Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesFriday MP3 Shuffle: The Birth of Joy Division

For today’s Friday MP3 Shuffle, instead of celebrating a person’s birth, we celebrate the birth of a band and one of the pivotal events in modern music history. On May 29, 1977, in support of The Buzzcocks, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Ian Curtis and Tony Tabac stepped on stage at the Electric Circus in Manchester under the name Warsaw. The band’s one performance got enough attention from the local press to set magical things in motion; The band would soon replace Tabac with Stephen Morris on drums, change their name to Joy Division, and go on to make music that continues to influence genres from Industrial to Dance to Shoegaze. It’s not often that a band gets to be at the forefront of a new music movement, tragically lose a member, then go on to be at the forefront of another music movement, but that’s exactly what Joy Division/New Order did when they helped put Post-Punk and Alternative Pop on the map. In this writer’s opinion, this day should be a world holiday, one celebrated by 24 hours of dancing with romantic-tragic vigor while drinking red wine and looking at modern video art.

Let us mark the occasion by taking your MP3 Player, pressing the “shuffle” button, and sharing the first 10 songs your hear:

1. The Doors, "Break on Through" (The Doors): Jim Morrison at the top of his game. Commercial radio stations are finally letting him say “She gets HIGH!” instead of blanking out the last word. That’s progress.

2. Outkast, "Ms. Jackson" (Stankonia): I don’t think I’ve heard any Pop song, let alone Hip-Hop song, written quite like this – an apology to your baby-mama’s mama. Great song.

3. Reds and Blue, "Son of the Stars" (Son of the Stars): I’m not sure if this band is band is still around, but this album is terrific. It’s “cool” in the way people like to consider themselves “cool.” You can dance to it while still wearing your favorite evening jacket and not break a sweat.

4. Stygian Stride, "Drift" (Stygian Stride): Meditative Ambient with a beat.

5. The Cool Kids, "Penny Hardaway (Feat. Ghostface Killah)" (When Fish Ride Bicycles): Seems like it’s been a while since we’ve heard from these guys, although it also might be that I haven’t been looking in the right places.

6. Martyn, "Dorian Concept Remix, Mega Drive Generation" (Hyperdub 10.4): DIY basement electronica from a label that’s done a lot of great stuff over the years.

7. New Order, "Chemical" (Republic): The last great album from a band that didn’t exactly specialize in albums (their best ones are compilations of their singles). When oh when will Barney and Hooky bury the hatchet?

8. King Khan & The Shrines, "Of Madness I Dream" (Idle No More): This song suggests Americana while at the same time sounding totally Avant Garde.

9. Journey, "Lights" (Infinity): A lovely love-letter to San Francisco, but ambiguous enough to be sung about pretty much any city. “I wanna get back to my city by the bay…”…that works for Chicago. You can even sneak in a word change to “lake” and people would still hold their lighters up high.

10. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, "Walkin'" (The Hottest New Group in Jazz): Vocalese, the technique jazz vocalists created to put words to dozen-notes-a-second Bee-Bop songs and solos, never ceases to amaze me.

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