Now this, THIS, is interesting...

Just imagine: the year is 1983, Blue Monday is storming the charts, and the band that recorded it are called ... the Radical Jesuits?

A forthcoming book of previously unpublished notes by the late Rob Gretton, former manager of Joy Division and New Order, reveals that New Order almost didn't become New Order. After the suicide of Ian Curtis, Joy Division compiled a list of potential new names. Alongside New Order, Gretton and the band considered monikers including Arab Legion, Voices Crying, Dharma Bums, the Radical Jesuits and Man Ray. They liked Man Ray so much they even highlighted it on the list.

The list of What Might Have Been appears as part of 1 Top Class Manager, to be released on October 7. The full-colour, 220-page paperback compiles diary entries, letters, to-do lists, posters and excerpts from 20 notebooks kept by Rob Gretton between 1978 and 1980.

Gretton died of a heart attack in 1999, but the collection was compiled by his widow Lesley Gilbert.

Christmas #1

As addressed in 'Love, Actually,' having the number one single on Christmas is a rather big deal in Blighty. Today, Stereogum posted a list of all the songs to achieve this since 1952.

I must confess, I am completely wild to hear the entry from 1980, 'There's No One Quite Like Grandma.' Martin Hannett allegedly once snorted some illicit substance off its gold record. And I don't know what Stereogum is smoking, dissing the entries since 1999. 'Sound Of The Underground' is an AMAZING single.

'Control'

What's mysterious is how the band found a match for his words in their music. Early on we see Peter Hook (Joe Anderson), Stephen Morris (Harry Treadaway) and Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson) decide to form a band after watching the Sex Pistols in Manchester, but once their brief tuneless phase as Warsaw is over, the magnificently strange Gothic of Joy Division seems to derive not from punk – or even from Iggy Pop, David Bowie or Lou Reed – but from the very clangour of the post-industrial North itself. It was surely destiny that the Mancunian impresario Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson) should have signed them to a label called Factory.

"It's probably the same for all of those left behind"

Interview with Natalie Curtis about 'Control'-



I was about three when my mum first told me that my father, Ian Curtis - who died when I was one - was a singer, but it just seemed normal, like having an uncle who was a tradesman or whatever. I remember hearing Love Will Tear Us Apart on the radio and realising he was known in some way, but I never thought of him as famous.

'Northern Lights'

This is excellent- a rolling interview of sorts with all the parties involved with 'Control.'

Steven Morris cannot believe it. When he talks about what he's lived through as a simple, dedicated drummer, first for Joy Division, then for New Order, he can start to sound like a post-punk Victor Meldew, increasingly indignant at the chaos that unfolded all around him mainly because he found himself, through no real fault of his own, a Factory Records recording star.

Don't get him started on the Hacienda, the Manchester nightclub his two groups helped finance, early in the Eighties, for up to £10,000 a month, where he never got a free drink in eight years. He still hasn't really recovered from the time 27 years ago when Ian Curtis, his 23-year-old Macclesfield friend, and the singer in his band, killed himself the day before Joy Division were due to start their first American tour.

Both his producer, Martin Hannett, and his manager, Rob Gretton, died in the Nineties, and now, would you credit it, the immortal-seeming Tony Wilson, boss of his record company, the crusading mouth of Manchester, has joined his comrades in the great Factory in the sky.

Control

I'm going to NEED to see this movie. Always a good sign when I get weepy during the trailer..... via The Slut

Control to open Cannes

A Joy Division renaissance is in the making, mark my words......

A BIOPIC on the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis has been selected to open a prestigious section at the Cannes Film Festival.

The debut feature by photographer Anton Corbijn follows the singer's rise to fame, as well as his relationships, his struggle with epilepsy and his suicide in 1980 just before the Manchester band's first US tour.

Joy Division

Joy Division, originally uploaded by disco saturday.

Cool pic of Stephen, Hooky, Ian and Barney.