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Today, I thought about how my band existed for around the same length of time as Joy Division, had a song output around the same size, and just how many similarities we shared with them, without necessarily sounding too much like them (very little "crowd working" at shows and an overall bleak vibe)...I also began to think about how if maybe we'd gigged far less sporadically and had gotten signed to a label and recorded an album or two, and if maybe instead of our frontman just giving up and making plans to move out of town, he'd disappeared Richey Edwards style, offed himself (he'd often joke about this), or we'd violently self destructed onstage, we would've been viewed posthumously in the same capacity as Joy Division.
But then I thought about how they rose form the ashes of Ian Curtis' death as New Order, and made a signifcant contribution to 80s pop and the history of dance music in general. Now obviously a lot has been published about Ian Curtis and his role in Joy Division, from films like 24 Hour Party People and Control to countless magazine articles, but would they have if the surviving band members had split and done other projects or just gotten "real" jobs? Maybe then the band would've been seen as a minor footnote in the history of post punk?
Basically, what I'm asking here (and the tl;dr version for illiterates with no attention span beyond 10 words) is if Joy Divison would've be seen as they are if not for New Order?
Discuss.
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