JOY DIVISION - WINTER GARDENS, BOURNEMOUTH, 2/11/79

 

His Joy Division bandmate Bernard Sumner says if Ian Curtis had not died, he would have become a successful author. A true postmodern, Curtis’ attraction towards dystopian and philosophically lugubrious subject matter encompassed art film makers (Coppola, Herzog, Scorsese) and literary figures (Dostoevsky, Kafka, Conrad, Hesse, Mishima) as well as SF writers like Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard, William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick. His widow Deborah informs us in Touching from a Distance that Saturday night horror films were a weekly television ritual for the young songwriter. Curtis may have read James Herbert’s flawed but prescient horror novel The Fog (1975), a major set piece of which takes place in the seaside town where this recording was made.

The miasma of Herbert’s book is a possibly sentient mycoplasma and biowarfare agent - released from containment by seismic convulsion - that causes homicidal insanity in its victims. A scene in which an affected jumbo jet pilot steers his craft into London's GPO Tower has a queasily affecting power in the post-9/11 era. The Bournemouth scene depicts a Jonestown-like mass suicide. The novel’s catastrophic depiction of mass delusion parallels the ambiguous interrelationship between personal dilemma and social mayhem (or is it spiritual renewal?) in the song 'Disorder'. It possesses a capacity for reinvention as compelling as the band’s pop standard 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' which appears here in all its original vibrancy. The author recently heard an easy listening ‘cocktail party' interpretation through Spotify in a Thai restaurant that’s marginally better than Broken Social Scene's sub-Swans dirge version of LWTUA.  

To be honest, this is one of the post-punk legends’ middling to great performances, Curtis’ singing limited by a somaesthetic stage fright of which he seemed to be free in the ambient womb-havens of Strawberry Studios and Britannia Row. But he and his band are still on fire as is evident from the audience reaction.

‘I Remember Nothing’ opens with the austerity of one of Les Rallizes Denudes’ Kurosawa-gone-post-apocalyptic soundscapes ('Flames of Ice' from Blind Baby Has Its Mother's Eyes) molded with bass flange envelopes and radar-scanned by feedback clarions. ‘Colony’ shares some of the entropy energy of the Peel Sessions version or the motor-dub architectonics of PiL's ‘Careering’ from Paris Au Princeps.

'Interzone' has feedback whines that complement the Curtis snarl, an empty space broken by a Stooges-era Iggy Pop's Gestapo bark with an isolated "Get Out!" 'Insight' is blighted with the awful syndrum Space Invaders sounds drummer Stephen Morris evokes in his autobiography Record Play Pause, his dream image of a mushroom cloud (via Ballard/Burroughs) rendered a more prosaic Orion's Belt of space debris.

On ‘Digital’, Curtis' Elvis-reimagined-by-Ballard skroon sounds more atompunk than post-human with a harmonizer's varispeed warble. ‘These Days’ sounds enervated without Martin Hannett's celebrated psychogeography, but the song still impresses for how it gives a dystopian sensibility to Roxy Music’s contemporaneous future disco template on ‘Same Old Scene’.

What’s most remarkable about this concert is the insight it gives into Joy Division’s liminal-protean position in avant-rock history. Post-Can/Wire, but pre-post-punk like Peter Hammill's solo work (Morris mentions him a bit in RRP, although his comments over the years still make it unsure whether Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator were positive or negative influences on Curtis). You can hear trace elements of other significant pre-punk groups like Kingdom Come circa Journey, Hawkwind (obviously) and Doctors of Madness. For whatever limitations it may possess - like their heroes, Can, Joy Division could both impress and disappoint outside of the studio - this bootleg still offers fascinating insights into the evolution of one of the late 20th Century's most significant groups. Like the pernicious brain fog of Herbert’s novel, their influence will only continue to grow within our own liminal time zone.

(C) Jon Kromka 2021