~ Chapter 6: Closer to a Joy Unknown... ~

~ Alrighteh, I guess it's safe to say I have three blogs that I maintain on a day-to-day basis. One of them is on MySpace, another is on NOOL [New Order Online], and this one [even though this one came before the NOOL one]. I'm gonna try to maintain this one as much as I can. Though I will admit: I did get to tweak it up a bit today, so this is the SKC, Version 3, as of March 2007. [That's why you see Version 3/March/2007 up below the Excelsios SKC bit.]

In other quirky news, this year is, as any Joy Division and New Order fan will cheer, the year of Joy Division. Quite a bit is going on this year--

--Joy Division's 30th Anniversary
--The 27th Anniversary of Ian Curtis' death
--Ian's 52nd Birthday
--Joy Division's albums Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and Still being remastered and released
--New Order's 27th Anniversary
--David Nolan's new book bio on Bernard Sumner
--The biopic about Ian, 'Control', being released this September

Quite a big year to be a Joy Division/New Order fan. These are exciting times.

Now I'm sure someone's bound to ask, Why the h*ll do you like to listen to such a depressing group of bores!? Well, allow me to explain myself, please.

For one, their music speaks out to everybody in some form or fashion, in my opinion. Their music helped me survive my depression when life seemed at its bleakest. Ian Curtis, the late genius and lead singer of Joy Division, inspired me to write poetry again that no longer hid behind any sort of curtains whatsoever. He wrote from the heart, and what he wrote was raw.

So this is permanent, love's shattered pride.
What once was innocent turns on its side.
A cloud hangs over me, marks every move
Deep within the memory of what once was love.

['Twenty Four Hours', from the album Closer]

If you ever listen to a Joy Division song, and the bass is what strikes you best, then that would proudly belong to the genius that is Peter Hook [or 'Hooky']. Hooky kicks serious a*s on the bass, playing it as if it was a guitar on a good slew of the songs. It can even set the mood for a song too. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you are seriously missing out.

But one of the best things about the band even is, and I'm saying this from a fangirl's perspective, the rather adorable drummer that is Stephen Morris. That man has been beating the hoohaw out of drumsets since the forming of Joy Division, and just as I think that in bass playing Hooky is god, so is Stephen when it comes to drumming. Listen to many different Joy Division songs, and you'll be d*mn surprised as to what sort of beats this man can come up with. And if you listen to some early New Order also, the man is just pure drumming genius. Even with a drum machine!

And, out of the three surviving members, he's the best-looking of the bunch. He's cute. *grin*

~ 'Sunshine'

*EDITING: It's not 'Substance' being remastered. It's 'Still', which was released in 1981, after Ian Curtis' suicide in 1980.*

~ Tuesday, 1 May 2007 2:48 P.M. ~