huh?

Warsaw was the name Joy Division first used. They recorded a whole album before Unknown Pleasures that wasn’t released at the time but it has been bootlegged a lot. Bimble probably found an official cd or something?

Yeah it was released in 2003—it is pretty good.

Is this what you’re talking about? Do the songs sound very different from the versions on Substance, Still, and UP? (I know there are a few tracks I don’t have.)

I love “Novelty.”

Yes, that’s what I’m talking about, and the songs sound VERY different, yes, especially “Transmission” & “Novelty”. There are even synths on a few tracks like “No Love Lost”...If I recall correctly, this was a time when they were actually having synths forced on them by the folks who had agreed to help them record and/or release it. It’s hard to believe the band themselves didn’t want synths!

I have no trouble believing that but... I guess I wasn’t really hoping for versions with more synths.

No, I wasn’t either, but...hell, to me it’s all good.

I mean don’t you think it’s weird at all that the band who later became known for Blue Monday wanted nothing to do with synthesizers? I do.

They just hadn’t met Martin Hannett yet.

Also I’ve just pulled out my old Joy Division book and it tells me that the first verse of Transmission was a quote from Alistair Crowley’s “The Book of Thoth”. That definitely takes their coolness factor up a notch I think.

“During the album’s final mixdown on Friday, Anderson put some synthesizer into it. He believed that the raw sound of punk would not last much longer and he wanted Joy Division to have a more professional and advanced sound than all the other same-sounding punk bands of the time. But when the group heard the mix they were very unhappy—they disliked the synths (though less than a year later they used them on Unknown Pleasures) and, wanting only guitar and drums, asked that the album be remixed. Joy Division believed that if the album were released, it would harm their punk band repuation.”

Anyway, the truth is there really is very little synths on these tracks, so I don’t want to misrepresent what’s actually on this Warsaw CD. It’s hard not to make a big to-do out of the few synths that are there, though, particularly because as I say, this was pre-Hannett’s involvement with the band.

Thought it was the opening verse of “These Days” that’s the Crowley quote? Is it both of them? “Transmission” sounds pretty Curtis-ish.

Good lord, dude, I don’t know. I’m just telling you what the book said. Can’t someone less drunk than me/someone who knows their Crowley tell us?

Hmm, a web search seems to suggest that it is “Transmission” after all although this person says: The first verse of Transmission is from The Book Of Thoth by Alistair Crowley. Or so we’re told. Having looked through the entire book I thnik it’s a myth!.

(Other sources say it was just inspired by AC. I’ve never read Crowley in any case.)

Yeah all I know about Crowley was he was into “Magick” and he inspired a fantatsic Ozzy Osbourne song “Mr. Crowley”.