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Live at Rockpalast, 1983
He just goes wild on this, and that scream… is scary
Mar 22, 2024
A grotesque, unsettling musical picture of chaos, massacre and lunacy. There were some years since it was released (1980) where I couldn’t listen to it at all.
It's maybe the most unlikely opening track of an album I've ever heard (despite Ian Curtis' repeated chorus: "This is the way, step inside"). It's based upon a 1970 J.G. Ballard collection of short stories of the same name, which imagines a name-changing protagonist who creates surrealistic fantasies about celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and President Ronald Reagan.
One of the first times in recorded music (long before bands like R.E.M. made a regular practice of this) where I can recall band members swapping instruments; guitarist Bernard Sumner plays bass on the track, bassist Peter Hook "plays" guitar (it's basically one long, wobbly noise scribble).
Super disturbing. I'm always amazed that the band could even pull off a live performance of it. Impossibly influential; you can hear the outline of the Cure's "Pornography," the Swans' catalogue, and much of whatever became to be called "tribal" in the DNA of this track.
Sep 22, 2024
From the cover art to the hellacious guitar racket going on atop the track's spooky tribal drums to lyrics that reference "The Atrocity Exhibition" by J.G. Ballard (a controversial and experimental series of "condensed novels" obsessed with modern celebrity at that time -- 1970 -- including chapters about the Kennedys, Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe), I find this completely unsettling and difficult to get through in one sitting. And it's been that way since I first heard it four decades ago. I've often wondered if the late Ian Curtis meant this song to be a commentary on audiences that came to see the band knowing that he could be gripped by one of his epileptic seizures at any point in their performance -- a true "atrocity exhibition."
Apr 27, 2024
Top Recs from @s_jared
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Who Camus described as "The only great spirit of our time."
Jan 28, 2024
Jan 28, 2024
From Add Some Music To Your Day, an album of covers (mostly Beach Boys covers) that Tatsu presumably made in his bedroom when he was 19 years old.
Jan 27, 2024