Look out honey, cause I'm using technology

Got some great music for this Music Monday, starting with hizzoner, Iggy Pop.

And it's where we get today's blog post title. Too wonderful for words!

Search and Destroy - The Stooges



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Yes, I confess, whenever somebody goes postal and shoots up a place, this song runs through my mind.

Best line: "Say something once, why say it again?"

Psycho Killer - Talking Heads



Second-best line: "I hate people when they're not polite."

~*~

Transmission - Joy Division



If you still haven't seen the terrific biopic about Ian Curtis, CONTROL, heartily recommended!

CONTROL

As promised way back in June (!)--I finally saw Anton Corbijn's film CONTROL.


For those who do not already know about the life of Ian Curtis: SPOILERS AHEAD!


The movie was simply beautiful to watch, in stark, British working-class black and white. There is a great segue early in the film, as we see Ian laying on a bed, smoking cigarettes and listening to one of my all-time favorite songs of the era: Drive-In Saturday, which was thrilling to hear in historic context, as well as an omen for Ian:

She's uncertain if she likes him
But she knows she really loves him
It's a crash-course for the ravers
It's a Drive-In Saturday.

(I listened to it as many times as Ian did, which gave me an immediate emotional connection to the movie.)

After this, you hear more Bowie, Roxy Music and Sex Pistols on the soundtrack, like a progression... then, suddenly, it is Joy Division. It is Ian. They have taken their place in the pantheon. We realize: this is a movie about how that occurred.

Mr Daisy didn't think the inner-life of Ian, the person obsessed with suffering, the Third Reich and Rudolf Hess, was completely shown to us, but I'm not so sure. The fact of Ian's epilepsy is introduced early, as he zones out while looking at an equation on the blackboard in school. The motif of something "closing in" is one of his repeated themes, and he undoubtedly had an instinctive "darkness" and introspection (nowadays they'd call him a goth) that made him perfect for punk.

Sam Riley portrays Ian wonderfully and captures his erratic dancing perfectly. The famous incident in which he writhes at the microphone, finally collapsing into an actual seizure (in the film, during the song DEAD SOULS, see below) is turned into an amazing scene, finally made realistic and understandable. (The audience thought it was part of the show.) The way Ian felt soul-numbingly sick and drained, heavily-drugged to prevent seizures, is made apparent throughout the last half of the movie. Samantha Morton is great as Deborah Curtis, who also wrote the book titled Touching from a Distance, on which this account is based. She also co-produced the movie.

Transmission - Joy Division



It's also understood that the song "She's Lost Control" is describing a woman having a seizure at his workplace, which Ian watches, frightened, later learning that the woman has died. This song reflected Ian's fears around the fact he could no longer manage his epilepsy. The issue I have with the portrayal of epilepsy-as-evil-interloper is the way his disability is seen as the major negative in his life, while issues of class and heterosexual marriage/reproduction are presented as a given.*

On the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org), Kevin Martinez reviews CONTROL:

The name of the band was taken from the brothels operated by the Nazis in various concentration camps. While Curtis was not flirting with neo-Nazism, some of his bandmates indicate that they had a fascination with fascism at the time, and the whole thing suggests unseriousness and irresponsibility, as well as a growing social nihilism.**

The band’s demo EP, “An Ideal For Living,” featured a Hitler Youth member pounding a drum on the cover. The inside artwork is the infamous picture of Jews with their hands up in surrender during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

“I like it,” Ian explains “It’s thought-provoking.” This critical stance, however, does not prevent their shows from being overrun by skinheads and accusations of the band supporting fascism.

Much has been said of the atmospheric and sad sound of Joy Division’s music. It is usually described as depressing; others like to think of it as cathartic. Like the elephant in the room, the knowledge of Curtis’s eventual suicide hangs over the band’s music, and the film, like a long shadow. The story is not unlike that of Kurt Cobain and his band Nirvana, who underwent a similar process of achieving fame and ultimate disillusionment.

At one point, Ian is heavily drugged with anti-convulsants and unable to continue; the audience riots, and Ian feels responsible.

Below--the DEAD SOULS sequence from the movie:



Someone take these dreams away
That point me to another day
A duel of personalities
That stretch all true realities

That keep calling me
They keep calling me
Keep on calling me
They keep calling me

Ian Curtis committed suicide at the age of 23. I don't know how historically-accurate these last scenes were, but it certainly didn't look pleasant. The screaming of Deborah after entering the house to find Ian, just cut me right to the quick.

Rest in peace, Dead Soul. We love you and yes, pray for your soul.

~*~

*Annik, the beautiful Belgian rock reporter whom Ian falls in love with, remarks on Ian and Deborah's marriage: "I've never heard of anyone married so young!" At the time of their wedding, Ian was 19, Deborah was 18. (I was startled by that, since my first marriage, around the same time, was when I was 19, on his 19th birthday. These things sound shocking when you hear them out of the mouth of someone else!)

**Wikipedia informs us: Curtis's memorial stone, which is inscribed with "Ian Curtis 18-5-80" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart", was stolen in July 2008 from the Cheshire cemetery where he is buried.

Seven songs meme

Lovely Ren roused me from my grief by tagging me with a meme. See what nice friends I have? (She got an iPod and it just seemed pertinent!)

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List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring-summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

I've already posted several of these songs and decided to post the rest, so you can listen to em here if you want to.

~*~

LAUGHING--David Crosby

Actually, I've been listening to the last two minutes, the amazing steel guitar solo by Jerry Garcia, which is resplendent.

MUSIC EYES--Heartsfield (2nd song in link)

Overjoyed to find this old song, and have listened to it about 5000 times since it was first posted to YouTube last week.

AIN'T LIFE GRAND--Widespread Panic

Always makes me think of summer, for some reason... probably because I first remember hearing it in a horrendous summer traffic jam, where I had the AC in the car way up. And it properly reminded me: you aren't in an accident, you aren't poverty-stricken or unemployed, people care about you, so just calm the fuck down. Zen message, which I listen to whenever I need to be reminded: Ain't Life Grand?

I love the wistful, ironic way the song is delivered. I think it was Wendell Barry (?) who said the Southern Way is "sitting on the fence post, commenting wryly on the ways of God"... and this song is the musical equivalent of that sentiment.

~*~

This next one goes out to the AA folks. I've listened to it most of my life, at some point. I love the hard-nosed sensibility; like the last song, it "wakes me up"--as the Buddhists would say. It brings me back to myself and reminds me of first principles. It's also one of the greatest country songs ever written.

I was once at an AA picnic and virtually EVERY SINGLE PERSON KNEW THE WORDS...even the children! That says plenty, huh? (Unlike a lot of people these days, he takes FULL RESPONSIBILITY!)

Mama Tried - Merle Haggard

[via FoxyTunes / Merle Haggard]

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Abrupt change in sensibility. I've been patiently waiting for Netflix to ship me the movie about Ian Curtis, titled CONTROL. I MUST SEE IT. Meanwhile, listening to WARSAW, which is the most claustrophobic punk song ever written.

Every now and then, I get a sort of clairvoyance concerning who isn't long for this world. Or is it (as the skeptics would undoubtedly say) that I'm just very attuned to the particular reality of addiction? (see AA reference above) At various times in my life I have heard certain songs and then pronounced "That person isn't long for this world!"--spooking my daughter, Delusional Precious, with my prescience and accurate fortune-telling. Most historic of these documented instances: WOULD?, ALL APOLOGIES and NO RAIN. In each instance, I thought, wow, that guy is gonna die, and SOON. I don't know if it's the actual song-lyrics, or the fact that I have heard literally thousands of addicts talk in thousands of 12-step meetings, and the overall sentiments expressed in the songs ring some kind of existential bell? Or is it something else I am hearing on some other sensory level? Whatever it is, I can hear it, and it always alarms me in a distinctive way. DEATH IMMINENT is what I hear. (And the song might even be relatively sprightly, as NO RAIN is, but I heard it anyway.)

And I thought the same thing when I heard WARSAW. I thought, DAMN, that guy, whoever he is, is NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD. (When I finally get the movie about Ian, promise to post a review!)

Warsaw - Joy Division

[via FoxyTunes / Joy Division]

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Nostalgic pining away for the days in San Francisco before AIDS took my friends away. It was fun, you guys. I have no words to properly express it, but I do have the song.

(Why does it start out with a HARP? Because we were in heaven, of course.)

Boogie Nights - Heatwave

[via FoxyTunes / Heatwave]

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And this election season, we are well reminded that the big fish eat the little ones, the big fish eat the little ones...

Something we should always keep in mind, even if we are optimistic.

Optimistic - Radiohead

[via FoxyTunes / Radiohead]

~*~

I TAG THE FOLLOWING:

white rabbit (who had issues with my quirky meme! you should like this one better, dude!)
Jojo
Annie
Rootie
Vanessa, who usually includes fun stories with her memes, like I do.
Nexy
And John Powers, to get him to update his blog!

~*~

Yall have been just wonderful in the face of my grieving. Thank you so much. It was (and still is) a shock.

My mother's beloved Siamese kitty lived to be 18, and I was kinda hoping for that long lifespan, even though I knew Grand Old Man's digestive system wasn't in very good shape.

And it happened so fast; just like with old humans. Simple illnesses are no longer simple.

It's hard to write without my muse. I've been doing it so long; Grand Old Man nestled in my lap as I typed. And when I got going really good, he would emit a sweet, quiet, musical purr, as if he could somehow sense that my brain was creatively humming along. His contented purr let me know I was writing well. We were connected that way, and I feel like a tentacle, a sensory antenna, was severed.

I just loved him so much. It will take a long time to recover.