ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN SINGLES : #045

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#045– Joy Division – ‘Atmosphere’ (Factory Records ’80)

Dear friends,

„oh, bugger off:“, I hear you saying, “’bloody ‘Atmosphere’! Are you serious?! Why not ‘Transmission’? Or ‘Love Will Tear us Apart’?”.

Well, yes, you have a point there, I admit. Still, I think we can start a war upon what’s the best Joy Division song released on 7” – and probably no-one will ever win this war. I mean, yes – if I had a 7” copy of ‘Transmission’, I would perhaps even have chosen it instead. But those go for € 50,- these days – and that’s one reason why it’s ‘Atmosphere’ today.

Basically the same applies for not presenting something from ‘An Ideal For Living’, but a) it’s questionable whether ‘Leaders Of Men’ and/or ‘Failures Of The Modern Man’ are preferable to ‘Atmosphere’ (‘Warsaw’ and ‘No Love Lost’ certainly are not!) and b) the current value for a copy is € 8.000,-. So, perhaps after Christmas, who knows?

So its inclusion today is an objective of cheap in a way, if you want. Forgive me. And also I know that ‘Atmosphere’ is often considered as not being one of ‘the real things’, if you know what I mean … not in a ‘row’ along with ‘Transmission’, ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’. Probably its fragility is one reason, it being overshadowed by ‘She’s Lost Control’ at the time of release another one.

Then again, perhaps you remember, on the US-release of the 12”, ‘Atmosphere’ was the A-Side and ‘She’s Lost Control’ was (only) the B-Side. A questionable decision perhaps, but then again Factory Records have never been famous for marketing wisdom, have they? They even had to hold back the UK release for half a year to avoid affecting the sales of ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

This though was not a problem for the lucky ones who managed to get their hands on one of the 1578 copies of ‘Licht & Blindheit’, a 7” issued on a French label, Sordide Sentimental, which had ‘Dead Souls’ on the flipside. Why? Because those lottery winners (it’s now worth € 3.000,-) would have known the song since March ’80 – before ‘Love Will Take Us Apart’, in fact! Also it was already recorded in October of 1979, quite some time before ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

So, the point I’m trying to make is: if you look closely, it’s a song which should not just be seen as a nice dessert served after a superb three-course-dinner. No, it actually had its (deserved) place in the ‘Joy Division sequence of things’: as far as I’m concerned, and I have never seen this differently, ‘Atmosphere’ simply is a brilliant song – and therefore it should not be neglected:

mp3: Joy Division – Atmosphere

If you remember, the links in this series always lead to a rip of mine of the actual 7” singles – depending on their age and the way they were recorded the sound quality may suffer a bit from time to time. It will probably do so even more than usual on this occasion, because ‘Atmosphere’ might well be the most quiet and frail one in all of the 111 songs.

Also, both of my copies of ‘Licht & Blindheit’ are currently in a bank safe in Switzerland (along with all my Misfits and early Postcard singles plus a copy of ‘God Save The Queen’ on A&M), therefore I had to rip the 1988 reissue which, confusingly enough, has ‘The Only Mistake’ as the B-Side – it’s the very same version as the original one though.

Still, I hope you enjoy it. I certainly do.

Peace,

Dirk