Jan 4th- Happy Birthday Bernard Sumner, Michael Stipe; Jakob Grimm

A happy birthday to Bernard Sumner (third from left) who was born today in Manchester, England back in 1956. In 1978 after getting signed to Enigma Records, Sumner (then using the surname Albrecht) made his musical debut with an eponymous EP in a band that consisted of Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris: Joy Division.

The EP was comprised of only four cuts; "Warsaw", "No Love Lost", "Leaders of Men" and "Failures" and was soon followed by a full length LP called "Unknown Pleasures" at the group's new label Factory. Following the suicide of the band's lead singer, Curtis, Sumner forges ahead with Hook, Morris and keyboardist Gillian Gilbert and change their name to New Order. In 1981 the new group's debut LP, Movement, was released in the UK and hit American shores in '82 but, despite all of this, the group didn't move out of the shadow of Ian Curtis until a year later, when they cut the LP Power, Corruption and Lies in 1983 wherein Sumner would "find his voicing" and help establish a template that would be copied many times over by the legions of New Wave and pop acts that would follow in Sumner's footsteps.