New Order--"Ceremony"

From Movement Collector’s Edition (Warner/Rhino: 2008)

This November 11 marks the eighty-ninth iteration of Veteran’s Day for my fellow USians. It was a holiday first proposed by Woodrow Wilson in honor of the young soldiers of the Lost Generation who gave their to the first World War etc. etc. I’ll resist the urge to comment from either a current (and we’re still in Iraq) or historical (Johnny Come Lately) perspective and say simply that the government closures due to the federal holiday may have lost me a day of mail but won me a new kitten (long story). This year, at least, I’m square with Veteran’s Day.

This 11/11 also brings the U.S. release of Warner’s expanded, double-disc New Order reissues, hot off the presses, glossy-sleeved and probably, in our current, execrable economy, unnecessary for all but those pitiful ones of us who know every word to every song on the original albums (mine were cassettes) plus both discs of “Substance.”

My own re-purchase of Movement today (the third, for those playing at home) kept me stuck in my office listening to “Ceremony” (on disc B) for what has got to be at least the 400th time, watching the autumn sky fade to twilight and still, after all these years, feeling the dizzy, weightless sensation at the repetition of those first ten notes (hum along if you like). The quick, pinch of Stephen Morris’s drums and the first unsteady moments when you hear Bernard Sumner becoming Bernard Sumner, as opposed to simply aping Ian Curtis.

“Ceremony” was written before Curtis’ death in May of 1980, produced by Martin Hannett and in many ways, it is a Joy Division song. But there’s something else going on. A mood, perhaps. It would be foolish to call it hopeful; after all, this is a song whose first line of lyric speaks of unnerving events. However, there’s a space to this song. A wide-open, major-keyed landscape that speaks to that which is coming, as opposed to that which has passed. It’s true that this song is weighted down in pop mythology—the death of Ian Curtis, the sound of New Order being born. It’s also true that this song would probably earn a chapter heading in my personal musical autobiography. I can still feel the ringing in my ears from playing this song at ludicrous volume while speeding down the river road in my hometown, smoking illicit cigarettes my junior year of high school. But there’s something to be said for that kind of nostalgia. The memory of promise may not play out the same way sixteen years later, but it certainly adds something to a sunny small town November in a nation still reeling in the promise of its most recent election.

For a trip down nostalgia lane (and a somewhat endearing, early live version), see here.