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Magic, Murder and the Weather: The icy cold New Wave art rock of Howard Devoto and Magazine
11.18.2016
04:53 pm
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For his darkly literate songs of icy alienation, violence and psychological nonconformity, Howard Devoto has been called rock’s answer to Vladimir Nabokov. Devoto was all of 18 when he split off from Buzzcocks, the laddish punk band he’d formed in 1976 with his fellow Bolton Institute of Technology student, singer/guitarist Pete Shelley. After just one EP and a handful of live shows (including the 2-day Punk Rock Festival at London’s 100 Club which also included Sex Pistols, Subway Sect, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Clash, The Vibrators, The Damned and the French group Stinky Toys) Devoto felt constricted by what he perceived as the cliches of punk’s predictable three-chord thrash. “What was once unhealthily fresh is now a clean old hat” he said at the time.

Devoto immediately went about forming Magazine, a musically complex group who were critical darlings, but whose records seldom charted very high on the pop charts. Magazine‘s unique art rock sound—heavily-influenced by David Bowie’s Low album—was a fortuitous combination of some truly incredible one-of-a-kind young talents: Devoto’s twitchy, half-sung, half-sneered vocals were matched perfectly by the multi-layered keyboards of Dave Formula; the singular guitar sound of the late, great John McGeoch and a phenomenal rhythm section consisting of Barry Adamson on bass and John Doyle on drums. McGeoch, who later played with Siouxsie and the Banshees and Public Image Ltd., has long been considered one of the greatest guitarists of the post-punk era, using flangers, a chorus effect and a percussive arpeggio technique to achieve his influential new sounds. Nothing, and I do mean nothing else sounded like Magazine did when their remarkable first album, Real Life, was released in 1978.
 

 
For such a young man, the prematurely-balding Devoto’s deeply cynical lyrics betrayed an intense and often-self loathing inner life. As a poet he was particularly adept at portraying insanity, social alienation and toxic anxiety (“Look what fear’s done to my body!” being one of his more memorable lines.) The music was simultaneously icy cold (Formula’s department), jagged and angular (McGeoch’s) and rocked like hell (credit due there to Adamson and Doyle). Truly Magazine were one of the most instrumentally formidable bands of their day and heroes to the sort of import record-buying rock snob smartypants who loved the Psychedelic Furs, Gang of Four and early Ultravox. Their profile in America was greatly enhanced by their appearance (singing “Model Worker”) in Urgh! a Music War and the release of their instantly classic sophomore effort Secondhand Daylight.

McGeoch quit the group in 1980 after the recording of Magazine’s third album The Correct Use of Soap frustrated with the low income and what he perceived as Devoto not giving his best efforts during an American tour. They recorded one final album without him, 1981’s unremarkable (especially when considering the three stone classics that had come before it) Magic, Murder and the Weather before Devoto would disband the group, finding no suitable guitarist to replace a genius like McGeoch.
 

 
After a solo album, 1983’s A Jerky Version of the Dream (if you are of a certain vintage you will no doubt recall the “Rainy Season” video, which at one point was on heavy rotation on MTV) and two albums as Luxuria, the enigmatic Devoto left the music industry entirely and became a photo archivist. A 2002 collaboration with Pete Shelley as ShelleyDevoto saw him get the music bug again, but it wasn’t till 2009 that Magazine reformed, first for a short series of live dates and then the critically-acclaimed No Thyself album in 2009. It’s unclear what the status of Magazine is today, although they did release a live EP (recorded in 2009) for Record Store Day on April 16, 2016.
 

“The Light Pours Out of Me”
 
Much more Magazine after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.18.2016
04:53 pm
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Watch the Buzzcocks’ farewell concert before they split in 1981

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The story of the Buzzcocks begins with an ad on a college notice board in 1975. The ad was placed by a young musician named Howard Trafford at the Bolton Institute of Technology. Trafford was looking for like-minded musicians to form a band. A student called Peter McNeish replied and the band that was to become the Buzzcocks was born.

McNeish changed his name to Pete Shelley. Trafford changed his to Howard Devoto. A drummer and bass player were recruited and the foursome played their first gig in February 1976.

They had ideas, they had a sense of what they wanted to do, but it didn’t really all gel until Shelley and Devoto traveled to London to see the Sex Pistols play. This was the kind of music they wanted to play—fast, furious, with purpose and edge. Being enterprising young lads, they booked the Pistols to play a gig at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester—the venue Bob Dylan played in 1965 when he went electric and was called a “Judas.”

The Sex Pistols first appearance at the Lesser Free Trade Hall was in June 1976. It’s been well documented and fair to say it was one of those gigs that changed musical history.  Among the 35-40 people in attendance that night were Mark E. Smith who would form The Fall, Steven Patrick Morrissey who would go on to form The Smiths, Ian Curtis who became the lead singer of Joy Division, Paul Morley who would write for the NME before becoming involved with record label ZTT and the Art of Noise, and er…Mick Hucknall….which proves that not all revolutionary events end in change.
 
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He was there: Pete Shelley showing the poster for the Sex Pistols second appearance at the Lesser Free Trade Hall with support from the Buzzcocks.
 
The Buzzcocks were supposed to support the Pistols that night—but Shelley and Devoto couldn’t rally any musicians together. This led to a more professional attitude and a new more permanent line-up. Steve Diggle joined on bass guitarist with John Maher on drums. When the Pistols returned in July, the Buzzcocks did support them this time. The Buzzcocks name came from a magazine headline—a review of the Rock Follies TV show—containing the words “buzz” and “cock.” You can see how this Sex Pistols-inspired name appealed to a group of young guys.

The band formed a record label, New Hormones, to release their first EP (the third ever punk single in the UK) “Spiral Scratch.” Unexpectedly, Devoto quit the band. Shelley took over lead vocals and shared songwriting duties with Steve Diggle—who had moved from bass to guitar while Stephen Garvey eventually joined as new bass player.

Over the next four years, the Buzzcocks produced a selection of powerful, memorable and infectious songs (“What Do I Get?” “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t've),” “Harmony In My Head” and “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” to name but four) that were sharp and clever and often lyrically as good as songs written by Ray Davies for the Kinks but with a more frenetic beat.
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.10.2016
11:54 am
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Pete Shelley, Howard Devoto, Buzzcocks and Magazine in vintage punk doc ‘B’dum B’dum’ from 1978
03.06.2014
09:50 am
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Punk history on the installment plan…part one

The Buzzcocks had to be quick because they didn’t know how long they would last. That’s what Pete Shelley told Tony Wilson over tea and cigarettes in this documentary B’dum B’dum from 1978.

Made as part of Granada TV’s What’s On series, B’dum B’dum follows the tale of the band Buzzcocks from formation to first split and the creation of splinter group Howard Devoto’s Magazine.

Shelley met Devoto at Bolton Institute of Technology in 1975. Shelley responded to an ad Devoto had placed on the student notice board looking for musicians to form a band. The pair clicked and started writing songs together. Then they wanted to perform their songs, so they sought out other musicians to play them (Steve Diggle, bass, and John Maher, drums), and hey presto, Buzzcocks.
 

 
Part two…

The influence had been punk and The Sex Pistols, but Devoto found punk “very limiting” as “in terms of music there was a whole gamut of other stuff”:

“...Leonard Cohen, Dylan, David Bowie. With the Pistols and Iggy Pop, it was the anger and poetry which hooked me in really…

“I think that punk rock was a new version of trouble-shooting modern forms of unhappiness, and I think that a lot of our cultural activity is concerned with the process, particularly in our more privileged world, with time on our hands—in a world, most probably after religion.

“My life changed at the point I saw the Sex Pistols, and became involved in trying to set up those concerts for them. Suddenly I was drawn into something which really engaged me. Punk was nihilistic anger, not overtly political anger. Political anger could have been the radical Sixties.”

 
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Pete Shelley, Tony Wilson, Howard Devoto during the making of ‘B’dum B’dum’ 1978.
 
The Buzzcocks recorded and released the “massively influential” Spiral Scratch a four track EP, which contained the Shelley/Devoto songs “Breakdown,” “Time’s Up,” “Boredom,” and “Friends of Mine.”
 
Parts three to five with Shelley and Devoto, plus full Buzzcocks concert, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.06.2014
09:50 am
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Post-punk’s Nabokov: Howard Devoto and Magazine, live from Berlin, 1980
12.19.2012
06:17 pm
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“Look what fear’s done to my body!”

This 1980 Rockpalast concert from Magazine must’ve been shown again recently on German television. I snagged a high quality copy of this just last week from a torrent tracker and now it’s on YouTube, I see, with not that many views, either.

The Magazine we see here includes Barry Adamson on bass, Dave Formula on keyboards, drummer John Doyle and of course bandleader/frontman Howard Devoto, but original guitarist John McGeoch, whose strikingly original guitar lines were such a major part of the band’s sound, had by then departed to join Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was replaced for Magazine’s 1980 world tour by Robin Simon of Ultravox, who is on deck here and no slouch on the guitar himself.

This is a pretty amazing concert—these guys were tight—and must be the most substantial record of Magazine performing live during their classic era. If you love Magazine like I love Magazine, then this hour long concert is going to make you very, very happy. Watching the great Howard Devoto captured in his youthful prime here singing his darkly literate songs of icy alienation, violence and non-conformity is a revelation.
 

 
Via La Cumbuca

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.19.2012
06:17 pm
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