JOY DIVISION

GROWING up, as I did, in Limerick during the Joy Division years was a curious business. If you waited long enough you could get hold of the records.

The NME offered puzzling postmodern analyses of the music by Paul Morley and crisp monochrome images from Anton Corbijn and Kevin Cummins. But it was more or less impossible to view any moving images of the famously bleak Mancunian band. I reckon it was a good 10 years before I got to see Ian Curtis - then long dead - dance, dance, dance to the radio.

How times have changed. Following dramatic recreations of the Joy Division experience in 24 Hour Party People and Control, we are now offered a fine documentary on the group from director Grant Gee and organising force Jon Savage.

Fans will savour the grimy footage of Curtis juddering like electrocuted tagliatelle and soak up the wry anecdotes from Stephen Morris and Peter Hook. But it is, perhaps, time to call a halt to the mining of this particular seam.

None of which is to suggest that the film is not an unalloyed pleasure. Savage, author of England's Dreaming, a key text on punk, has brought together almost all the major players, and each has something interesting to say about the brief rise of Joy Division. Only Deborah Curtis, Ian's widow, is conspicuous by her absence, but she has granted permission for her writings to be included.

Almost all the contributors feel it necessary to point out how ridiculously young they were at the time and a sense emerges that older, wiser heads might have averted Curtis's impending suicide.

Grim as the subject matter often is - producer Martin Hannett, manager Rob Gretton and impresario Tony Wilson have all followed Curtis to the grave - Joy Division does find time to tell the odd happy story. Gee and Savage believe that the success of Joy Division helped drive Manchester out of its post-industrial torpor and towards the pop-cultural high ground it now occupies.

It doesn't say so here, but the band also did wonders for the sale of long black overcoats.