The Rock Blogger

Legendary English author JG Ballard has passed away today at the age of 78.
He is most well known for his visionary works of science-fiction including the controversial Crash and High Rise. His work has had an enormous influence across the world, earning him a substantial cult-following in literary and artistic circles. Ballard’s dystopian themes were also influential on Britain’s post-punk music scene, especially on Ian Curtis from Joy Division.
His imagination will be dearly missed.
RIP.

The Atrocity Exhibition shares the namesake of one of Ballard’s most disturbing short stories.

From YouTube: A new video by Jonathan Beamish for the earliest recorded version of the song produced as a John Peel Session for the BBC in 1979.
The original band footage is a mixture of a performance video shot by the band for the single release (minus the damaged shots) and live concert excerpts from Plank, Brussels and the Apollo, Manchester.

Still recovering from my debilitating cold while trudging through my many readings. Luckily I have Joy Division to keep me going. I decided to link to “The Only Mistake” since I think its one of the lesser-known and underrated Joy Division songs. While it was never on any of JD’s full lengths, it appears on the collection Still which was released after Ian Curtis’ death.

Still getting settled in my new dorm in Windsor. Its pretty awesome here so far, despite being really busy. I did have some time to watch the brilliant Joy Division documentary that came out last year where they show some of the band’s early television appearances. “Shadowplay” was one of the many highlights. I like the urban imagery that is superimposed over the performance, I think it really brings out the modernist anxiety within Ian Curtis’ lyrics.

“Joy Division” documentary Trailer

Mike Doherty has written the inspired article Modest Muse for the CBC, examining the impact of author JG Ballard’s writing on popular music, particularly in post-punk and industrial scenes. Ballard’s writings developed a cult following worldwide, as he wrote speculative fiction pitting transgressive protagonists against cold mechanical worlds and dangerous urban pathologies not unlike our own.
A brief excerpt:

The British author, now 76, is often said to have inspired the entire genre of industrial music, and his fiction certainly explores its central preoccupations. Ballard writes about the increasingly intimate relationship between humans and machines (most infamously with Crash, in which characters become aroused by car crashes) as well as the disturbing atmosphere of mind control created by the prevalence of mass media (as found in the experimental 1970 story collection The Atrocity Exhibition).

Having been both a Ballard and Joy Division fan, I found the article to be strangely revealing as it brought me deeper into post-punk’s often literary aspirations. I’ve noticed similar expressions of post-industrial anxiety in the work of Nine Inch Nails, especially the technological horror shows of The Downward Spiral, where songs like Ruiner and The Becoming eschew an almost bio-mechanical aesthetic.

When put into a wider thematic and cultural context, music like this becomes part of a larger, almost philosophical movement concerning the sociological decline of civilization. Bodies without limits, thresholds shattered, time accelerated. Symptoms of a wider post-modern dystopia where no definition, of love, of progress, of humanity, is safe from deconstruction.

“O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
“I was asleep—
From a deep dream I woke and swear:—
The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—
Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—
Wants deep, wants deep eternity.”

-Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Dead Souls. Joy Division.

A classic video of Joy Division performing “Transmission” on British Television. Also look for John Cooper Clarke at the beginning of the clip reading “Evidently Chickentown”). I saw the movie Control recently (the incredible Ian Curtis bio-pic) I’ll review it sometime soon, but in the meantime see it yourself. Enjoy.