This time you're sixteen again

Just back from seeing Joy Division. Not Control, which I saw last year and liked, but just the one called Joy Division. Wow.

Yes, I am pretty much unable to make any sort of critical judgment when it comes to Joy Division, heck, I even really love the Warsaw stuff and so much of that is just tragically awful. I probably would have been happy in the film if they had just played Unknown Pleasures and Closer back to back with an image of the spinning disc. (Maybe a bit like the Replacements refused to make a proper music video for Alex Chilton, put a record on, lie on the couch, and take it off at the end.)

But I probably liked it a lot better than Closer. It was nice to see what things probably were like all acted out, and the musicians they got for that were really spot on at being Joy Division. But the actual music, big larger than life images (even if they were sometimes really grainy Super 8 footage), and just it being loud, that's just great.

Just how much of this is in my head all the time, for so many years, what has it done to me? How much time did I spend in my room as a teenager listening to it all. It was a little freaky, they would play a clip from a concert and I would be thinking, hmm, that sounds like the Eindhoven show. And it was.

But I think I'm going to go sit in the dark for a bit, listening to a few of the discs really loud and consider why after so many years, it all still feels so disturbing yet uplifting at the same time. Maybe I need to finally do that tour of Manchester too. I should have some time here in a few weeks see some of those places in the UK I haven't made it to yet.