8. Joy DivisionCloser

I heard Joy Division when I was very young, and I did not like them. I was about 11 and I thought Ian Curtis’s voice was scary. I listened to a radio station called WFMU, which was in New Jersey but three days a week I could pick it up, I don’t know why. I couldn’t get it on Mondays and Tuesdays: the receiver didn’t work. But I discovered so much through them. I think they played ‘Transmission’ and I didn’t really like his voice, but the way the DJ spoke about them I thought oh, maybe they’re good. So I decided to explore them more and I got that compilation record, Substance, and I thought this is interesting, but I didn’t get obsessed with any of the material on there. But I was still intrigued, so I went to Tower Records in Lower Manhattan, and I’d read that Unknown Pleasures was the one to get, but they didn’t have it. They had Closer, so I got Closer and as is a repeated theme for me, the first record I hear by an artist, if I like it, it’s hard to get first place over that. I did eventually hear Unknown Pleasures and it’s wonderful, but I still don’t really listen to it that much. Closer though, I don’t know where to begin. The first track, the drums are incredible. It just feels like you’re about to go on a journey. As a teenager I didn’t look people up and read about them, beyond these little snippets I’d read in magazines so I didn’t even know Ian Curtis was dead. I don’t even know if I checked the date of the record to see if they were a current band. I was so out of touch. But I did know that, as a depressed teenager, it made me feel like who I was was okay, and that the feelings I had were not unique.