Joy Division - Warsaw (Bootleg 1977 UK)

Roddus Album Of The Day (Supplementary)

 1. All Of This For You (1:44)
2. They Walked In Line (2:40)
3. Failures (2:27)
4. Ice Age (2:26)
5. Interzone (2:06)
6. Warsaw (2:12)
7. Transmission (4:12)
8. Shadowplay (4:04)
9. Leaders Of Men (2:22)
10.Novelty (3:48)
11.No Love Lost (4:51)
12.Exercise One (peel session) (2:30)
13.Insight (peel session) (3:52)
14.She's Lost Control (peel session) (4:11)
15.Transmission (peel session) (3:56)
16.You're No Good For Me (warsaw demos) (2:02)

 Rant, Rant, Rave, Rave...F**ken awesome... Rant, Rave... Best punk album ever...Rant, Rave... Passion... Powerful...Rant, Rave... most brilliant guitar...Blah, Blah, Blah.... Rant, Rave... Desert island disc... Blah, Blah, Rant, Rave.

The greatest album never officially released, this has been near the top of my all time list since high school.

Any one familiar with Joy Division will know these songs but may not have heard them like this in their original form. Raw, rocking loud, snotty, brilliant. I posted this over at Rare MP3 some time back and here is what I wrote about it then.

"We all know of the Great English band "Joy Division", but what some don't know is that they originally called themselves "Warsaw", and they recorded a bunch of tracks for RCA Records, which were intended for an album, but the band didn't like the synths that the producers added to the tracks and so they quit RCA and the album was never released. These recordings eventually turned up in slightly different forms on Joy Division's early releases and eventually they appeared in their original form on a bootleg titled "Warsaw By Warsaw". Now, a friend of mine at high school was a Joy division fanatic and had several hard to get bootlegs of them and he made me a tape of this particular one. This tape lived in my car almost permanently and I use to blast it all the time when I was on long trips around our beautiful Island. It became one of my all time favourites and the passion and the beautiful reverberation of the guitar sound is truly awesome. Although it is low-fi it is very clear, the lyrics are easy to understand and the guitar just is amazing, the way it ends on "Interzone", the awesome riff of "Failures" and the incredible "No Love Lost". Every song is just stunning, the rawness and passion dominate these tracks, the greatest punk album never made. Eventually the tape expired and as I had lost contact with its source, my life was destined to be "Warsaw free," until several years ago, when I actually found it on CD, released in 1994 on Movie Play, I was over the moon, ecstatic, I thought I would never hear this stuff again. So it was with great excitement that I gently placed the shiny new disc into my stereo and prepared to be transported into bliss. But AAARGH, what the hell is this, the fools had ruined it, the complete d**k who remastered it had almost completely rendered it unlistenable, the base and drums had been turned up and distorted and almost drowned out the most incendiary guitaring ever. I was devastated, the CD got put in its rightful place on my shelf and was destined to be played only very occasionally. I did have many of the tracks on other Joy Division albums and Compilations, but these versions, although very good, left me somewhat disappointed, empty. Recently, something made me drag out the CD for another listen and I then decided to see if I could again track down the original unmolested recordings. As far as My ears remember, I seem to have been successful, I did find the 1994 Movie play version on a couple of Blogs, but after digging deeper into other sources I am delighted to say that the state of bliss has been restored to my ears."

My Rating 5+/5

Listen Here