— Feature, Musings —05.18.2025 05:14 PM
45 years ago today
Forty-five years ago today, Ian Curtis took his life.
I was in Calgary, and getting ready to start at Carleton and later – I figured – a journalism degree. In Calgary, I had been involved with the punk scene for many years. I had my own record label, I put on shows with my great friend Nasty Bob Haslam, and I was a member of a seminal prairies punk band, the Hot Nasties.
Punk rock had started to break my heart, however. Skinheads were showing up at our shows to start fights and to promote neo-Naziism. The violence and destruction at gigs was insane. Ras Pierre Schenk and I led the Nasties, and we had had enough.
Punk rock, too, seemed to have lost its way. The Pistols had broken up, the Ramones were getting over-produced by Phil Spector, and the Clash were starting their bizarre dalliance with Rockabilly. It felt like the punk scene was dying, or dead.
Then, along came this band from Manchester that was totally and completely different than anything we had ever heard. Joy Division were dark and (seemingly) despairing, but nobody had done before what they were doing. Their sound, their songs, their words: it was all just so unprecedented. Unknown Pleasures was their first record, and listening to it, for me, was like listening to someone’s soul. A lost one.
The lost soul at the centre of Joy Division was Ian Curtis, a young and married civil servant who was the antithesis of every rock star that had preceded him. He struggled with epilepsy and many demons. On the eve of their first tour in North America, however, he hanged himself in his kitchen. Shortly afterwards, the group’s second and final record, Closer, was released. It is still one of the best records ever made.
Joy Division had a huge, huge influence on me. One of Curtis’s lyrics – from the final song he performed with the band, Ceremony – is tattooed on my arm. “Lean towards this time.”
I still do that, and I remain so sad that he did not. Gone, too soon, too young, 45 years ago today.
They and New Order and the other Manchester bands never got the mainstream airplay or attention that those bands got in the UK, which was massive.
I never realized that until I saw Michael Winterbottom’s film 24 Hour Party People, which I thought was excellent. It really explained how those bands were influential and transitional, taking the UK and international music scene from post-punk through to the whole DJ/electronic dance/club scene. And Steve Coogan was amazing as Tony Wilson, who was a key figure in that scene and an incredible character.
That movie is so excellent and yes Coogan is brilliant as Tony Wilson.
I was explaining Ian Curtis’ history and influence to some people at dinner and then blasted Love Will Tear Us Apart and Ceremony over my sound system. They had never heard of either of the songs or him or Joy Division and they are about my vintage. CFNY turned me on to them.
Torontonians were lucky to have CFNY, and that was probably a function of Toronto’s size that it could support a station that played what was, for the time, alternative and indie music. I think WK would attest to the fact that at that time, Calgary had no such commercial station. I think you had to go to stuff like University radio to hear alternative bands back then. The FM radio stations in Calgary were playing 70s-80s album rock, but typically not stuff like Joy Division, New Order or Happy Mondays.
Warren previously mentioned Mike Bezzeg, James Muretich and FM Moving Pictures, which was a local indie cable show from that era in Calgary, and they were true trailblazers. A lot of bands only got exposure in Alberta because of those guys.
And down the rabbit hole I go. I sure wasn’t a Torontonian. I escaped when I was 11. Thank god. Don’t get me started on CFNY and what it meant to me. Until then, the station that had had the most influence on me was the big 800 out of Windsor that I listened to from 1969-t973(after escaping Toronto).
Byron MacGregor worked there and he recorded Gordon Sinclair’s The Americans that became a 3 and half million selling hit. Anti Americanism was also in vogue at the time(we have always been kind of smug about the USA, actually).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=gyJw0ak9czA
Dick Smyth(who needs no introduction in Toronto) got his start there too:
https://www.reynoldsfuneral.com/obituaries/richarddick-smyth
But the most important person there which I did not know until later was Rosalie Trombley. If Warren ever interviews The Nuge again, he should ask him what he thinks about her.
“Many recording artists visited Trombley to promote their latest single releases, and the walls of her office were lined with gold records. Among the artists she is credited with helping are Earth, Wind and Fire; Elton John; Kiss; Ted Nugent; The Guess Who,[6] The Poppy Family and Bob Seger.[14] Among the hits that CKLW was first to play were the Guess Who’s “These Eyes”[15] and the Main Ingredient’s 1972 hit “Everybody Plays the Fool”.[16] She persuaded Elton John to release “Bennie and the Jets” as a single, because she believed, correctly, that it would be a cross-over hit, appealing to both black and white listeners.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_Trombley
Anyway, if you are still reading, I am getting to the point. The CRTC basically killed the station(musically). One of the reasons I switched to CFNY in 1979 was literally because of the CRTC. My go to station was Q107 and they were pretty well fulfilling their Can Con by playing Rush what seemed like 24 hours a day and I was tired of it. It was very good timing because David Marsden had just taken over the programming:
“After CFNY program director Dave Pritchard left the station in 1978 due to conflicts with the station management, Marsden was promoted to program director. The station’s mandate had been to present significantly different programming than other radio stations in the Greater Toronto Area. Before Marsden’s arrival the station’s format had been highly eclectic. Marsden saw the commercial potential of punk and new wave, and widened CFNY’s focus even further, creating Canada’s first alternative music station. Throughout the 1980s, under the slogan the spirit of radio, CFNY was one of the most influential promoters of new international and Canadian artists most radio stations ignored.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Marsden
Here is a song that they played regularly that is the answer to the question what is your favourite song that no one has ever heard of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gtt2p-PYAYE
The intro is the ringtone on my phone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeding_Ground_(band)
Note the references to Chalk Circle and Molly Johnson.
Got this on vinyl on release:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2cDsqu91q8
Nice tribute to Curtis WK, well done.