Good Morning!
Today we’re listening to “Transmission” by Joy Division
I made it.
For someone that is a total New Order/ Joy Division fanboy, there is always a greater-than-zero chance that this will devolve into an all-New-Order-All-the-time page. Not the worst thing, I suppose (at least for me, anyway). Nevertheless, I thought I'd already covered one of Joy Division’s songs. Enough so that I went to check. And then checked again. No dice.
I made it almost 200 posts before featuring one of my all-time favorite bands.
"Love Will tear Us Apart" is one of those songs that has become bigger than itself, transcending any discussion. At this point, it's canonical. Indeed, New Order still closes out their shows with it. And people love it. Play the hits and all that, right?
It's good, but Transmission is better.
The debut single for our friends from Salford kicked off a strange tradition for the band and (later for New Order) of releasing tracks that don't appear on an LP. An earlier iteration was recorded a year earlier and slated to be on the band's scuttled self-titled record. We're familiar with a sped-up version (re)recorded a year later.
"Transmission" was a catalyst for the band and the beginning of the sound that landed them on everyone and their brother's best of lists.
It was-and is- a song that defined a band that defined an era.
More:
This is what gives the tune its emblematic importance in popular culture. It proves a point about what’s actually important in art, a point that we all need to be regularly reminded of, that cleverness and complexity are utterly redundant if they are not imbued with meaning, with intensity, with human experience.
Transmission tells us that 2 notes with something to say have infinitely more value and meaning than a thousand well-rehearsed but empty artistic gestures. What the tune does have to say is more than the sum of its parts, and as time has proven is more than the band could ever have known.
Read the rest of the article here.
Listen:
“Transmission” by Joy Division| Album title, YYYY
Click the record to listen on your platform of choice.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this track!
On Repeat is made possible by support from readers like you. If you find value in this work, please become a subscriber today!
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
P.S. Lively up your inbox! Every day The Sample forwards you a newsletter to discover. The more you use it, the better it gets at delivering what you want.
21st October 1979, Joy Division supporting Buzzcocks, at the Top Rank, Sheffield. This remains the best £2 I've ever spent.
Got there late (due to a tardy friend - never let him forget it) and missed JD's first song - how cool/relaxed was I at 18, missing the start of JD!
On any other night my lasting memory would have been Pete Shelley at the end of the Buzzcocks set, remaining on stage after the band had left, repeatedly (dementedly) singing/screaming a Capela, "there is no love in this world anymore," for what seemed like an eternity, but ...
... it doesn't stand a chance against my still vivid recollection of Ian Curtis's intense vocal and weird dancing to, yes, you've guessed it, 'Transmission'. "Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio"!
Obviously more Joy Division as my story continues at: challenge69.substack.com
Such a fan of Joy Division. The song that 1st sucked me in was Warsaw, but I'd struggle to pick a favorite. I tend to fall into periodic phases when I only want to listen to them, whenever the air is crisp, the sky is gray and the crows cackle endlessly as I walk my dog. I love that feeling they bring.