closer and one of the best closing tracks on any album, maybe even the best.

 

I also used to find We Were Strangers to be a rather dull ending. In retrospect, listening to it out of blue like that, it's great.
Another powerful line from Ian: "Violent, more violent, his hand cracks the chair,...".

 

Where/who is your source for this information regarding Ian singing lead on Interzone or is it just an assumption? For years it's been accepted across the board that it was Peter Hook singing lead, with Ian Curtis on backing vocals.

A Short Conversation with PETER HOOK - The Electricity Club

Also If memory serves me, I believe he talks about it in his book Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division... I'll dig it out and have a look when I get a minute.

 

I love how this song creeps up on me, fading in as it does and sounding as if doomsday has arrived.
Really dark and ominous stuff. I think the breaking glass inspired Depeche Mode to do something similar at the start of Blasphemous Rumours (the rattling cans). IRN simultanously wraps up the album in style as well as sets the stage for what’s to come. This, as well as it’s parent album, is a remarkable achievement!

 

Nope, no assumption whatsoever: it's right there for all to hear when you listen to the actual song. The two vocals may be treated to different effects, or Ian Curtis may just have sung them in different ways, but it's him all the way - regardless of what gets copied on the internet all too easily from site to site to site... Along the way, the misinformation about Peter Hook singing on the studio version has evidently been perpetuated and amplified because it really is him doing the lead vocal in live performances.

 

It's an assumption... this has been widely known since before the internet was even invented. You have no evidence to back up what you're saying... With respect, it's just your opinion

 

I always thought it was Ian singing both lines as well, the high one in his pre-Hannett voice, I only ever knew Hook's high voice as being the deeper, more resonant voice that sings things like the high line of Dreams Never End.

When I was getting into JD, live recordings weren't easily available - I remember finding a copy of the Atmosphere bootleg with half the cover missing and thinking it was manna from heaven - so I just presumed the high line was the throaty voice from the Ideal For Living EP.

Happy to be proven wrong though.