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Tracklisting & More Information
The highly acclaimed U.K. post-punk band Joy Division was originally called Warsaw. Formed in Manchester, England in the late 1970s, the group consisted of lan Curtis on vocals, Bernard Albrecht (aka Sumner, aka Dicken) on guitar, Peter Hook on bass and Stephen Morris on drums. Hook, Albrecht and Curtis hooked up at a local concert and later formed the group Warsaw. The band's name was taken from a David Bowie-Brian Eno composition, "Warszawa".
The 5 bonus tracks on this album are demos cut by the group at Pennine Studios in Manchester on July 18, 1977 with Steve Brotherdale on drums. He left the group shortly after the demo sessions. His replacement on drums was Stephen Morris, an old school friend of Curtis's. The four continued their day jobs, getting together at night to play in various underground clubs around Manchester. They changed their name to Joy Division in 1978. The name referred to the section of concentration camps where young women served as prostitutes for the Nazis.
Two promoters had been introduced to the musicians in their pre-Joy Division days, and had decided to back the group in cutting an album. The first eleven tracks presented here were the result of a recording session for that album that took place in early May of 1978. Rehearsals leading up to the session resulted in two new songs being added to the group's existing repertoire: "Interzone" and "Transmission." "Interzone" was based on the backing track of the song "Keep On Keepin' On,* " to which the band added their own lyrics. The result was a song distinctively their own. "Transmission" was written by the band during the final week of rehearsals. The first verse contains a quotation from Alistair Crowley's The Book Of Thoth. The two recordings are interesting renditions of songs which would later became famous.
During the album's final mixing, one of the promoters added some synthesizer. He believed that the raw sound of punk would not last much longer, and he wanted Joy Division to have a more professional and advanced sound than the other punk bands of time. But the group wasn't happy with the mix; they disliked the synthesizers (though very shortly thereafter they used them on the album Unknown Pleasures) and, wanting only guitar and drums, asked that the album be remixed. Joy Division believed that if the album were released, it would harm their punk band reputation, so the two promoters decided to use the recordings instead to set up a record deal with RCA. The project was later abandoned as the group was dissatisfied with their contract. The recordings, presented on the first part of this disc, remain interesting historical and musical testimony to Joy Divison's early artistic qualities.
Concerts and recordings followed under the name Joy Division, and soon the group was being hailed throughout England as one of the most important of the post-punk bands. The tremendous stage presence and original, disturbing music of the group, along with the intense voice and manic, jerky movements of singer lan Curtis, impressed critics and led to the development of a strong cult following. That following and the critical acclaim soon spread outside of the U.K.
In 1979, lan Curtis, who had epilepsy, began to suffer visibly from related health pro-blems, occasionally having seizures or blackouts on stage. A three-week American tour was planned in 1980, as it had been decided that it was time for the group to cross the Atlantic. The plans, however, were dashed by the death of the 23-year-old Curtis, on the evening that Joy Divison was to embark on the American tour. Later it became evident that the singer had hung himself. The surviving members of Joy Division went on to form the band New Order shortly after Curtis' death.
lan Curtis died at the peak of the band's creativity. The work Joy Division recorded just before his death is of such quality that one can only wonder what might have been...
Side A
1. The Drawback
2. Leaders Of Men
3. They Walked In Line
4. Failures
5. Novelty
6. No Love Lost
7. Transmission
8. Ice Age
Side A
1. Interzone
2. Warsaw
3. Shadowplay
4. As You Said
Bonus Tracks*
5. Inside the Line [The Warsaw demo]
6. Gutz [The Warsaw demo]
7. At a Later Date [The Warsaw demo]
8. The Kill [The Warsaw demo]
9. You're No Good for Me [The Warsaw demo]
*recorded 18th July 1977, Pennine Sound Studios, Oldham
LP RECORD
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