Ceremony
It could have been a complete trainwreck. The stereotypical washed-up rocker cashing in on his glory days, trampling on his legacy in exchange for that badly needed check. Most times, that’s how these nostalgia tours wind up, and all the warning signs were there. Only one original member in the band? With his son filling in as a band member?Substituting himself for the mythic, departed frontman? 30 minute self-congratulatory video before the set? Peter Hook presents: Unknown Pleasures had all the markings of a disaster.
Reading Dave Segal’s interview with Peter Hookin the Stranger helped allay my fears. I got a sense from the interview that at least he was approaching the material, and the tour itself in a respectful way. But I still didn’t know what to expect as I walked into the Showbox last night.
And then the band took the stage, kicked into “No Love Lost”, and erased any skepticism I still had.
The 5-piece band ripped through Unknown Pleasures, and a handful of other Joy Division songs over the course of their set, and followed it up with two quick encores. The crowd ate up every minute of it, from the kids too young to have been alive when Joy Division actually existed, to the old-timers who looked like they were only a few gray hairs away from their days at the Hacienda. And I’ll admit, I was into it to, dancing up front right from the start. Even the idiotic frat boys behind me, who kept wondering out loud when they were going to play “Blue Monday”, couldn’t kill my mood.
No real surprises in the setlist – you can probably guess most of the selections, and maybe even the running order, if you have a passing familiarity with the band. “Transmission” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” to close the main set and the first encore? Of course, of course, of course, what else would you expect? The lineup was perhaps a little surprising – two bass players, and a keyboard player who appeared to be running softsynth patches from a laptop. Anachronistic perhaps, but the end result sounded good enough to justify the deviation from canon.
Say what you like about Peter Hook, his reasons for mounting this tour, the audacity of him fronting the band; the bottom line is that while this may just be a Joy Division cover band, it’s probably the best Joy Division cover band you’ll ever see, fronted by one of the three people alive who can legitimately lay claim to that legacy.
