Joy Division

10th November 1979: The Rainbow Theatre, London
On tour with the Buzzcocks (last date on the tour)


Many thanks to Omega Auctions for the poster image


Songs performed:
01. Dead Souls
02. Wilderness
03. Twenty Four Hours
04. Day Of The Lords
05. These Days
--   Interzone (false start)
06. Interzone
07. Disorder
08. Atrocity Exhibition (cuts).
Appx. duration: 30 mins. Sound quality: 7/9

These Days was released on the following bootleg LP:

A Retrospective - Part II LP

In December 2007 a better quality recording of this concert, decended from the same master, surfaced. On this tape Day Of The Lords is cut short but Atrocity Exhibition is complete. Sound quality: 8-/9

This was the final date of the Buzzcocks tour and contemporary accounts say the sound quality was "immaculately sharp". This is not true of the surviving recording of this concert however.


Ticket Ebay

Apparently Joy Division were in high spirits and marked the end of the tour by dumping fishing maggots on the sound and lighting desks, spraying the crew with shaving foam, putting live mice through the windows of the tour vans, and bombarding the crew with eggs before finally being chased off by a passing police car.


The Rainbow photographed in 202
(C) Copyright Joy Division - The Eternal web site
(Michel Enkiri) and reproduced here with permission 



Tour  Schedule:
   
David Salmon was there:  I was at the Rainbow for both nights and I recollect thinking at the time that if they had not been on a stage performing in front of an audience (largely indifferent - many coming in late for Buzzcocks) they would have to have been performing somewhere just for themselves. Transmission left the biggest impression. I'd never seen anything as intense before or since despite the audience growing during the performance and being largely uninterested. They could and should have been the biggest band on the planet. Now a legend...