Ceremony ; primarily JD or NO

Most of us,if not all of us, love Ceremony, but where do you consider its roots lie? Do you consider it a Joy Division song as it had been recorded along with In a Lonely Place at Graveyard Studios Prestwich in 1980 and appears as a live track on Still [performed at Birmingham University]. It was refined by New Order and released on vinyl before the release of Still.

Definition of PRIMARY:

First, original, first order in a system of successive branches, first formed primative, elementary, fundamental.

Theres no argument...It's PRIMARILY a Joy Division song

I don't think NO have been able to improve on it, and it was written by JD, so there you have it.

I personally prefer the Joy Division version. Curtis' vocals are particularly great.

it's consider it a bit of both...but i usually think of it as a NO song.

Originally posted by Spotnick Who cares..Joy Division = New Order So it's a song from the same damned group!

true, i've ALWAYS thought of them as one band

and they could hardly not think of Ian while recording these songs, so maybe the answer is the obvious "both"

i think they made a great choice, saving these two songs as a transition. and moving on after.

Originally posted by Spotnick Who cares..Joy Division = New Order So it's a song from the same damned group!

Your point is fundamentally flawed, Joy Division had a different lead singer, how can you say they are the same?

Originally posted by almanso if you consider it a JD song maybe you should start thinking about if any of the movement´s songs were written on the JD era. what do we know? maybe crystal was a song barney originally wrote in 1979! and if this is true would crystal be a JD song for you? I say NO because it was edited by NO, with or without gillian. but I think is nonesense, because we´re talking about the same band with different names. If you say "but the music is different" then you should start considering new order since temptation or blue monday, when they definetly cutted off the strings that attached them to JD. it´s a never ending discussion, you know? what came first? the egg or the chicken?

TOSH!!!

The song was conceived by the four members of Joy Division, and sufficiently rehearsed to warrant a more than decent performance during the May 2nd Birmingham show. Furthermore, before Gillian joined the band, the three surviving members of JD continued to develop the song (Western Works demo, when they still hadn't settled on a new name) and came up with the definitive arrangement, as immortalized on the original 7" version. In sum, Ceremony is primarily a Joy Division song, put out under the New Order moniker.

But ultimately, it's all immaterial.... certainly in its first year of existence, New Order pretty much continued in the vein of Joy Division anyway.

Primarily it is a JD song, but in the end it is a NO song.

Basically it doesn't matter. Bernard wrote it anyway, with Ian knocking up some random words. Most JD/NO songs could be split down to "written by B.Sumner", but they chose to acknowledge the whole band (except currently on Temptation it seems ;)).

I love both the Joy Division version (who is the dickhead that booked them into Graveyard Studio?), but I love the newOrder version as well, but it is a Joy Division song.

It's a Joy Division song, but who were Joy Division? The boys in New Order. The only thibg that makes this an issue at all is the fact that they changed names. Most other bands lose members, but no-one questions the origins of their older songs. Pink Floyd, The Manics, etc, etc. Are any of their old songs not THEIRS? They are the same people, for god's sake.

Joy Division 'cos it's credited: written by Curtis, Sumner, Hook, Morris

what exactly are you folks referring to by NO 'refining' or 'developing' the song ? I don't hear that.

i'd still consider it a NO song, cuz if it was a joy division song, they wouldn't have played it very often live (seeing that new order vowed to only play new order stuff for a long time...)

It's OUR fucking song, of course....................

joy division's

Johnny Giles wrote "......this track wasn't even recorded by JD"

but they did, the demo which is on the 'Heart and Soul' set.

anorak ? huh ?

I've got to take issue with this too- Benny wrote "Basically it doesn't matter. Bernard wrote it anyway, with Ian knocking up some random words. Most JD/NO songs could be split down to "written by B.Sumner", but they chose to acknowledge the whole band ..."

I have a hard time seeing Bernard in the JD days writing a complete bass line for Hooky to play or dictating a drum arrangement to Steve. Especially a complex one like this song uses. And how can you say those are random words ? Ian's 'random' words are better than most pop musician's deliberate words, then... so what's left ? 2 chords and a little melody which alternates for attention with the top notes of the two chords. Ceremony in fact sounds to me like the most democratic song JD ever wrote. If it had more chords, Bernards share of credit would have been larger. I don't think Bernard came up with the melody that Ian (and later Steve and Barney) sang, either, it sounds totally within Ian's style.

Martin Davies wrote "who is the dickhead that booked them into Graveyard Studio?"

I thought that was the band's name for their practice space, located adjacent to a graveyard.

even though JD recorded ceremony first, i think the NO version is superior and whenever i hear the song i think of NO, not JD. so, i suppose i'll vote for NO. either way, it's a damn fine song.