Transmission 4x.
Original:
From the excellent movie Control:
Playmobil Stop Motion:
Caribbean steel-band:
What else is there to say?
(Here is some of what I said last November):
If you are a Joy Division fan you probably caught Control when it first hit the screens (and streets) in 2007; if you still have not seen it, you should. If you are not a Joy Division fan, you should be. If you don’t believe me, believe this and this and especially this.
If you are still not convinced, try this:
Having just written in some detail about the sad, redemptory and mostly inscrutable life of Syd Barrett, it was impossible not to make several connections between these two extremely brilliant and deeply sensitive souls. Each of them gave us a lifetime of work in the most abbreviated artistic lives, and each was gone from the scene before most folks ever had a chance to catch up to them. Arguably, many folks are still struggling to keep pace with what they did more than thirty and forty years ago, respectively. And while there is no question that a cult of personality is inevitable when charismatic rock stars die early (Hendrix, Joplin, Holly and Stevie Ray), particularly if they die by their own hand (Cobain, Curtis and, to varying extents, Morrison, Moon and Bonham), there is still a difference between the ones who left too soon and those who may have changed the world –even more than they already did– had they managed to stick it out. Therefore, envisioning what Ian Curtis may have offered in the ’80s and beyond is…difficult. Far be it from me to fan the facile flames of myth-making, but Ian Curtis has more in common with Syd Barrett than a handful of albums that continue to influence musicians today.
Think about it: what would Syd’s music have sounded like in the ’70s? (And after?) I’m not suggesting or implying it wouldn’t have sounded incredible, but I also wonder. And I don’t think his enigmatic end justified the means, but I’m content not only with the handful of documents he did leave behind, but the import they accrue considering a would-be career cut off so bluntly. Likewise, was there anything else for Ian Curtis to prove? Changing the face of music (listen to these songs: even if you have never listened to a Joy Division song, if you were alive in the ’80s and have had ears the last two decades you’ve heard them channeled through the myriad acts who’ve absorbed them like oxygen) was, arguably, enough and quite well done for a two-year tenure. If Piper At The Gates of Dawn and Unknown Pleasures are not on the short list of all-time great debut albums nobody else belongs in the debate.
Considering the legacy of Syd Barrett, I suggested the following:
There was so much more for Syd to achieve… or was there? Do we dare ask for or expect more from any artist who gave so much? Is it both selfish and short-sighted to wonder what he may have achieved in the ‘70s and beyond when we consider what he’d already done? Did Syd pay the ultimate price for fame and artistic immortality?
I could have said the exact same thing about Ian Curtis. Watching the movie (and I also strongly encourage anyone who is interested in Joy Division, or that era in general, to check out the magnificent 24 Hour Party People, featuring the incomparable Steve Coogan), I mostly felt a tremendous sadness. Before he was an artist he was a father, a husband and a human being. On all of those levels, even (or especially) the prospects of fortune and fame could not quell the desperate gloom he struggled to keep at bay. (His offstage and onstage epileptic seizures are the stuff of Dostoyevesky, figuratively and literally.) It makes your heart hurt, and then the music helps heal you; if only it could have healed them.
Finally, I want to resist the urge, but since I also just wrote at some length about Bill Hicks, I can’t help myself. Comparing and contrasting the lives and careers of Ian Curtis and Dennis Miller on the same day goes beyond cheap irony and seems to suggest a sardonic reiteration of artistic inequity, as it’s tended to play out past and present: the great ones are too often hampered (and/or inspired) by their fragility and are inexorably broken by the world, their pieces an ineffable legacy we are left to ponder; the hacks thrive once they suicide their souls and feed their flesh, growing old and obscene by eating their unjust desserts, applauded all the way by the unreflective Hoi polloi.
