Joy Division

Still [First Pressing]

Manchester: Factory Records. 1981. Double LP, in hessian gatefold boards with debossed lettering and a ribbon wrapped around the spine; with die-cut cardboard inner sleeves. Shrink-wrapped indicating initial U.S. import. Used condition. Item #6947

First pressing of Joy Division’s double LP compilation Still, released the year after Curtis’ death, only a month before the remaining members of the band issued the album Movement as New Order. This record compiles previously unreleased tracks from the band’s various recording sessions in one disc, along with a set of live recordings from Joy Division’s seminal show at Birmingham University’s High Hall. These songs include some of Joy Division’s finest, such as Dead Souls, a punk song turned rage-seánce wherein Curtis is continually called up by the dead. The compilation’s seánce-pop, however, is cushioned by Joy Division’s live homage cover of the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray, which becomes the band’s most vulgar entry as they repeat Lou Reed’s celebration of trans-and-homo-sexuals copulating and shooting up heroin.

On the other hand, this compilation marks the completion of Tony Wilson’s project to canonize the band as the martyred vanguard of the Factory scene; that is, to make it the substantial or spiritual core of the Factory Records catalog. The band’s name and fame thus continued to grow long after this compilation carefully wrapped up the Joy Division oeuvre as a completed concept: depressed, mystical, suicidal, energizing in its romanticism—Factory Records not un-impressive submission into high or literary art.

Price: $500.00