Tikkabik

Joy Division was one of those generational touchstones for me -- after the first time I heard "Closer" I was hooked and threw myself whole-hog into the post punk/gothic music scene.

Although I ended up buying almost all their recordings, I never liked New Order (the band that rose from Joy Division's ashes) nearly as much, and always have considered Joy Division one of my all-time favorite rock bands, along with Bauhaus and a few select others.

So when I saw the trailer for Control, a new film directed by Anton Corbijn, I got really excited. I biopic of Ian Curtis, the doomed lead singer of Joy Division who went on to kill himself in 1980 following the disintegration of his marriage and his own ill health (Curtis was an epileptic and prone to seizures).

In retrospect, Joy Division's impact on the post punk music scene is remarkable when you consider that they only produced two studio albums -- Closer and Unknown Pleasures (other stuff has mainly been compilations, demo reels and so on). But Curtis' suicide just as the band began an upward climb to popularity seemed to cement Joy Division's enduring mythic legacy to generations of goth and emo music fans.

It helps that Corbijn directed it -- he's the Dutch photographer and music video director who's arguably most connected to England's post-punk scene -- a regular with the magazine NME, photographer for Joy Division itself, director of music videos for Depeche Mode, David Sylvian (another favorite of mine), Echo & The Bunnymen and countless others.