Wednesday Wadio: Joy Division's 'Decades'.

It's amazing how when you hear an older song out of context, you see it in a completely different light or find a new appreciation for it. For example, a tune you've ignored as part of an album you usually listen to in its entirety is featured on its own in a movie or something and you suddenly think - Wow. How did I miss that? And why am I watching Arachnophobia again?



I heard my favorite Joy Division song, Leaders of Men, on random ipodiness while walking around today and was taken back to my family's house on Nashawtuc Hill where I used to sit on the hardwood floor and listen to it on cassette with enormous headphones covering my head. Because that's where your ears are, generally. I wanted to feature it on Wadio today, but short of a short live clip there is nothing on YouTube which does it justice. Which is hardly surprising seeing as how it's a lesser known song from the catalog of a band whose lead singer hung himself over 25 years ago.

I did find a good quality collage-clip of 'Decades' and was immediately reminded of an eerie story I read many moons ago, about a New Order recording session which took place a year or so after Ian Curtis cashed in his chips. You see kids, when Curtis died, JD became NO, and guitarist Bernard Sumner took over on lead vocals. After Bernard came out of the booth to twist the knobs on the vocals for one of the earliest New Order tracks, they realized it was unusable - because they could clearly hear someone whistling Decades in the otherwise empty sound booth. Whether that's true or not... alright, it probably isn't. But it's a great yarn befitting a song that is already plenty spooky enough without the ghost story.