BUZZCOCKS: ANOTHER MUSIC IN A DIFFERENT KITCHEN (1978)
1) Fast Cars; 2) No Reply; 3)
You Tear Me Up; 4) Get On Our Own; 5) Love Battery; 6) Sixteen; 7) I Don't
Mind; 8) Fiction Romance; 9) Autonomy; 10) I Need; 11) Moving Away From The
Pulsebeat.
By the time the Buzzcocks got around to
releasing their first LP, they'd already played together for two years, and
even had time to go through a serious lineup change, dropping their original
vocalist Howard Devoto (whom one still has a chance to hear on the Spiral Scratch EP — the Buzzcocks at
their punkiest, one might think) and relegating vocal duties to guitarist Peter
Shelley. And even if they began as friends of the Sex Pistols, Another Music In A Different Kitchen
shows that, ultimately, they'd rather settle on becoming the British equivalent
of the Ramones — exchanging, perhaps, some of their Queens-based brethren's
primal minimalism for a slightly higher level of musical complexity and
intellectualism, but worshipping, above and beyond everything else, the (silly)
pop catchiness of the music.
Steve Diggle's rhythm guitar playing may be
fast, distorted, and superficially aggressive, but the music is not triggering
a «pissed-off» reaction — it's basically teenage fun, with a Manchester twist.
Shelley's vocals have that slightly haughty, but friendly nasal twang that is
so common of British glam rockers, and the band has a passion for melodic vocal
harmony that shows up on most of the songs — sung songs, not merely recited or screamed over a harsh beat. Likewise,
his solos, while not too complex, seem carefully constructed and well
rehearsed, albeit still played with maximum feeling. And the tightness of the
band's rhythm section once again exposes the myth of punk rock as «non-musician
music» for all it's worth — I mean, either the Buzzcocks are not punk rock at
all (an open terminological possibility), or this here is some of the tightest,
best played, diligently produced rock music of the late 1970s.
While the Buzzcocks are usually judged by their
singles, these early albums are by no means dismissable — the debut almost
completely consists of well-written highlights, further aided by hilariously
insightful lyrics: ʽFast Carsʼ, dominated throughout by its genius two-note
guitar solo (catchy and reasonably
evocative of a police siren at the same time!), is probably the first well
known anti-car song in history,
showing that this pop-punk band may have inherited the love for the simple
rock'n'roll values of the early 1960s, but not the love for all those other values that went along with it —
"they're so depressing, going around and around" makes this the
ideological antipod of ʽI Get Aroundʼ. And although this is the only song about
cars on the album, it does allow it to proudly fall in the «Nothing but girls
and cars!» category — because, well, most, if not all, the other songs are
about girls. No coal miners or soup kitchens anywhere on the horizon.
Honestly, though, it does not matter much what
Pete Shelley thinks about girls as long as he writes these wonderful hooks
about them, both vocal and instrumental. The band succeeds both with the speedy
chainsaw-buzz three-chord rockers (ʽLove Batteryʼ), the slightly slower, more
old-fashioned glam-rockish tunes (ʽGet On Our Ownʼ), and the sharper, moodier,
artsier compositions (ʽFiction Romanceʼ), showing great understanding of what
it is that separates a striking riff from a meaningless one — the riff of the
ʽAutonomyʼ chorus may only have two chords to it, but it cuts through to the
heart in one bar, a nagging, insistent, desperate drone that fully supports
Shelley's claim that "I, I want you, autonomy!" Indeed, this is
nowhere near «unique» music, but it does come across as completely autonomous,
sounding just like any other punk rock band and yet, at the same time, totally
belonging to these guys and nobody else — probably no other punk band in
Britain at the same time showed such attention to melodic detail (certainly not
the Pistols or the Clash, to whom melody was only one of several factors that
mattered, and probably not the most important one).
In fact, Another
Music could have been quite valuable as an instrumental album, and it is no
surprise that the last track, ʽMoving Away From The Pulsebeatʼ, based on a
modernized version of the Bo Diddley beat, actually ends with several minutes
of instrumental jamming — guitar solo (somewhat reminiscent of Joy Division's
fabulous solo on ʽShadowplayʼ, which appeared later and, for all we know, may have been influenced by the
Buzzcocks style), brief drum solo (drum solo on a punk album!), and, finally,
the return of the original crunchy riff to bring it down to a grand conclusion.
Shelley's solos, loyally following the rhythm rather than playing against it,
are always a joy to listen to — in the end, the only song that I am not fond of
is the anthem ʽ16ʼ, whose slow, repetitive, bolero-style melody and especially
the little bit of chaotic free-form noise sort of disrupt the record's
near-perfect flow. That said, the song does emphasize the band's experimental
and slightly surrealist side which was essential for them — it's just that it
does not feel nearly as natural here as the follow-up, ʽI Don't Mindʼ, which is
simple as a doornail but is also one of the finest pop songs the early Kinks
never wrote.
The slightness of the album prevented it from
ever featuring highly in the critical ratings when it came to assessing the legacy
of the British punk movement, but I think that the moment one decides that
«punk», in order to be «good» or «great», does not necessarily have to make a
grand social statement (and the artistic value of these statements, per se, has
rarely been high anyway), Another Music
will immediately rise up to the top of the roster, being the exact (but idiosyncratic)
British equivalent of Ramones — and
who cares now that it came out two
years late? The important thing is that the music sounds catchy, invigorating,
and fresh even today. And has there been a «punk» band in the 2000s, anyway,
that managed to produce something as innocent, memorable, and endearing as ʽI
Needʼ? This is like Sha Na Na with distorted guitars and a real, not fake-vaudevillian, sense of humor. Thumbs up, of course.
I Need has a friggin' bass solo .... so much for punk. But of course the Buzzcocks are a punkband; they share all the values. It's just that they are willing to add elements that reinforce those values. They also have speed - they are comfortable when playing fast, unlike most other punkbands, especially including the Sex Pistols, who usually sound forced. For some reason they never made it in The Netherlands, because more than the Ramones this is what I think punk should sound like. So I suppose I have to thank you once again.
ReplyDeleteNot sure Shelley's any more into girls than he is cars, George.
ReplyDelete