Saturday morning, and I'm thinking about Joy Division

Ian Curtis would have benefitted from recording in the digital age perhaps. When I listen to Joy Division it's sometimes hard to get past the, uh, imperfect intonation of his voice. With Pro Tools (or whatever) you can fix all of that now. But, what you be left with? This is the great trade-off with digital recording; you're able to fix everything, yes, but does everything need fixing? Too often everything sounds really compressed. And all those perfect voices? Pleasing at first, but nothing can match the intensity of Ian Curtis. The shouting, the pleading, all twisted together with those metallic and melancholy sounds. The parts were simple (they were punks, remember?), there wouldn't be too much to covering any of their songs. And yet their music lingers. It lingers in a way that New Order cannot match, in way that almost all the punks and goths that adopted Joy Division as their heroes cannot match.