Acting Out Your Own Death

Think we're all looking forward to this one: Anton Corbijn's monochrome film of Deborah Curtis's Touching From A Distance (which you should read, by the way). Expect film tie-in Joy Division promotional cut-outs at HMV, and 'Atmosphere' re-entering the download chart (if it isn't there already - does anyone, er, follow the download chart??).

Easy to forget that, even back then, Joy Division were bigger after Ian's death than before it - I don't think Radio Luxembourg were playing 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' before his suicide, but I certainly remember it fading in and out on that shaky frequency as a 'POWERPLAY!!' soon afterwards (every night after the 11 o'clock news and just before the ad for Cuticura Mildly Medicated Soap).

Peel, of course, had been there from the beginning - delivered the 'bad news, lads..', played 'New Dawn Fades'.

I loved them then, I love them still, and they get - not many bands do really - better still for me as I get older.

All that darkness was a Game back then, a Pose (not for Ian, that's for sure) - now it has resonance. I think only truly great art does that.

This is my favourite Joy Division song, if push comes to shove.

I hope it's well used by Corbijn - if ever there was a piece of soundtrack music looking for a film, this is it...

Joy Division - 'Shadowplay' (1979)

(from this, obviously)

I promise as soon as I've saved up my pennies for one of they USB turntable thingies, I'll upload my Live At The Paradiso Club Amsterdam bootleg too...