For the last week or so, I've kept hearing trails on Radio 4 for a program called Great Lives, this week featuring the life of Ian Curtis of Joy Division. I've not really been a great JD or New Order fan (though like many I thought Blue Monday was a masterwork) and I think the lyrics in Love Will Tear Us Apart are probably some of the most emotionally charged to have graced a pop record. I'm sure any decent appreciator of poetry might disagree, but I'm more of a pop lover than a poet.
My appetite was whetted though and it was worth firing up the BBC iPlayer just to hear an unreleased version of LWTUA played on plaintive reverb-heavy piano, and sung by Mr Curtis through a pitch-shifter or vocoder - I couldn't tell with. This version, which appears about half way through the program, has all the lonesome qualities of a computer calling out to a silent, post-apocalyptic world. Fractured, damaged, almost dead, but with just enough charge to cry out its last - a digital vocalisation is it is putting all its effort into, knowing that it too will be finito soon.
The show was interesting in its own right - we get to hear about the two faces of Ian Curtis, public and private. For that 1 minute excerpt of song, it is worth seeking out the shows, which will be on iPlayer for the next few days, and no doubt will make occasional re-appearances in the BBC's archive music documentaries so is likely to pop up sporadically on iPlayer.
An interesting source of some cover versions is:
http://coverlover.vox.com/library/post/love-will-tear-us-apart.html
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