This past Saturday’s excellent Peter Hook & The Light show at History, where they kicked off their North American tour featuring recitals of both Joy Division and New Order’s Substance singles compilations. I’d seen Hooky and his crew a couple years ago when they ran through both JD albums and knew that they did a fantastic job, so the chance to see them do the same with one of the greatest run of singles in history was not to be missed. And despite missing the first couple songs due to traffic (note to self – no more driving to History), it was a fantastic night. And it reminded me that despite being one of the alphas and omegas of the post-punk scene, Joy Division has been woefully under-represented in these pages, even if that’s partly on purpose because of their being over-represented everywhere else in the world. But I’m still buzzing from the show, so I’ll allow it.

Hook is on record as saying their 1979 single “Transmission” was their first great song. In 2018, in conversation with Radio X, he said:

The first time I noticed anything different was when we’d written a song that weekend. And we had a gig on the Thursday, so we thought we’d play that song at the gig,

We played the new song, which was “Transmission” – and everyone in the whole place stopped literally what they were doing to listen and to turn round and watch us. It was an absolutely bizarre moment. It really made the hair on your arms stand up and shivers down your spine.

Peter Hook
Peter Hook on Joy Division’s first gig, meeting heroes, and more | FIRSTS | Radio X

This clip is listed as the official video for “Transmission”, but it’s not the album recording – it’s taken from a September, 1979 appearance on the television programme Something Else, which would be the band’s first and last nationally broadcast television appearance. In addition to the performance, they played “She’s Lost Control” and gave a brief interview – well, Stephen Morris and Factory mainman Tony Wilson did, at least.