It’s amazing how when you hear an older song out of context, you see it in a completely different light or find a new appreciation for it. For example, a tune you’ve ignored as part of an album you usually listen to in its entirety is featured on its own in a movie or something and you suddenly think – Wow. How did I miss that? And why am I watching Arachnophobia again?
I heard my favorite Joy Division song, Leaders of Men, on random ipodiness while walking around today and was taken back to my family’s house on Nashawtuc Hill where I used to sit on the hardwood floor and listen to it on cassette with enormous headphones covering my head. Because that’s where your ears are, generally. I wanted to feature it on Wadio today, but short of a short live clip there is nothing on YouTube which does it justice. Which is hardly surprising seeing as how it’s a lesser known song from the catalog of a band whose lead singer hung himself over 25 years ago.
I did find a good quality collage-clip of ‘Decades’ and was immediately reminded of an eerie story I read many moons ago, about a New Order recording session which took place a year or so after Ian Curtis cashed in his chips. You see kids, when Curtis died, JD became NO, and guitarist Bernard Sumner took over on lead vocals. After Bernard came out of the booth to twist the knobs on the vocals for one of the earliest New Order tracks, they realized it was unusable – because they could clearly hear someone whistling Decades in the otherwise empty sound booth. Whether that’s true or not… alright, it probably isn’t. But it’s a great yarn befitting a song that is already plenty spooky enough without the ghost story.
Shit … really. Leaders of Men.
The only thing worse than this hideous pop dirge would be Ian Curtis scratching his arse with the leftover paper from his curried chips as he zig zagged home from the effen Factory on the wee hours of a sunday morn.
Well not so much the wee hours as on the back end of a truck load of gear.
How could you over look decades?
Obvious to the rest of us that you wuz just tucked up in bed with yet another copy of some mis-tuned pixies cover while you put your father of his stroke as you practiced that fucking guitar one more night.
Apart from learning another song, other than Where is My Mind (in e of course), you might want to admit that you need to quickly revisit the genius of that depressed soul.
If you must pick a shite song to seem cool – at least shoot for, “I rem. Nothing”. Who ever makes it to track 10 of Unknown Pleasures to listen to that 5:52 secs tomb of pish that leaders is.
Pish aside feel the genius of the man that paved the way for Cobain. They followed their okay 1979 debut (UP) with the thigh glistening delights of Closer (1980) and the double album Still (1981). Still with me?
From the tribal openings of Atrocity, over the dulcet tones of Peel, ignoring the over-covered isolation and basking in A means to an end and Heart and Soul this was the clarity before the clouds drew deep.
Let’s all take a moment to remember Curtis, 23 Years Old, hanging in his kitchen 2 months short of his 24th birthday, May 18, 1980. Proof that Macclesfield is a shithole and that genius really is a short distance from insanity.
Or that Dave’s arse is just an inch away from his fanny as far as Joy Division is concerned.
Colony
A cry for help, a hint of anaesthesia,
The sound from broken homes,
We used to always meet here.
As he lays asleep, she takes him in her arms,
Some things I have to do, but I don’t mean you harm.
A worried parent’s glance, a kiss, a last goodbye,
Hands him the bag she packed, the tears she tries to hide,
A cruel wind that bows down to our lunacy,
And leaves him standing cold here in this colony.
I can’t see why all these confrontations,
I can’t see why all these dislocations,
No family life, this makes me feel uneasy,
Stood alone here in this colony.
In this colony, in this colony, in this colony, in this colony.
Dear God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
In this colony, in this colony, in this colony, in this colony.