There are variables and constants. Some things are fabulous for a day, they snag their fifteen minutes and that’s cool enough, but then there are Beatles and Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn and Truman Capote. For me things iconic range from Willie the Shake’s The Tempest to Jack’s Mannequin. 400 years separate Andrew McMahon and Shakespeare, but not for me. Each is perfect, and if I leave you with anything, I hope that it is the pursuit of perfection.

The eighties were my era, and I was lucky enough to have embraced them and squeezed out the sublime, a huge part of which was Joy Division, a band that would become, following the death of singer/songwriter Ian Curtis, New Order. It was dark and self absorbed, danceable and infectious. New Order invented self-absorption, not to mention club music, sampling, bass lines as melody, and the automobile (maybe I exaggerate). I offer up the music for you to discover on your own. Songs like “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Blue Monday” are accessible dance tunes, but explore the darker shoegazy sounds (look it up) of Movement, their first album, and absolutely, positively go back a bit further and download Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which will be familiar to you weird Donnie Darko fans (like me), and remains one of the most influential songs ever written. You’re on your own, but go explore.

This article, though, is about Peter Saville. The 1980s were industrial art’s heyday and Peter Saville, the designer of New Order’s and Joy Division’s album covers turned album covers into artwork. You wanted to hang them on the wall or carry them around with you. They were stark and, again, industrial, a symbol of a new digital age, of things that didn’t exist before. They are so iconic and intrinsically aesthetic that Microsoft commissioned the artist to create the first in a line of limited edition Zune mp3 players utilizing the album cover at the top of this article. Dang. I wish Apple had done that. I don’t want a Zune, but it’s tempting.


Look at the Movement album cover sitting side by side with the original art deco design from Fotunato Depero in the 1920s. I think it was TS Eliot who said, “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” I guess it holds true for artwork as well. Saville would go on to capture more of Depero’s work as his folio of Factory Records covers was assembled. Next are several covers for the singles of the album Power Corruption and Lies (which contains Stowell’s favorite song, “Leave me Alone). You may not even remember the floppy disk, but it signaled the electronic era and remains an icon of all things digital.


Finally to show diversity I leave you with Saville’s cover for New Order’s Technique. There is something strangely beautiful about the art deco simplicity of the other covers in contrast to this hot pink and fuchsia neo classical cherub.

Your assignment is to explore what’s perfect and beautiful. I’ll be looking for your enthusiasm in your journals. Whether it’s Joy Division and New Order or the Wombats for that matter, open your minds and shove a bunch of stuff in it. Use the Zen of the internet: one thing will lead to another…