Miscellaneous - November 2015

  by Admin

published: 25 / 11 / 2015

intro

Hello and welcome to the November edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. It would be very hard to sum up the main musical influences on all of us in all our

Hello and welcome to the November edition of the Pennyblackmusic Magazine. It would be very hard to sum up the main musical influences on all of us in all our different locations and situations at Pennyblackmusic. There are, however, four acts that perhaps have had more of a collective influence than others. We have over the years covered three of these - the Velvet Underground, the Beatles and the Sex Pistols - in depth. The fourth - Joy Division and its successor New Order – we have covered less extensively. When our Manchester-based photographer and occasional writer Marie Hazelwood floated the idea of doing some kind of Joy Division theme with one of our monthly magazines, it seemed, with New Order having just released 'Music Complete', their first album in ten years, like a good idea. The short history of Joy Division, and the tragic tale of its epileptic singer and lyricist Ian Curtis who killed himself leaving behind two sombre but haunting albums, has, of course, been recounted time and time over, both in books by his former band mates (Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner), his estranged wife (Deborah Curtis), music journalists (Paul Morley, Mick Middles) and also in films ('Control', the 'Joy Division' documentary). We wanted to avoid the trappings of doing something that just told this story again. Amongst our interviews this month, Marie has spoken to Hadar Goldman, an Israeli businessman, musician and Joy Division fan, who has bought the house in which Ian Curtis died at Barton Street in Macclesfield and plans controversially to open a museum there. Whatever you feel about Hadar's intentions and plans, what shines through in this interview is his sincerity and genuine enthusiasm. We are also running an interview, again conducted by Marie, with Martin O'Neill, one of Joy Division's early and sometimes neglected photographers. We also have ‘Ten Songs That Made Me Love’ columns on both Joy Division and New Order. In one Denzil Watson writes of his favourite songs by Joy Division, and in the second Mary O’Meara writes of her favourite songs by New Order. Nicky Crewe lived in Manchester at the time of Joy Division and knew Tony Wilson, their boss at Factory Records, from the age of fifteen. She writes of her memories of him, and working the door at both the Hacienda and its predecessor, the Russell Club. There is also a Photoscape from Marie in which she has taken photos of Ian Curtis’s former home (and the soon museum) and also his grave. While this is an edition of the magazine which I otherwise would largely like to speak for itself as pretty much every item on the front page is new. I would like to highlight one other article which is in our ‘Profiles’ section, a charity appeal from our writer Anthony Strutt. Anthony, who has written for Pennyblackmusic for fifteen years, is terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. Although his health is relatively stable at the moment, the long-term prognosis is, of course, not good. He is currently trying to raise £5,000 for his local hospital in Leicester. If you have enjoyed Anthony’s articles over the years and would like to donate something, I know that he would be grateful. We have a new writer this month, James Lowther, who has contributed live reviews of Foxes and Ex Hex sows in Manchester. Thank you to James. Thank you also to Carl Bookstein, Malcolm Carter, Nicky Crewe, Dastardly, Nick Dent-Robinson, Anthony Dhanendran, Gillian Fish, Cat Goodwin, Dave Goodwin, Marie Hazelwood, Keith How, Adrian Huggins, Adrian Janes, Richard Lewis, Mary O’ Meara, Owen Peters, Maarten Schiethart, Billy Seagrave, Harry Sherriff, Dominic Simpson, Melanie Smith, Anthony Strutt, Lisa Torem, Paul Waller and Denzil Watson, all of whom have contributed in one way or another to this edition. Special thanks to our webmaster Richard Banks. We will be back in early December with an album and singles reviews only update, and then towards the middle of the month with a full update with interviews, features, live reviews and more album and single reviews. We will be running our annual Writers and Photographers’ Albums of the Year poll, and hope also to be featuring interviews among others with Robert Wyatt, the Comsat Angels, Butterfly Child, Lauren Hoffman, Chorusgirl, Little Brother Eli, Bear + The Woods, the String Project and Ben Gosling. Please don’t forget to check out our regular Facebook and Twitter updates. Thank you as always for reading Pennyblackmusic, John Clarkson Magazine Editor www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk