Less than three months before Ian Curtis's untimely death, 
Joy Division ventured north of Manchester to play in 
Preston, Lancashire, which, by their own admission, was
"the worst fucking gig we ever did". What this recording 
does reveal is that the most cataclysmically significant
group of the Eighties had the technical back-up of a 
third-rate pub band.
  Hooky's bass amp gives up the ghost midway through the
third number, "Twenty Four Hours", rendering the song all
but unlistenable. The band struggle on manfully for the 
remainder of the set, as the rest of their equipment
gradually collapses. Ian Curtis offers a perfunctory
apology - "some slight problems," he says, which, as the
events of the next few months would prove, was the 
understatement of the century.
Peter Huxley      

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