19th January 1980: Club Vera, Groningen, The
Netherlands
This following articles were published in
'Nieuwsblad van het Noorden', a regional newspaper
in the north of Holland. Syb Wynia, was the papers
music critic.
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From the
'forthcoming events' section - published 18th
January 1980
Joy Division is one of those English groups of which
Vera at Groningen presents so much at their program
these days. The kind of music that introduces the
eighties, with music that is made in a such a way
that huge crowds were not walking away with it
already in 1979.
Joy Division comes from Manchester and wants to know
this as well. Just like Wire, XTC and a handful of
other groups, Joy Division lets us hear how life is
in England, the country that was one of the earliest
with the industrial revolution and that seems to
reap the sour fruits of it now. |
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| Club
Vera photographed in 2008. (C) Copyright Joy
Division - The Eternal web site (Michel Enkiri)
and reproduced here with permission |
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In 2016 Greenie Drums took
this photo in the exact place the original was
taken |
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| Concert review: Impressive concert
from gloomy Joy Division - published 21st
January 1980 |
| Happening: concert of
Joy Division. Band members: Ian Curtis: vocals,
Bernard Dickin: guitar and notes, Peter Hook:
bass-guitar, Stephen Morris: drums. Support Act:
Red Rizla and The Stubs. Venue: Vera, Groningen.
Attendance: 300. |
The choice of the band's
name bears witness to a brilliant cynicism. Like an
undertaker describing his job as being a joker. For
it's not a joyous message that the four young
musicians from Manchester bring us. Music, lyrics as
well as presentation are imbued with an ominous
presentation of the present and hopeless
expectations for the future.
A thundering bass-guitar and a chunking drum sound
are being completed with long, crying guitar riffs
and a singing-voice that's addressing us in a gloomy
tone, like late Jim Morrison. The bass-player and
the guitarist are standing almost motionless on
stage, whilst the singer is moving in a spastic, as
it seems from Iggy Pop adopted, style: his face is
being lighted in a spooky way by a powerful lamp
from beneath. |
The sound equipment is
adjusted in a way that the low tones are being extra
emphasized. With the grim atmosphere that Joy
Division evoked in this manner at Vera, the group
attracted attention in an insistent way, and that
continued from the first bars till the last
sustained note of the songs, that start just out of
nothing and end without the well-known bombastic
ado. It's not Joy Division's idea to add esteemed
superfluous ornaments and maybe that's why this
concert was so impressive.
The strong pictorial, tense music calls up
associations with desolate industrial cities where
something is about to happen. Joy Division creates a
sort of pessimistic suspense, and the cute way in
which the group knows how to convey this feeling,
compelled big admiration. It's no light-hearted |
amusement-music that is
being brought by Joy Division, and radio stations
are not enthusiast to broadcast this genre. Even
record companies don't think this music will pay
bread, because their debut album 'Unknown Pleasures'
hasn't been officially released in Holland. How
wrongful this is, appeared Saturday afternoon at a
fair crowded Vera. The capacities of Joy Division
are evident and lyrics, music and working method of
the group are seeming to reflect reality more than
the deceiving happy dreamworldpop that's being
recommended by the media. Little by little it's
getting clearer how far The Stranglers were ahead of
their time and that the music of tomorrow is the
music of groups like Gang of Four, The Pop Group,
Wire and Joy Division. Vera continues in this line:
on the 17th of February Gang of Four will give a
concert. - SYB WYNIA |
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