Confusion in her eyes that says it all

At mom's house this weekend I spotted an old box on my shelf. "What's in there?" I thought. Tapes. Old tapes. Tapes as old as the one of the Cars' first two albums circa 1979.
And also some mysteriously labelled ones that once belonged to one of my mom's businesses but were repurposed when I got a stereo. With titles like "Bad Hits" and "Bad Hits II," surely they were worth a listen.

Mom's car stereo showed that they were tapes of Anarchy in the PM, WXYC's early punk and New Wave show. Seminal stuff. Old scratchy tapes with tunes from the likes of Rocky Erikson, Richard Lloyd, Iggy Pop, and so on. On Saturday nights I used to put on my big clunky headphones, sit in by big Swedish rust-colored chair and tape the show. It changed my life. This weekend I came upon one of the most life-changing moments of all: hearing Joy Division for the first time "She's Lost Control." Was it before Ian Curtis killed himself? I don't know, though I like to think so, but I had never heard anything like it, the funereal Moog, the impossibly low-tuned base, the mad depth of Curtis's range, singing about some girl on ludes or smack. It was at once raw and intensely crafted.

When, a year or so later, I spent the summer near Manchester and loitered with youth by the chip shops and in video parlors, hearing them talk about the impossibility of dreaming of a job. Then we raced one day from a field trip to the city because of hundreds of bobbies swarming the malls, shutting it down to prep for a race riot. Pre-Volcker, pre-Thatcher, this was the time of Joy Division.

And then, a year later, in Honolulu, I read that mourning had run its course and the remaining band members had reformed as New Order, and their first EP release turned out to be a classic: "Oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got grey eyes, oh you've got blue eyes." And then those ever softening New Orderites remixed it in the 90s and made it safe to be made into a soundtrack for the Gap. Thanks. I'd give several teeth for a clean copy of the original.