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Joy Division - The Moonlight Club 800402 (1980)

Track listing:
  1. The Sound Of Music 4:47
  2. Wilderness 2:51
  3. Colony 5:05
  4. Love Will Tear Us Apart 3:50
  5. A Means To An End 4:03
  6. Transmission 3:25
  7. Dead Souls 5:43

Notes


As part of the three night residency "Factory by the Moonlight", Joy Division played three concerts at the West Hampstead Moonlight Club on consecutive nights. Here are audience recordings of those concerts, of varying sound quality.

The first performance was decidedly sub-par (even by the band's own admission), but it does feature a rare outing of "The Sound of Music" and a unique guitar-only rendition of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" - not to mention the encore of "Sister Ray", which has been omitted from this torrent as it is available on "Still". The actual recording is good, but not really spectacular.

The second performance saw the band make amends for the previous night's mess with a stellar performance, fortunately captured in the best of the three recordings. This is the band at its peak, and a killer setlist to boot.

The last performance took place after the band had, earlier that evening, played another concert at the Rainbow Theatre that had been cut short because Ian Curtis had a fit onstage. Nevertheless, the band made the ill-adviced decision of taking the stage one more time, and they only managed to perform 5 songs with their singer; after Curtis made another untimely exit from the stage, the remaining bandmembers rounded the evening off with a storming "Interzone" sung by Peter Hook. Be aware that the recording of this night is atrocious, only slightly better than the appaling, headache inducing recording from the Berlin Kant Kino.