Every Filmed and Televised Performance by Joy Division (1978-79)

Bri­an Eno once said of the Vel­vet Under­ground that their first album sold only 30,000 copies, but every­one who bought one start­ed a band. Joy Divi­sion’s debut Unknown Plea­sures sold only 20,000 copies in its ini­tial peri­od of release, but the T‑shirt embla­zoned with its cov­er art — an image of radio waves ema­nat­ing from a pul­sar tak­en from an astron­o­my ency­clo­pe­dia — has long since con­sti­tut­ed a com­mer­cial-semi­otic empire unto itself. That speaks to the vast sub­cul­tur­al influ­ence of the band, despite their only hav­ing been active from 1976 to 1980. When we speak of the genre of post-punk, we speak, in large part, of Joy Divi­sion and the artists they influ­enced.

Less than a year after the 1979 release of Unknown Plea­sures, Joy Divi­sion’s lead singer Ian Cur­tis com­mit­ted sui­cide. The band had already record­ed Clos­er, their sec­ond and last album (at least before the sub­se­quent, more suc­cess­ful ref­or­ma­tion as New Order). Scant though it may be, their stu­dio discog­ra­phy has only drawn more and more crit­i­cal acclaim over the decades.

Still, fans who weren’t around to wit­ness the rise of Joy Divi­sion first-hand will sus­pect they’ve missed out on some­thing essen­tial. “Live, Joy Divi­sion were heavy,” remem­bers band his­to­ri­an Jon Sav­age. “Per­form­ers — and David Bowie is a good exam­ple – know exact­ly what to give and what to with­hold, but Ian Cur­tis didn’t have that stage­craft. He just came on and gave every­thing.”

That sort of inten­si­ty, Sav­age adds, is “not infi­nite­ly repro­ducible”; even at the time, it seems that those who wit­nessed Joy Divi­sion in con­cert under­stood that their pecu­liar­ly com­pelling ener­gy was dri­ving toward some kind of final com­bus­tion. You can get a taste of it in the col­lec­tion of the group’s every tele­vised per­for­mance, orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC2 and Grana­da TV in 1978 and 1979, at the top of the post; just above, we have a 70-minute com­pi­la­tion of all their filmed live shows. Much of it con­sists of footage shot over two nights at the Apol­lo The­atre in 1979, which the uploader describes as of poor qual­i­ty — but “accord­ing to peo­ple who were there, the gig’s qual­i­ty was poor in per­son too.” As much as gen­er­a­tions of fans have done to mythol­o­gize the band’s brief exis­tence over the past 45 years, here is evi­dence that even Joy Divi­sion had an off night once in a while.

Relat­ed con­tent:

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

The His­to­ry of Rock n Roll in 10 Songs: A List Cre­at­ed by Leg­endary Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus

Radio­head Cov­ers The Smiths & New Order (2007)

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.