Is our experience of music influenced by what we are told to expect from it? I won’t answer that question , other than to say probably. Back in 1983 when I was first getting into music in a big way there was obviously no internet, and I hardly knew anyone who listened to anything outside obvious chart music. You could read reams of “purple prose” in music magazines about artists before you actually happened to hear them on the radio.
One band that I kept reading about long before I heard them were Joy Division. Tony Wilson had said that Joy Division “said what they felt and for some reason everyone found it earth shattering!” There were plenty more quotes from journalists about their “stormy mental landscape”, “ice sculpted beauty” (probably – pretty sure I read that somewhere) and their “bloodlust turbulence” (I definitely read that one!). So quite a lot to expect from one band. Then one day I was pretty sure I heard Peter Powell introduce a record by “Joy Division”. The record wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but as I listened it began to make sense. It did seem quite bleak and to be describing an emotional trauma. The illusion was shattered at the end of the record when I realised I’d misheard. Here is my mistaken impression of Joy Division….
The 'Spill 