Magic Jewball

I’m not even sure what to say about this one. I was scrounging up videos for Are Everything when I discovered this… gem? I don’t know. The juxtaposition of wholesome, high-haired teens of the 80’s clowning around for the camera while perhaps the most depressing New Order song ever (it had been a Joy Division song before Ian Curtis committed suicide and left it unfinished, so that should tell you something) plays is both horrifying and riveting. It’s apparently from a local Michigan public access show of the time and some of the other videos they have on their channel are more chipper and have the teens dancing around the cheesy studio. So I’m thankful, at least, that no one’s dancing to the funereal “beat.” But just the sort of “go around the room catching kids chit-chatting or answering the phone while bad text graphics run across the screen” visuals with a sonically bleak song about death as the soundtrack is enough to utterly boggle one’s mind.

If you make it to the end, and I doubt you will, there’s a short advert for a play or something at Edsel Ford’s Auditorium (not “The Edsel Ford Auditorium,” mind you; this sounds more like it was a large room in the Ford mansion). Senior citizens are free! Better tell your grandparents, though, because I doubt many of them were watching this show.

[youtube width=”384″ height=”313″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hSch-VjGVU[/youtube]

BTW, fun story! I know this song well because it’s the first track on the “bonus” CD of New Order’s Substance greatest hits package from 1987. I did not yet have a CD player and I already owned the cassette, so I split it with The White Whale, and all I have on CD to this day is Disc 2. However, this cassette was played so much at Palais Royale, our Baltimore rowhouse, that I literally did not listen to it again for at least ten years. That’s when I discovered the gym and how great most of the songs work with it. Not this one, though. Of course, I have named a post after this song before. That post was about death, natch.