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Tag: Joy Division

Episode Thirty Nine – Schrödinger’s Halen

We all know that Joy Division were an incredibly powerful band, but did any of us realize that they might have become both New Order & Dokken at the same time?

Taking in The Shaize, Van Halen, Love Will Tear Us Apart, Bears, Human League, Buzzcocks, Atomic Kitten, Portugal, The Cure, and much more

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Episode Thirty Six – Bizarre Bear Triangles

Was an early version of Love Will Tear Us Apart written by the ancient Greeks? Were New Order slated to cover the entire Wizard of Oz score for the So I Married An Axe Murderer soundtrack? Did The Pixies think Salvador Dali might have replaced Ian Curtis in Joy Division?

Young Southpaw investigates.

“Love will tear us apart, I mean maybe ya know. I guess that’s a possibility. I’d certainly never thought of that before I heard the song. That’s kinda dark. Though you look at those photos of Joy Division, they’re all black and white as well, real gloomy…

But ya know love, maybe… like I said, but ya know what would definitely tear a couple apart? Bears! I mean why wasn’t it Bears Will Tear Us Apart? Same number of syllables, ya know? I’d have to think that just by using logic Ian Curtis woulda thought of that before love occurred to him. Comes first alphabetically too! In case like the charts were rigged that way. I guess A would be even better but… Can’t think of anything…axes? Nah, see that’s two syllables. And they more chop apart than tear. Though that So I Married An Ax Murderer had a pretty good soundtrack ya know. Ned’s Atomic Dustbin doin’ Saturday Night by the Bay City Rollers. Boo Radleys coverin The La’s There She Goes. Suede with My Insatiable One. Now that’s pretty dark when you’re talking about ax murderers. Insatiable, woo. I wonder if New Order were even considered for that soundtrack? They coulda done like…well Lions & Tigers & Bears was a chant, not really a song. But ya know how they had a certain fondness for like frog noises and whatnot, on singles no less? They coulda thrown the Lions & Tigers & Bears chant into their tune for the So I Married An Ax Murderer soundtrack. A knowing nod to their secret history. But wait a minute like what if New Order…covered the entire Wizard of Oz soundtrack… And like if you pressed play on it at the beginning of So I Married An Axe Murderer it was like the most psychedelic experience ever!

But I mean yeah again axes and definitely axe murderers chop more than tear. Could be a combo I guess. Not so snappy of a song title though, ya know – Axes & Axes Murderers Will Chop & Tear Us Apart. Rarely do such themes make it into the singles charts. Though So I Married An Axe Murderer was ultimately a film about love. So this is quite problematic…

But like what strictly tears? Eyes I guess, not in the same way of course. That’d be crazy if tears…teared…tore? I mean now we’re in Pixies territory, no pun intended. Though I don’t know, who knows the inner workings of my mind and what it means to intend and whatnot? But that’d be crazy if Debaser was actually a cover of Love Will Tear Us Apart. Done to point out exactly what I’m saying here about the tearing. Imagine if Salvador Dali went on to sing for Joy Division, they just kept the name after Ian passed and like Peter Murphy ended up bein’ their chauffeur. And that’s what that Duran Duran song is about! That makes perfect sense!

Though if it was a bear drivin’ a car, like if Peter Murphy couldn’t make it to work one day. I mean I assume if Peter Murphy was going to get someone to replace him, bear or otherwise, he’d make sure they could drive. Heck they even had that Spy In The Cab, he’d totally know who he was putting in charge of cartin Joy Division around. Heck, it might even be too much of a system. But let’s just say, like there’s a communication breakdown, Jimmy Page workin’ some dark magic ya know, and a bear who doesn’t have a license, doesn’t even know how to drive, has prolly never even been behind the wheel of a car before – or any vehicle, tractors and gold carts included – let’s just say this bear finds himself there. What can he do? Does his best, I’m sure. But there is a very real danger that this bear…could tear them apart… Just by wrapping them around a tree or somethin’. And the car, car would go first. This could be what the songs Confusion and True Faith are about, heck maybe even Everything’s Gone Green – ya know this bear just taking them all back to the woods where he knows it’s safe. Rather than on busy city streets with radio stations refusin to play Axes & Axe Murderers Will Chop And Tear Us Apart

But like back to what I was sayin’ about alphabetically, eyes would be out cause E comes after B. Though like Bear’s Eyes Will Tear Us Apart does sound real cool and poetic, heck even more intriguing than Love. Lots of people fall in love, or claim to for whatever reason. But how often do you come face to face with a pair of bear’s eyes? Then like they could be crying, the tears tearing apart…it’s all startin’ to make sense now… And like Paddington Bear, ya know! Keepin’ it English. I’m not sayin’ Paddington Bear was violent at all. And neither am I sayin’ Joy Division should have been playing children’s television shows. If that’s what you’re taking away from this, let me correct your misconceptions. Though I mean I don’t wanna take money outta their pockets either. I mean kids prolly woulda liked Dali’s moustache, not payin’ so much attention to the sounds coming out of the speakers…

Huh… Though there’s prolly some copyright stuff with Paddington Bear but like ya know I mentioned they liked sampling animal noises, I imagine since those were still early days of electronic music you’d need a live bear at some point in the equation. Like musos didn’t regularly have authentic bear samples on hand. I mean where do ya go? Well Liverpool, of course! Bill Drummond and Dave Balfe got Zoo Records going…

Woah, speakin’ of bears and Liverpool, there was that band Care  ya know. Paul Simpson and Ian Broudie. Care Bears ya know, woo! They had that tune Flaming Sword. Imagine facing that on the dancefloor! That’ll tear you apart. Well, I guess more slice though. But still, Care Bears With A Flaming Sword, now we’re talkin!

There were apparently a lot of animals in Liverpool at the time, certainly enough for a zoo – Lori & The Chameleons, Wild Swans, even Bunnymen – and then like all that Beatles memorabilia of course. Other cities prolly had Zoo Envy. Well how bout Zoos Will Tear Us – or heck Zeus! Will Tear Us Apart. I mean his lightning certainly would. Split you right in half. Like that Smiths song you know. And the Greeks woulda been fond of division too. Archimedes and his crew, all those cats. Maybe they even wrote Zeus Will Tear Us Apart and it’s just been floatin in the ether ever since for Ian Curtis ta pick up on thousands a years later. I mean I wonder how many songs this happens for…”

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Episode Twenty Four – FaceTiming With Ian Curtis, Spectral Mini-Golf Fanatic

Young Southpaw recalls sitting in a hot tub on the eve of Live Aid, Facetiming with Ian Curtis about his love of mini-golf in the afterlife, poses the all-important question ‘did Sartre ever see Joy Division’, conjectures about worlds made entirely of soup and songs, etc.

Taking in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Van Halen, the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the Chinese Zodiac, New Order, Love Vigilantes, Dr. Who, Phil Rudd, and much more…

“Speaking of Live Aid last time, I remember it was the eve of that great event, and I was sittin’ in a hot tub FaceTiming with Ian Curtis. It was weird, there were like two days in 1985 when like all this stuff that we now know and take for granted was available back then, just came out of nowhere and everybody had everything. It was like those scenes in Buffy when her little sister appears and there’s all this crazy stuff like ripping and tearing open the sky and these giant beasts would just burst into view. It was like that for like 48 Hours, not the film, that came out a couple years before though you could actually see the sequel Another 48 Hours that came out in 1990 for these two days in 1985. It was playin’ at all the cinemas. And of course Buffy was available then so of course everyone was just watchin’ Buffy all the time. And then like everything disappeared so that’s like why it wasn’t that far-fetched, why it seemed familiar to Buffy when her sister came back like that…

But it was weird man cause I was like sittin’ there, lookin’ at Ian Curtis over there in the afterlife, you know. And he has no idea even who New Order is. He’s just too busy playin’ mini-golf. I mean they have crazy mini-golf tournaments you know in the astral plane, as you can imagine. Imagine like a mini-golf set up like the 10 Sephiroth, that would be crazy. Like the Tree Of Life depiction with all the circles and pathways, I mean how would that even go? Ian explained it but like he was using, I mean I understood the mystical terminology of what he was saying but it was the golf talk that confused me. Which reminds me of my favourite joke:

‘What’s a golfer’s favourite number?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t remember how scoring in golf works’

But you know the 10 holes and 32 paths I was right along with. Though I mean maybe this is forbidden for me to even be speaking about. And there’s no way for me to get back in touch with Ian Curtis now cause there’s no way to FaceTime with the dead even today. That’s still comin’. It was just those two days in 1985, ya know the Year of the Ox, the most spiritual of all the Chinese zodiacal animals, you know. Then Buffy the Vampire Slayer the film came out a few years later in 1992, which, speaking of the Chinese animals, was the same year that Tiger Woods made his pro debut. Though of course you could’ve seen it live on tv or even on YouTube during those two days in 1985…

Now that I think about it…this have been a dream…. That I had recently too. I hadn’t even heard Joy Division in 1985. That woulda been weird ya know, had I just been FaceTiming with this guy Ian Curtis, who died in 1980 and is obsessed with Kabbalistic mini-golf, and I didn’t even know who he was, you know! I’m trying to remember the first time I heard Joy Division – Transmission… Novelty… Unknown Pleasures… Well maybe this wasn’t a dream cause those three titles, especially Unknown Pleasures, would definitely sum up the undead playin’ these mystical forms of mini-golf. I can’t think of a, well I’m sure there are plenty of things that are unknown and pleasurable but by the very definition, we don’t know about them. Well, I’m sure I could have asked him had we more time back in this spectral window in 1985, the day before and day of Live Aid. And the thing is like unless you started watchin’ Buffy like the first night and got real obsessed, you know the whole second day this window was available, everyone was watchin’ Live Aid…

It was a weird time, man. I mean Roth had left Van Halen so you knew somethin’ like this might happen. But you could never tell where nor when to expect it. You know now that you could just be livin’ your life and at any given moment things like David Lee Roth no longer being in Van Halen could be not just a possibility but a reality…

That’s weird that after Ian Curtis…departed, you know…that New Order then went on  to become this crazy synthpop band and…Van Halen did the same thing now that I think about it. Just like on Joy Division’s ‘Closer’ there were also hints of it on ‘1984’. The writing was on the wall as they say. Perhaps the very wall that David Lee Roth has his back against the record machine on in Jump, ya know…

And then ‘Why Can’t This Be Love?’…Why Can’t This Be Love Vigilantes, ya know?! Well, there are many, many answers to that question, you know I mean cause that song is like the first time Bernard Sumner ever wrote like a direct lyric and that’s, that’s what it’s about? Still freaks me out to this day. And you know like plain and simple, even if you don’t know who New Order is, or the song – I assume everyone knows who Van Halen is, I mean that’s probably the one safe assumption anyone can ever make – but even if you don’t know about New Order, the answer to Why Can’t This Be Love Vigilantes is either going to be ‘because it’s something else’, because Love Vigilantes already happened… I mean I can’t imagine a world where literally everything in it was the New Order song Love Vigilantes! Like even soup?! How would that work? I mean songs in soup form…would be…pretty amazing actually, man. You take a mouthful and it all just starts vibratin’ at the right frequency and you’re in heaven. Like that Pixies song ya know… I know it came from Eraserhead! But Eraserhead and soup, that’s terrifying! I mean Eraserhead was a terrifying enough film already. But you think about like puttin’ a spoonful a soup in your mouth and then someone comes with some form of eraser than can erase liquid! Would that just be a vacuum? Imagine tryin’ to eat soup with someone just jammin’ a vacuum hose in your mouth. I mean that should be an Olympic sport, ya know. Man & soup versus vacuum. It’s symbolic, really, ya know, of Life itself… The whole primordial soup and the vacuum of space…WOO! I mean maybe it shouldn’t be an Olympic sport, be too heavy ya know. He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother trying to eat soup. But then of course he is heavy philosophically speaking and of course a little heavier physically too with the added weight of the soup to his mass. This is getting all too much and well, if it was a dream or not, I coulda asked Ian Curtis about this. I mean is this coming? Will there be a time when life just consists of people trying to eat soup cause it’s…Love Vigilantes by New Order…but then there are like these vacuuming forces… Like the Daleks, I guess. This is prolly what Dr. Who was really tryin’ to say. But they had to get it around the censors as television is much closer to a vacuum than it is to soup. I mean when you go to the doctor when you’re sick, what does he tell ya? He tells ya to eat soup! Ya know, give your stomach a rest. Let your digestive system take a little break and let everything heal itself of its own accord. Dr. Who just made this all the more cool. Imagine if the Tardis was full of soup. That would be rad! Ya know like this…gigantic hottub. It doesn’t look too big on the outside but once you’re inside it’s just full of soup…that you can bathe in and eat – I don’t know if I’d wanna do that…I mean that’s as wack as that Van Hagar song ‘Inside’ that closes out 5150, ya know. Maybe they do it all on the time on Gallifrey. All those giant turtles, ya know, just swimmin’ through the soup. But I’m not sure I’m ready…

But I mean if this was a dream, maybe I can ask…ol’ Jean-Paul Sartre…what was really goin’ on. I mean he was prolly there lurkin’ in the back of my dreams like he almost always is. Quite frankly I’m surprised he and I haven’t discussed Live Aid before. But he might remember ya know – oh yeah, you were FaceTiming with Ian Curtis. I mean I hope he’s not bitter than I wasn’t FaceTiming with him. I actually have no idea what Sartre was doing during those two days when all of technology was possible. Well maybe he was right there in the hottub with me. I should keep my mouth shut, I don’t wanna offend him by not remembering…

Sartre is all about those New Order songs. Loved Joy Division too. That Les Bains Douches live album that later came out, recorded in Paris. I mean maybe Sartre was there. Did Sartre ever see Joy Division? And if he did…is that what gave birth to my psyche? It’s a question every man asks himself from time to time. Ya never can tell with these things. I mean I trust ol’ Jeanny-Paul to tell me the truth. And like ‘Dreams Never End’, that’s the first song on New Order’s first album. Maybe this whole thing was a dream. So it doesn’t much matter whether I was FaceTiming with Ian Curtis in a hottub or not. The hottub was not filled with soup, I can clarify that. If there’s one thing I know…is that when I was FaceTiming with Ian Curtis on the eve of Live Aid…whilst in a hot tub…that the hottub was not full of soup… It was a regular, regulation hot tub – just like Rub-A-Dub-Dub Reggae Hot Tubs, ya know. I do not know what Phil Collins was doing at the time, or any of the Concord employees. I’m not sure it really matters. But you didn’t even have to pay for FaceTime, it was the same as it is now. It wasn’t like Skype where you had to pay to make a phone call and ‘the afterlife’ just appeared in that long list of all the countries. And anyways it was a video call…

Now that I think about it, he was playing mini-golf while we were, while we were Facetiming. So was he like…or like maybe his caddy – you don’t have caddies in mini-golf, but maybe you do, maybe in the afterlife you just have a caddy like – like you know how Phil Rudd from AC/DC always had a spare snare – that’s a fun phrase to say, spare snare – but he always had a well here we go again – spare snare with his pack of smokes and a lighter on it sitting next to the snare he was using. I wanna say he had a beer on it too but that seems like it would spill real easy, ya know. And with that EasyBeats team producin’ them, they prolly would have none of that. But maybe Ian Curtis’ caddy is like that and he just had his laptop open so he could get his however many holes in while we were talkin’. We still haven’t really solved that old how many holes does Kabbalistic golf have conundrum? Well I guess we should clarify too that it’s Kabbalistic golf in the afterlife cause it might be different up there but then again isn’t that world a reflection of our own? But it could be distorted you know. Do they even call them holes? Ya know like that Mercury Rev song, and then you got Mercury governing the Sephiroth of Hod which sounds like hole so maybe there ya go…”

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