Joy Division Suck

Joy Division Are The Worst Band On The Planet

Hi, its me, the bloke whose “argument” you replied to, just wanted to add a few things…

1) I didn’t say virtuosity matters a “jot” in music, thats the point, what i said was virtuosity cannot beat ideas, never has.  And whats wrong with the term sonic exploration?

Sonic exploration = pretentious. I’m guessing you like My Bloody Valentine too?

2) OK, a vague insult to Martin Hannetts production work there, no real addressing the point i raised, fair enough.  Is that art?  Yes, yes it is, you explain to me how its not and properly, i’m not talking about insults and clever little digs, talk about the music, the product, don’t just sit there inventing new ways to write “its shit, i don’t like it”.  Your points about Curtis being self obsessed are sort of arbitrary and, despite being in response to a point i’ve made it has no relevance to it.  If it hadn’t've stood the test of time mate we wouldn’t be here talking about it now, would we?

We’re here talking about it in the same way that we still talk about Cancer these days.

3) There’s a difference between pity and giving credit where its due.  And well done for ignoring the part about self indulgence and its relation to the nature of music and instead opting for more vague digs.

I can’t help it, I tend to scan over the sentences as I’ve lost my attention span after suffering brain damage as the result of a Toffos overdose whilst I was still a Joy Division fan. Joy Division are due absolutely no credit.

4) Kurt Cobain saw fit to cite Unknown Pleasures in his best albums ever so i think you’ll find they are worthy of mention alongside them…I also marvel at your criticism of Ian Curtis for commiting suicide and making music you deem as depressing when the exact same observations are levelled at Kurt…more frequently than Ian.

Kurt Cobain killed himself because he was married to Courtney Love. Are you telling me you wouldn’t blow your own head off if you were married to that bint?

5) Unknown Pleasures is their album, they made it.  Lots of artists are critical of their own work, it don’t make it any less theirs.

??

6) Well done for ignoring the last paragraph.  Every point i’ve made has been of direct relevance to the point at hand whereas all you’ve done is make digs, i thought you were interested in a serious discussion, apparently not.

I didn’t ignore it on purpose. It just read like a Paul Morley piece. I’ve read most of Morley’s writings on Joy Division and you get tired of that sorta flowery wank after about the 15th dreadful analogy in a paragraph.

Also, how is music not art?

In the same way as a foot is not a cock.

Anyway thank you for responding young man. You are at least well mannered unlike the young rapscallions who keep calling me a ‘f**ing cunt’.

Spoiler : Curtis hangs himself at the end in his kitchen after consuming too much cheap whiskey. These were before the days of MSN were one could go onto a forum and threaten suicide whilst in the midst of a drunken huff and wake up fine the next morning.

‘Closer’ is a film about Joy Division that is directed by Anton Corbijn.

The film starts with Ian Curtis walking around in Manchester, scoring prescription drugs off pensioners, wanking into bins and chasing chubbies around his home town. After dating and dumping every fat girl in Maccers – Ian falls for Debbie who is intrigued by the fact that Ian can write (which would have been outstanding at the time as Manchester had a literacy rate of 3%).

Ian eventually becomes tired of being a no-one, so he fires out a sprog and robs a bank to fund the formation of Stiff Kittens/Warsaw/Joy Division.

At Joy Division’s first gig in the Rafters club in Manchester, Ian makes a Hitler salute to some fat girls at the front row, before whipping out his knob and nads, lodging a finger up his hole and climaxing into one of his Primark socks.

Throughout 1978 – every journalist hates Joy Division as they can’t play their instruments and there are rumors on the scene that either the bassist or guitarist molests raccoons as a job on the side.

In 1979 Manchester seemingly has a collective mental breakdown allowing Joy Division to become the best band in the city. However their success was not to last. At the height of their fame – Ian begins to experience troubling visions of owls onstage. During these hallucinations he is implored by God (who sounds eerily like Tony Wilson) to “swat exactly 450 of the freaky-beaked bastards” otherwise he’ll be forced to live in a shed with Hooky and his bean-farts for the rest of the year.

Sometime between 1979 and 1980 Ian begins to have an affair with a Belgian Boiler called Rick Honore. Ian was approached by Rick after a gig in Antwerp, bragging that he ‘had the biggest cock in Ghent’  and that ‘he longed for ‘the beef of a ‘ready salted’ type of boy’. Curtis and Honore then fall madly in love but Ian has commitments back home…

After listening to David Bowie and chowing down 50 Magic Mushroom pills one Saturday night, Ian felt he could rack up his guilt no longer and racked himself good and proper.

We are then treated to an extended moving epilogue read by Peter Hook who explains that Ian killed himself to escape nightly recurring wank-fantasies featuring him and Terry Nutkins frolicking around Deansgate with nothing but songs of love and stonking hard-ons to pass the time with.

Aside from the stunningly emotive epilogue this film is really a missed opportunity and therefore only gets 2 nooses out of 10.

/10

Some moron over on Joy Division Central has proposed that the bridge in Hulme where about 85% of all Joy Division pictures were taken be renamed the ‘Ian Curtis Memorial Bridge’.

Let’s set the record straight.

The last thing Joy Division fans need is a fucking bridge of their own to jump off. The streets of Hulme will be littered with the bodies of emanciated Joy Division fans who took the plunge to be in Valhalla with their favourite Nazi hero.

You’ll even have Manic Street Preachers fans joining in on the act and taking the plunge to emulate their hero Richey Edwards.

It’s a horrible idea.

They should instead dedicate the bridge to someone who deserves our applause and respect. Someone who continues to make a valid contribution to the music industry.

For those of you blissfully unaware of his existence – Paul Morley is a sniveling shit who plagues late-night current affairs shows with his wry under-stated ‘I know everything about everything’ spiel, systemically shitting out morsels of wank about art, seemingly without end.

He also adores Joy Division. At the last count he has written about 7,500 separate articles about the band and all of them have been thinly veiled attempts to seduce Peter Hook into having hairy, bearded man-to-bum-and-back-sex with him.

Now there’s nothing wrong with liking Joy Division or wanting to have Peter Hook’s bristly cock in your arse. Both inclinations are perfectly legal, if not morally questionable.

However that’s not the point.

The point is that Paul Morley is deluded. He does not understand that Joy Division were simply hapless Northern lackeys who got lucky.

He dolefully accepts that Ian Curtis, a 23-year-old ex-civil servant with a penchant for voting Conservative, cross-dressing and plagiarizing J.G Ballard, was God incarnate.

Paul Morley’s predicament – much like Joy Division’s own – is that he’s working class. Now as you’re aware the working class only know of baked beans, despair and damp Primark jeans that smell of cabbage.

In Morley’s case he has expanded his horizons into worshiping Joy Division and hoarding dark Primark jackets that smell of cabbage.

This is to be applauded. Unlike most Northerners Morley has managed to learn to read and write and only has the occasional drunken danger wank in his darkened kitchen.

However he’s now in danger of turning his Joy Division obsession into a proselytizing death cult.

Here’s the how and the why.

Morley is typical of the Far-Left in that he is a revisionist. If he was in Power he would attempt to have our Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible stricken from the Records and would instead instate Curtis as God and claim that Closer was divinely inspired.

By then everyone will be wearing pendants of Curtis and the Holy Noose and we’d all be forced into taking Communion to honour the wan man who died for Our sins by drinking Special Brew and eating Pot Noodles.

Paul Morley might try to come across as the Eternal Friend Of The Student with his black/navy Primark jackets but inside lies an insipid little fuck who would happily force you into worshiping Christ Curtis on a Sunday.

He is not to be trusted.

Yes it is and not in a good way.

I’ve tried listening to Closer on many occasions and it’s just dirt. I don’t mind depressing music if it is of a certain standard however Closer is just poorly written and the sound quality is despicable.

As an example – how the fuck could anyone even think about committing something as pointless as Decades to tape? They might as well have recorded a man gurning in a phone box for 10 minutes and it would have been as good.

Songs like ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ and ‘Isolation’ are just bleak, nondescript bollocks that promise to take you on a ‘musical journey’ but just leave you feeling raped and shagged by the roadside.

The rest of the album just blends into one long yawning moan of a man who should have been in an asylum instead of outside banging Belgian whores and fitting more than an Irish builder with as many CCJs as kids.

If you think Closer is a good album then you’re simply mistaken. I can forgive you for liking ‘Twenty Four Hours’ as it has a nice buildup and everything, but the rest? There’s nothing there at all.

Joy Division have just finished recording their debut album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ at Strawberry Studios in Stockport. They are parked outside the local chip shop waiting for the rain to stop so that they can finally have something to eat.

Hooky : I’m starving for some chips, me! Fucking ravished.

Barney : You’re always hungry you fat bastard. Can’t you just chew on your fist until it stops pissing down outside?

Ian ~interrupts without realizing that anyone exists in the universe apart from himself~ : Void. Void in my stomach. Void….everywhere. The rain will never stop. Even if the rain stops, the chip shop will have closed by then. Closed forever like the faint avenues of hope that once beckoned to me, but then faded away like a new dawn.

Hooky : Oh for fucks sake, would you shut the hell up?

Ian ~continues on rambling~ …the chippy shutters will be as grey as the bleakest winter inside my soul.

Hooky : What the fucking hell are you on about now?

Ian : You’ll never understand Hooky. You’ll never understand how I feel inside.

Hooky : Look if I stick my tongue down your neck will you stop whining? At least until I’ve had a pastie in me? I can’t cope with this on an empty stomach!

Ian : No way! There’s bits of kebab meat hanging off your teeth…..hanging like thin brown curtains inside a squalid tenement in the Interzone.

Hooky : If you were a real man you would have cupped my balls and patted me on the arse by now!

Ian : Look, I’ll do what I want to whoever I want! I am the talent in this band. You should shut the fuck up before I fire you all.

Ian begins to convulse. The band sit still and watch. He continues to convulse. The band sit still and watch.

It continues to rain outside.

Ian continues to convulse.

Suffice to say, Joy Division did not have chips on that rainy day in Stockport.

When Ian Curtis hung himself on May 18th 1980, he ended the band whilst they were at their peak. With Love Will Tear Us Apart they had created perhaps their only memorable song. Up until this point they hadn’t managed to create anything listenable, let alone great.

If Joy Division had continued on then they’d have just pumped out more awful Goth Rock. They’d have been like an even less talented ‘The Cure’.

Let’s face it Ian Curtis’s voice was annoying, not inspiring and the man could not hold a fucking note. All of the singing lessons in the world would not have made him passable as a true rock singer.

Yet deluded Joy Division fans believe that this was only the beginning of the Joy Division saga. World domination would have followed on the American tour that never was. Baying fans would have barked ‘Colony’ back at Curtis, staring at him with all the reverence of Jesus the Baby in the arms of Mary.

Face it, Ian Curtis killed himself because he realized he’d reached his peak and decided to call it quits before the music press called him out on his lack of talent.

That’s the truth of the matter.

It is not a wise idea to play Joy Division music if you’re in a relationship. Not only will your partner freak out at you and begin to fire plates around the apartment like a madperson, but the music will inspire you subconsciously into destroying your relationship just like Ian Curtis did.

If your relationship has ended recently then Joy Division definitely aren’t what you should be listening to. Everyone knows how Ian Curtis died so by playing their records, then you’re tempting yourself down a dark path.

Why not play something worthwhile like Coldplay, Keane or U2? Unlike Joy Division, these bands were able to encapsulate the human experience in more than just a vague tone of gray.

Do the wise thing now and lay all of your Joy Division CD’s out on the road and wait for cars to run over and squish them. You’ll thank me when you make it past 25! A

I’m tired of Joy Division fans telling me that I don’t understand the band. These idiots believe that music should be depressing otherwise it doesn’t hold any real meaning or worth. That’s why so few of them listen to any pop music!

Anyway there’s nothing wrong with music being depressing. Radiohead have mastered the art of creating mournful soundscapes that have inspired a generation. Joy Division have inspired many people to smash their own ear drums in with wooden cooking spoons.

The fact is Joy Division didn’t have any really good songs. If you listen to ‘Unknown Pleasures’ or ‘Closer’ you’ll realize that the records are 98% production and very little of substances lies underneath. This is why Joy Division fans have to spend so much time trying to like the bands music.

There’s nothing there at all but layers and layers of reverb. If the English had any sense they’d have vilified this band and Martin fucking Hannett a long, long time ago.

Without a doubt, Ian Curtis’s depressive antics helped inspire a new wave of talentless poets to form bands and to write songs, often urging their fan base to cut themselves with whatever came to hand and willing them on to write songs about their depression.

Joy Division were not solely responsible for Emo, however.

Everyone’s least favourite Welsh band, the Manic Street Preachers were huge Joy Division fans.

The guitarist Richey Edwards was an Ian Curtis devotee and ended up killing himself by jumping off a bring 30 years ago.  Many Emo bands tried to mimic the Richey by cutting themselves to pieces and forming other talentless punk bands that only existed to annoy anyone with taste.

Anyway back to Joy Division. Emo musicians typically look very similar to Ian Curtis in that they’re remarkable pale, thin and lame. Most of them have very poor relations with their families and help desecrate graves. Very few have any discernable talent other than to inspire other equally pointless groups to follow in their paths like sheep.

But that’s the Joy Division and Emo subculture for you!