Bri­an Eno once said of the Vel­vet Under­ground that their first album sold only 30,000 copies, but every­one who bought one start­ed a band. Joy Divi­sion’s debut Unknown Plea­sures sold only 20,000 copies in its ini­tial peri­od of release, but the T‑shirt embla­zoned with its cov­er art — an image of radio waves ema­nat­ing from a pul­sar tak­en from an astron­o­my ency­clo­pe­dia — has long since con­sti­tut­ed a com­mer­cial-semi­otic empire unto itself. That speaks to the vast sub­cul­tur­al influ­ence of the band, despite their only hav­ing been active from 1976 to 1980. When we speak of the genre of post-punk, we speak, in large part, of Joy Divi­sion and the artists they influ­enced.

Less than a year after the 1979 release of Unknown Plea­sures, Joy Divi­sion’s lead singer Ian Cur­tis com­mit­ted sui­cide. The band had already record­ed Clos­er, their sec­ond and last album (at least before the sub­se­quent, more suc­cess­ful ref­or­ma­tion as New Order). Scant though it may be, their stu­dio discog­ra­phy has only drawn more and more crit­i­cal acclaim over the decades.

Still, fans who weren’t around to wit­ness the rise of Joy Divi­sion first-hand will sus­pect they’ve missed out on some­thing essen­tial. “Live, Joy Divi­sion were heavy,” remem­bers band his­to­ri­an Jon Sav­age. “Per­form­ers — and David Bowie is a good exam­ple – know exact­ly what to give and what to with­hold, but Ian Cur­tis didn’t have that stage­craft. He just came on and gave every­thing.”

That sort of inten­si­ty, Sav­age adds, is “not infi­nite­ly repro­ducible”; even at the time, it seems that those who wit­nessed Joy Divi­sion in con­cert under­stood that their pecu­liar­ly com­pelling ener­gy was dri­ving toward some kind of final com­bus­tion. You can get a taste of it in the col­lec­tion of the group’s every tele­vised per­for­mance, orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC2 and Grana­da TV in 1978 and 1979, at the top of the post; just above, we have a 70-minute com­pi­la­tion of all their filmed live shows. Much of it con­sists of footage shot over two nights at the Apol­lo The­atre in 1979, which the uploader describes as of poor qual­i­ty — but “accord­ing to peo­ple who were there, the gig’s qual­i­ty was poor in per­son too.” As much as gen­er­a­tions of fans have done to mythol­o­gize the band’s brief exis­tence over the past 45 years, here is evi­dence that even Joy Divi­sion had an off night once in a while.

Relat­ed con­tent:

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

The His­to­ry of Rock n Roll in 10 Songs: A List Cre­at­ed by Leg­endary Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus

Radio­head Cov­ers The Smiths & New Order (2007)

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

We’ve focused a fair bit here on the work of Delia Der­byshire, pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry—fea­tur­ing two doc­u­men­taries on her and dis­cussing her role in almost cre­at­ing an elec­tron­ic back­ing track for Paul McCartney’s “Yes­ter­day.” There’s good rea­son to devote so much atten­tion to her: Derbyshire’s work with the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Work­shop laid the bedrock for a good deal of the sound design we hear on TV and radio today.

And, as we point­ed out pre­vi­ous­ly, her elec­tron­ic music, record­ed under her own name and with the band White Noise, influ­enced “most every cur­rent leg­end in the business—from Aphex Twin and the Chem­i­cal Broth­ers to Paul Hart­noll of Orbital.”

Yet for all her influ­ence among dance music com­posers and sound effects wiz­ards, Der­byshire and her music remain pret­ty obscure—that is except for one com­po­si­tion, instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as the orig­i­nal theme to the BBC’s sci-fi hit Doc­tor Who (hear it at the top), “the best-known work of a rag­tag group of tech­ni­cians,” writes The Atlantic, “who unwit­ting­ly helped shape the course of 20th-cen­tu­ry music.” Writ­ten by com­pos­er Ron Grain­er, the song was actu­al­ly brought into being by the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, and by Der­byshire espe­cial­ly. The sto­ry of the Doc­tor Who theme’s cre­ation is almost as inter­est­ing as the tune itself, with its “swoop­ing, hiss­ing and puls­ing” that “man­ages to be at once haunt­ing, goofy and ethe­re­al.” Just above, you can see Der­byshire and her assis­tant Dick Mills tell it in brief.

What we learn from them is fas­ci­nat­ing, con­sid­er­ing that com­po­si­tions like this are now cre­at­ed in pow­er­ful com­put­er sys­tems with dozens of sep­a­rate tracks and dig­i­tal effects. The Doc­tor Who theme, on the oth­er hand, record­ed in 1963, was made even before basic ana­log syn­the­siz­ers came into use. “There are no musi­cians,” says Mills, “there are no syn­the­siz­ers, and in those days, we didn’t even have a 2‑track or a stereo machine, it was always mono.” (Despite pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions, the theme does not fea­ture a Theremin.) Der­byshire con­firms; each and every part of the song “was con­struct­ed on quar­ter-inch mono tape,” she says, “inch by inch by inch,” using such record­ing tech­niques as “fil­tered white noise” and some­thing called a “wob­bu­la­tor.” How were all of these painstak­ing­ly con­struct­ed indi­vid­ual parts com­bined with­out mul­ti­track tech­nol­o­gy? “We cre­at­ed three sep­a­rate tapes,” Der­byshire explains, “put them onto three machines and stood next to them and said “Ready, steady, go!” and pushed all the ‘start’ but­tons at once. It seemed to work.”

The theme came about when Grain­er received a com­mis­sion from the BBC after his well-received work on oth­er series. He “com­posed the theme on a sin­gle sheet of A4 man­u­script,” writes Mark Ayres in an exten­sive online his­to­ry, “and sent it over from his home in Por­tu­gal, leav­ing the Work­shop to get on with it.” Aware that the musique con­crète tech­niques Der­byshire and her team used “were very time-con­sum­ing, Grain­er pro­vid­ed a very sim­ple com­po­si­tion, in essence just the famous bass line and a swoop­ing melody,” as well as vague­ly evoca­tive instruc­tions for orches­tra­tion like “wind bub­ble” and “cloud.” Ayres writes, “To an inven­tive radio­phon­ic com­pos­er such as Delia Der­byshire, this was a gift.” Indeed “upon hear­ing it,” The Atlantic notes, “a very impressed Grain­er bare­ly rec­og­nized it as his com­po­si­tion. Due to BBC poli­cies at the time, Grainer—against his objections—is still offi­cial­ly cred­it­ed as the sole writer.” But the cred­it for this futur­is­tic work—which sounds absolute­ly like noth­ing else of the time and “which brought to a wide audi­ence meth­ods once exclu­sive to the high mod­ernism of exper­i­men­tal composition”—should equal­ly go to Der­byshire and her team. You can con­trast that ahead-of-its-time orig­i­nal theme with all of the iter­a­tions to fol­low in the video just above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.