Mindful of the need to maintain symmetry between posts devoted to Hippies and those devoted to Punks, I cast about for a Punk album to spotlight this week. Initially, I thought I might do a Damaged (1981) or Golden Shower of Hits (1983) immersion. West Coast Hardcore Punk was the amniotic fluid of my young-man youth.
Then I struck upon the idea of Joy Division's Closer (1980) since I had just finished up an immersion in Joy of Cooking's Closer to the Ground (1971). Closer and Closer to the Ground, respective offerings of the Punk and Hippie "Joy" bands, offer as clear a contrast between adjoining avant-gardes as one can imagine.
I don't recall listening to Closer in my youth. Unknown Pleasures (1979) was a distinct presence though. A close friend owned a copy, and it was played frequently. The suicide of Ian Curtis added to the weight of the album. One did not hear Joy Division at that time -- the early 1980s -- without thinking of Curtis having hanged himself in his kitchen. Another friend, a girlfriend of a buddy, was morbidly fascinated by Curtis' demise and seemed to always have to re-tell the story whenever we listened to Joy Division.
What I was unaware of until this week is that Curtis had been watching Werner Herzog's Stroszek prior to his suicide.
In any event, Joy Division cast a shadow in my young-man youth of the early 1980s.
That is why when a young man who I worked with asked me to listen to a new album that he was impressed with, Turn on the Bright Lights (2002) by a band called Interpol, I told him right away, authoritatively, that they were ripping off Joy Division.
Around this time there was a rediscovery of Post-Punk by the young smart set, which is probably what paved the way for the renewal Joy Division's popularity, culminating in the effective biopic Control (2007) by Anton Corbijn and the terrific Grant Gee documentary Joy Division (2007).
While Control was still in the theaters I ran into a girlfriend with whom I had recently separated and she told me that I absolutely had to see it. I took note. Not too long thereafter I saw both Control and the Gee documentary, which impressed me enough that I started to accumulate Joy Divisions' recordings.
Closer, the band's second and last studio album released two months after Curtis' death, has always remained resistant and inscrutable to me. None of the songs "pop" like say the amazing "Disorder" from Unknown Pleasures.
Nonetheless Closer is consistently rated at the same level or above Unknown Pleasures by rock critics. (Christgau gives both albums an A-minus.)
This week of immersed listening I finally figured it out. It took a beautiful sunny day of clear skies after a day or two of rain to get it, to understand all that darkness. The consistency of Closer is its key. The steady level. The steady state is all there is. That is the message. Dark and light, matter and spirit, void and substance, the charnel house and the maternity ward -- it is all the same on the astral plane. That is what Closer tells us. It's a very Hippie message. It took a walk in the solartopia of winter's end in the Pacific Northwest to figure it out, to see it.
Listen to Joy Division's Closer sometime soon.
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