A Nice Pair: Joy Division

It’s Sunday so you know what that means…it’s time for our weekly book and vinyl series, A Nice Pair! Today we’re pairing the book Foreground Music: A Life in Fifteen Gigs by Graham Duff with the Joy Division album Unknown Pleasures.

Foreground Music covers fifteen influential concerts that the author, screenwriter, editor and actor Graham Duff attended over forty or so years. Ranging from his first gig (Cliff Richard) and onto such bands as The Jam, the Velvet Underground, Primal Scream and David Bowie, whether in intimate venues like a room in a pub or arenas, he covers them all in the kind of detail only someone who was there can truly share. Scattered through with personal pictures and ephemera, Duff shares stories not just of music, but also of friendship, creativity and inspiration.

We chose Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures as the author was at Joy Division’s Derby Hall, Bury (Greater Manchester, England) concert on April 8, 1980, just days before his sixteenth birthday. They were his favourite band at the time. The back of the book has a Recommended Listening section and along with Les Bains Douches, Duff recommends Unknown Pleasures, the band’s debut album. He describes the opening track, Disorder, as “the sound of a headlong surrender to fate” and the track Interzone as “a jittery rush of of exhilaration in dark times.”