[MUSIC] Five music links: Pete Shelley, Kate Bush, Joy Division, P.M. Dawn, East German punk

Dec. 6th, 2018 11:32 pm
rfmcdonald: (Default)

  • Pete Shelley, of the Buzzcocks and a star in his own right, has died at 63, BBC reports. The 1981 Pete Shelley song "Homosapien" is one of my favourite overlooked post-punk songs. (The queer visibility is also nice.)

  • The Economist makes a case for the historical importance of Kate Bush.

  • Dangerous Minds asks a question, mostly rhetorically: Was Peter Sutcliffe a Joy Division fan? If nothing else, the overlap does show interesting things about patterns in northern England's cities.

  • This Anil Dash essay at Medium about P.M. Dawn, a hip-hop musician so big in the 1990s and so overlooked now, provides a really useful perspective on this artist.

  • Rolling Stone interviews Tim Mohr on the subject of the punk scene in East Germany, a cultural alternative that he argues helped undermine the dictatorship.

Tags:
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry

[MUSIC] "New Order - Live in Concert - New York 81"

Apr. 4th, 2016 09:51 pm
rfmcdonald: (Default)
Dangerous Minds' Richard Metzger pointed me to this superb video, recording a performance of very early New Order in New York City.



Before they recorded their classic 1983 album Power Corruption & Lies, New Order made an extended trip to New York and absorbed some of the city’s more upbeat sounds into their own morose and world-weary music. Latin salsa, 12” remix culture and the electronic beats they heard in nightclubs like Danceteria and the Roxy were obvious inspirations for the music they would soon come to make.

But at the time this was videotaped—live at the Ukrainian National Home in New York’s East Village on November 18, 1981—New Order were still largely Joy Division minus Ian Curtis, a post punk band, not the electronic dance quartet they would soon become. It’s a fascinating document of the group during what is perhaps the least documented era of their long career. As I would personally chose Movement over anything else in their catalog, this was a real treat to watch.

Low lights, the intense musicians saying almost nothing to the audience, a concert held in a hot sweaty dance hall—there’s an extremely underground quality to this show.
Tags:
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry

[MUSIC] Joy Division and New Order, "Love Will Tear Us Apart

Jun. 7th, 2008 11:59 pm
rfmcdonald: (Default)
Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is rarely mentioned in a sentence lacking the word "iconic," the distorted vocals of lyricist and vocalist Ian Curtis combining with the high-fi downbeat indie/post-punk drama of the song's arrangement and the mystique surrounding the suicidal depression of Curtis that--some say--was presaged in this song's lyrics..



I was surprised and pleased when ever-helpful YouTube told me that New Order, Joy Division's successor band, had given more than a few concert performances of "Love Will Tear Us Apart".



Alas, New Order isn't Joy Division. It just couldn't be that compelling, not after nearly thirty years and so much mainstream pop success: New Order's members have all survived.
Tags:
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry
Page generated Jul. 19th, 2025 07:05 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios