Seriously, though, there should be a Journal of Things Which Are Obvious, but We'll Just Make Sure Anyway.

The study drew from the Virgin book All Time Top 1,000 Albums published in 2000 and compared 100 of the rock and pop stars from the list who had since died against average citizens of similar backgrounds, sex and ethnicity.

If that's an accurate description of the study, then it's horribly biased. You can't just look at the people who died; you have to include the ones who are still alive.

t /real actuary

Even anecdotally, that conclusion has some big holes in it:

Mick and Keith by all rights should be dead, but they aren't.

Deerhoof put a whole bunch of tracks up on their web site.

Is this a movies or music post? Who knows.

I saw Control, the Ian Curtis movie Friday night. Really well acted, and beautifully shot in B&W. It's mostly about the personal decline of Curtis. There's very little about the development of their sound, but a fair amount of coverage of the band live. Martin Hannett appears in one brief studio scene close to the end of the film, and isn't mentioned otherwise.

I've been thinking a lot about Joy Division since. It's meant recontextualizing the band, since personally they're tied to the mid-1980's when I was really discovering that music. And by that time, they were mythical. But really, the music of the 1980's was their legacy. Ian Curtis died in 1980, when I was only 10, listening to Rick Springfield and the BeeGees. It blows my mind a little to think of that music existing alongside all the top-40 radio that I associate with the late '70s, and that it's survived.

The other thing is that I also realized that what Joy Division music I had is gone. I think I had Closer and a later singles album on cassette, and I've been sloughing off that collection over the past few years, since I have no way of playing anymore.

ETA: Also the movie brought back the horrors of late70s/early 80s fashion. Pleated pants made of what I could tell were horrible scratchy polyblends. Shudder.

I really love the early Joy Division stuff that's collected on Substance.

Particularly "Warsaw" (from when that was their band name). But also (of course) "Transmission."

But also (of course) "Transmission."

I love the Low cover of "Transmission."

Thanks for the Deerhoof heads-up, Tom.

Mr. Yuck song: [link]

I haven't heard this since 1976, I think. I'm surprised at how well I remember it (I've been earwormed with it before I went out and found this mp3).

Mr. Yuck wikipedia page: [link]

A memorably scary psychedelic public service announcement was also produced in the 1970s featuring the theme song, becoming a pop-culture icon unto itself for a number of generations.

Awesome homemade video: TMBG Puppets in “Ana Ng”

Vancouver artist Mizushima Hine created a wonderful stop-motion video of the classic They Might Be Giants song “Ana Ng”.