Buzzcocks – "Harmony in My Head" (1979)

And life’s little ironies

Seem so obvious now

(Yes, life’s little ironies do seem obvious now.  But they weren’t obvious back then – and that was when they mattered.)

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Howard Devoto (né Howard Trafford) and the late Pete Shelley (né Peter McNeish) co-founded the Buzzcocks when both were university students in 1976.

Devoto left the band before its first album was released in 1978 and formed Magazine.  Last week, 2 or 3 lines featured the Magazine song “Shot by Both Sides.”

Steve Diggle and Pete Shelley in 1978

Today’s featured song was released by the Buzzcocks as a non-album single in 1979.  It was written and sung by the band’s original bassist, Steve Diggle.  

I heard both songs on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980.  (We’ll be featuring more “Mystic Eyes” records in March, after we present this year’s “29 Posts in 29 Days.”)

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Diggle was introduced to Devoto and Shelley at a Sex Pistols show by that group’s manager, Malcolm McLaren.

“Malcolm McLaren came in with this guy and said, ‘Here’s your new bass player,’ and it was Steve, who was waiting to meet someone completely different,” Shelley told an interviewer in 2006. “By the time we'd realized the comedy of errors it was too late, so he stayed and watched the gig. The next day, we had a rehearsal . . . and within six weeks of actually meeting Steve, we were doing the first Buzzcocks gig.”

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I saw the Buzzcocks perform in 2014 at the Black Cat in Washington, DC.  (“Harmony in My Head” was their first encore that night.)

Diggle and Shelley in 2012

Click here to read a detailed description of that show.

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Click here to watch a video of the Buzzcocks performing “Harmony in My Head” – which eventually made it to #32 on the British single charts – on the legendary British television show, Top of the Pops.  

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

MC Jiffy (ft. Lil Bro' Hunter) – "The Champion" (2020)

I am invincible, unbreakable 

Unstoppable, unshakeable 

They knock me down, I get up again 

Today 2 or 3 lines is featuring a brand-new cover of the Carrie Underwood-Ludacris collaboration that NBC featured in the introduction to its Super Bowl LII broadcast in 2018.

You can click here to see the official music video for the original Underwood-Ludacris “The Champion.”

It’s OK, I guess.  But I much prefer this version of the song by MC Jiffy (featuring Lil Bro’ Hunter):

MC Jiffy is best known for covering classic sixties tunes like the Spiral Starecase’s “More Today Than Yesterday” and Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild.”

But he’s nothing if not versatile, as his greatly condensed take on “The Champion” proves.

Magazine – "Shot by Both Sides" (1978)

I wormed my way into the heart of the crowd

I was shocked to find what was allowed

This may be obvious but I’m going to say it anyway: a song can be great even if the lyrics don’t mean anything.

That’s not to say that the lyrics of a song aren’t important – they are.  But they don’t have to mean anything.

See, e.g., today’s featured song.

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“Shot by Both Sides” was released as a single on this very date in 1978.  I first heard it on Steven Lorber’s legendary “Mystic Eyes” radio program in 1980 – I don’t recall ever hearing it anywhere else.

Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto in 1976

Buzzcocks co-founder Pete Shelley (who died last month) is given credit by most sources as coming up with the distinctive guitar riff that makes “Shot by Both Sides” the stick of dynamite that it is.  (You can click here if you’d like to learn how to play that guitar riff.)

That same riff was used in a 1978 Buzzcocks B-side titled “Lipstick” – which is not a stick of dynamite.

Howard Devoto (whose real name was Howard Trafford) wrote the song’s lyrics.  Devoto, the other co-founder of the Buzzcocks, left that group before it released its first album to form Magazine.   

I’ve been a fan of the Buzzcocks for a long time, but I somehow missed out on Magazine.  I need to remedy that toot sweet.  (Better late than never.)

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Thom Yorke of Radiohead was a big fan of Magazine.  Click here to listen to Radiohead’s take on “Shot by Both Sides.”

Ministry and former Bauhaus lead singer Peter Murphy also recorded covers of “Shot by Both Sides.”  (I remember a cassette I once had – it’s probably still in my basement somewhere – that had Peter Murphy’s “Cuts You Up” followed by Pete Shelley’s “Homosapien.”  That’s an odd coincidence, and it’s even odder that I remember that.)

Click here to listen to Magazine’s original recording of “Shot by Both Sides.”

Click on the link below to buy that recording:

Lori & the Chameleons – "The Lonely Spy" (1980) (part 2)

You try to run

I cry with fear

A single shot

Today’s 2 or 3 lines features the second part of my interview of Bill Drummond, who co-wrote, co-produced, and played guitar on “The Lonely Spy,” one of the many great records I first heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show in 1980.

Bill Drummond

Click here if you missed part one of that interview.  (Or simply scroll down.)

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2 OR 3 LINES:

 “The Lonely Spy” tells the story of a Western spy who hopes to meet up with his lover and make his escape from Moscow on the Berlin train.  But before he can rendezvous with her, he is gunned down by the KGB.  It all sounds like something out of a spy novel or James Bond movie.    

BILL DRUMMOND:

“The Lonely Spy” was totally a joint effort – conceptually, lyrically and musically.  Both David Balfe and I were into cinematic pop music.  

As for literary influences, I had read every novel that Graham Greene had written – I was probably reading his Doctor Fischer of Geneva at the time.  The Third Man was an obvious influence.  

As for John le Carré, I know Dave Balfe was watching the television adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with Alec Guinness as George Smiley.  I did not have a TV at the time so had not seen it. 

I did read the whole of the “Karla Trilogy” around that time.  But for me, John le Carré never had the magic of Graham Greene. 

Alec Guinness as George Smiley

I should add here that the song had nothing whatsoever to do with James Bond – I never liked James Bond in books or films.

[NOTE: The great British writer Graham Greene penned the screenplay for the 1949 movie, The Third Man, which is set in Vienna at the outset of the Cold War.  (In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the best British movie of all time.)  Best-selling spy novelist John le Carré’s “Karla Trilogy” – which includes the 1974 novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and its two sequels (The Honorable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People) – depicts a fictional rivalry between the British spymaster George Smiley and his Soviet counterpart, who was known to Smiley only as “Karla.”]

2 OR 3 LINES:

The Cold War heated up around 1980 – there was the Solidarity crisis in Poland and the USSR deployed a new class of missiles, among other things.  Did those real-life events have any influence on the song?

BILL DRUMMOND:

Very much so.

The ongoing subliminal, and not so subliminal fear that the Cold War spread is now so forgotten.  This is a topic of conversation that I have returned to on numerous times with my children.  There seems to be an innate human assumption that if the previous generation survived an era, then everything was all right and it was never really a threat.  But of course, while you are actually living through something, you have no idea that things are going to be all right and that you will survive.

Winter in Moscow

So, yes – those real life events that one would hear about on the radio or read about in the newspapers had a profound affect on how you saw the world.  Thus it was not just the Graham Greene and John le Carré novels that had that Cold War influence on “The Lonely Spy,” it was the reality of its threat as well.  

2 OR 3 LINES:

Had either you or David Balfe been to Russia before you wrote the song?

BILL DRUMMOND:

Neither of us had actually ever been behind the Iron Curtain.

2 OR 3 LINES:

Are there any particular aspects of the arrangement or production of “The Lonely Spy” that are particularly noteworthy in your opinion? 

BILL DRUMMOND:

As I do not have a copy of the original – and even if I did, I would have nothing to play it on – the only way that I could listen to it would be to go to YouTube via and listen to it on the speaker in my phone.  And I don’t even have headphones for my phone.  Thus I am unable to pass any real comment about the production. 

What I can say is that from a song structure point of view, it is very much missing a intro riff between each of the verses.  And the choruses need to be bolstered up more in some way.  

That does not mean to say that the record’s naive charm does not get me.

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Click here to listen to “The Lonely Spy.”  

Lori & the Chameleons – "The Lonely Spy" (1980) (part 1)

There’s no way out of Russia

For the lonely spy and me

One of the many wonderful records that I first heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show back in 1980 was “The Lonely Spy” by Lori & the Chameleons.

“The Lonely Spy” was written by Bill Drummond and David Balfe.  The two men – who called themselves the Chameleons – also played on the record, which was released on their own label, Zoo Records. 

Bill Drummond

I recently e-mailed Drummond and asked if I could interview him about “The Lonely Spy.”  Here’s his reply:

My automatic answer to any interview request is to say no . . . .

But then I saw you wanted to ask me about “The Lonely Spy” – that changes everything.

I am way more than happy for you to ask me questions about “The Lonely Spy,” as long as that is all the questions are about.

And I can tell you now that record is one of the things that I am most proud of in my life.

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I was intrigued by that statement because Bill Drummond – who one music journalist has described as “a cultural magician” – has done a LOT in his life.   

Drummond first became famous as a pop musician.  His most commercially successful musical endeavor was the KLF, a pop group that he and Jimmy Cauty formed in 1987.  It became the biggest-selling singles act in the world and won the “Best British Group” BRIT Award (the British equivalent of a Grammy) in 1992.  

Bill Drummond at the 1992 BRIT Awards show

Later, he became an author – Kitty Empire of The Guardian said that his 2000 book, 45, was one of the ten best music memoirs ever written.

But perhaps what is most interesting about Drummond is that he views every aspect of life as a potential work of art.  

For example, after I interviewed Drummond via e-mail about today’s featured song, he took the e-mails we had exchanged and turned them into a radio play – something I would have never thought to do.  (Drummond has chosen the actor who will read his part, but hasn’t decided who will play me.) 

Here’s part one of my interview with Bill Drummond.  

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2 OR 3 LINES: 

Who was Lori?  What made you choose her as the singer for Lori & the Chameleons?

BILL DRUMMOND:

Lori was Lori Lartey.

Lori was an art student.

Before “The Lonely Spy” there was “Touch.”  The song “Touch” had been evolving before Big In Japan came to an end in August 1978.  But we never did anything with “Touch” within Big In Japan.  I don’t think I even brought the idea of it into rehearsals.

[NOTE: Big in Japan, which was Drummond’s first band, was formed in Liverpool in 1977.  After it broke up some fifteen months later, he and fellow band member David Balfe started Zoo Records – the label’s first release was a four-song Big in Japan EP – and formed Lori & the Chameleons, which recorded a single titled “Touch” in 1979 and today’s featured song, “The Lonely Spy,” in 1980.]

With “Touch” we were being very much influenced by disco, even if it was a disco filtered through a very white and post-punk way of thinking.  I had been totally into the whole TK Records thing out of Florida.  

[NOTE: TK Records’ most successful act was KC & the Sunshine Band, who had five #1 singles between 1975 and 1977.]

And also hugely influenced by Shadow Morton, especially the track “Past, Present and Future” by the Shangri-Las.  For me, Shadow Morton was the thinking man’s Phil Spector.

[NOTE: Click here to listen to “Past, Present and Future,” a 1966 Shangri-Las single with a piano part that was based on the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”  George “Shadow” Morton wrote and produced “Past, Present and Future” and several other singles for the Shangri-Las – including “Remember (Walking in the Sand).” He later produced Janis Ian’s “Society’s Child” and the first three Vanilla Fudge albums.] 

As with “Past, Present and Future,” “Touch” only required the “lead singer” to talk her part in the record.  Thus we were not looking for an actual singer.  It was more important to us that whoever was doing it had the right vibe about them. 

Lori was a regular at The Armadillo Tea Rooms where we all used to hang out.  

[NOTE: The Armadillo Tea Rooms was a Liverpool café located on the same block as the Cavern Club – where the Beatles appeared 292 times between 1961 and 1963 – and Eric’s, a legendary punk/new wave club that operated between 1976 and 1980.]

Neither of us knew Lori – or I can’t remember that we did.  We might have known her older sister Sue.  

Lori Lartey

We liked the way Lori dressed.  It was very – and I know I am going to sound patronizing – it was very creative.  She almost dressed in a postmodern take on the way that The Shangri-Las dressed.  A knowing innocence.

So we asked Lori.  And Lori said “Yes.” And Lori did it. 

And “Touch” was released by us on our label.

And Dave Balfe and I called ourselves the Chameleons because we liked to think we could change sound in the way that real chameleons could change color.  

This was sometime before the post-punk band from Manchester called the Chameleons came to public attention.

2 OR 3 LINES:

Was “Touch” a success?

BILL DRUMMOND:

“Touch” got radio play.  It was even the choice of one of the daytime DJs at BBC Radio 1 for “Single of the Week.”

That meant it got played on Radio 1 each and every day for a week.  And back then, daytime BBC Radio 1 reached several million listeners across the UK.  So this for us was massive.

Sire Records licensed “Touch” from us.  Sire gave it the big push.  But it never became the major hit that they and we thought it might.

The “Touch” 45

It stalled at #70 on the UK singles charts, never cracking the all important Top 40.  But it had done well enough for Sire to want the pick up an option on us doing a follow-up record.

Thus we wrote “The Lonely Spy.”

At that point Dave Balfe and I had no idea if Lori could sing.  I think we had even recorded the backing track before we asked Lori into the studio to attempt to sing the song.  I thought the way she did it was perfect.  

Other than the four Lori & the Chameleons tracks, I don’t know if Lori every recorded any more songs. Even if either of the singles we did with Lori had been successful chartwise, I don’t think we would have wanted to do any more, let alone an album.  

I had always been very much into female solo 45s that came out of nowhere, and were massive hits, and then no one ever heard from then again. My ultimate of that was “Terry” by Twinkle.  An absolute classic.

[NOTE: Click here to hear “Terry” by Twinkle (née Lynn Ripley), which was a #4 single in the UK in 1964.]

2 OR 3 LINES:

You and David Balfe co-wrote "The Lonely Spy," performed the instrumental parts, and produced the record.  What were your respective roles on “The Lonely Spy”?  Who else was involved?  

BILL DRUMMOND:

Dave Balfe and I wrote “The Lonely Spy” very much together, although the lyrics were more driven by Dave.  I played the acoustic rhythm guitar in the background.  Dave played the keyboard parts.

I was then and still am very much into chord structures.  I somehow imagined the chord structure I put together for this song sounded very Russian.  Not that I have ever had any real idea what sort of chord structures are used in real Russian songs.

Dave had a very modernist take on what pop music should sound like.  As far as he was concerned everything should start with Kraftwerk.  Anything prior to Kraftwerk should be ignored.

That said we both still did love The Beatles.  But we put that love to one side.

Dave probably did not approve of me using a guitar on the tracks.  Especially an acoustic one.

Dave and I would do any backing singing that was needed on the Lori & the Chameleon tracks.

I don’t think we used a bass player on “The Lonely Spy.”  In my mind, the record didn’t need one. This was probably a mistake on my part. That said, Dave was also a bass player.  Maybe he did add some bass to it.

The drums were either played by Tim Whittaker, who had been the drummer in Deaf School, or Gary Dwyer who was then the drummer in The Teardrop Explodes. They were both mates.

And we got a guest trumpeter in – I can’t remember his name, but we did get him to play on other Teardrop Explodes records that we worked on.  He was great.

[NOTE: After Bill e-mailed me his initial answers to my questions, he had breakfast with Mick Houghton, a veteran music-industry publicist who is the author of Fried & Justified: Hits, Myths, Break-Ups and Breakdowns in the Record Business 1978-98.  Mick   Mick had recently seen a used copy of a 1982 Zoo Records compilation album that included “The Lonely Spy” at a nearby record shop, and the two men headed there after finishing their breakfast to check the liner notes.  Later, Bill spoke with fellow Chameleon Dave Balfe, who confirmed that Tim Whittaker was the drummer on “The Lonely Spy.”  Although he also was a drummer, Gary Dwyer only sang backing vocals on the record.  The trumpet player on “The Lonely Spy” was Ray Martinez.]  

We did all the recording for The Lonely Spy down in Rockfield Studios in South Wales. It is the same studio that we did the first Echo & the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes albums. 

And I guess we were working with Hugh Jones who also engineered on those albums.

[NOTE:  Rockfield Studios is now owned by Dave Edmunds, whose “I Hear You Knocking” was the first #1 hit recorded there.  (Edmunds later produced the Flamin’ Groovies Shake Some Action album there.)  Other well-known groups who recorded at Rockfield included Black Sabbath, the Boo Radleys, City Boy, Judas Priest, Oasis, Queen, the Stone Roses, and the Stranglers.  Hugh Jones engineered or produced albums by Adam and the Ants, the Charlatans, the Damned, the Icicle Works, Modern English, Simple Minds and many others.]

2 OR 3 LINES:

Did “The Lonely Spy” get played on the radio in the UK? 

BILL DRUMMOND:

As stated in my answer to your first question, “Touch” got nationwide radio play in the UK.  We expected more of the same for “The Lonely Spy,” but it didn’t get it.  

Chartwise, the record stalled outside the Top 100.  A total flop.  We could not believe it.  

So we gave up on creating a one-off, female-focused heartbreaking novelty hit record.  We got on with what we were doing with the Bunnymen and Teardrops. 

Maybe if “The Lonely Spy” had been a hit, I would have somehow gotten sidetracked and ended up not being able to be part of others things I became involved with in the future. And in that happening I would have shot my “pop” load way too early. 

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Part two of my interview with Bill Drummond will appear in the next 2 or 3 lines.

Click here to listen to “The Lonely Spy.”

Rattles – "Devil's Son" (1972)

Well, don’t you know you make me mad?

’Cause you treat me oh so bad

There are a lot of great rock songs that don’t have great lyrics.  Case in point: today’s featured song.

But let’s not be too hard on the Rattles.  After all, they weren’t native English speakers – they were German.  

So if you find the lyrics to “Devil’s Son” rather pedestrian, why don’t you write a song with German lyrics and send it to me?  I have a funny feeling your German lyrics will be even lamer than the Rattles’ English lyrics.

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The Rattles formed in Hamburg in 1960.  That’s the year the Beatles travelled to Hamburg for a two-year apprenticeship that prepared them to become the world’s greatest boy band.

The Rattles played some of the same Hamburg venues that the Fab Four played – including the legendary Star Club – and I’m guessing that the Rattles saw the Beatles perform . . . probably more than once.  

Click here to see a video of the Rattles playing a somewhat Beatlesque song titled “She’s the One” on a German TV show in 1965.

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The group’s records sold well in Germany, but they didn’t have an international hit until 1970, when they re-recorded a song called “The Witch” – which they had originally recorded in 1968.

Edna Bejarano (circa 1970)

That re-recording of “The Witch” featured vocals by Edna Bejarano, who had only recently joined the group.  

Bejarano – the daughter of a concentration-camp survivor who played accordion in the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz – left the Rattles in 1973, shortly after the group released today’s featured song on an album titled Tonight Starring Edna:  

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Not surprisingly, most of the records Steven Lorber played on his “Mystic Eyes” show in 1980 were by American or British groups.

But Lorber played a fair number of records by Dutch bands (like the Rousers), French bands (like the Dogs), and German bands (like the Rattles).

Today’s post is the fifth 2 or 3 lines post in a row to feature records (all with English lyrics) recorded by those groups.

Click here to listen to “Devil’s Son.”

   

Dogs – "Boy" (1980)

Girl, you’re got mournful eyes

They are eyes that paralyze

And they are eyes that mesmerize me, too

Most of the music that I heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show back in 1980 was by American or British bands.

But Steven played a fair number of records by Dutch, French, and German groups, too – including today’s featured song, which was recorded by a French garage/punk band called the Dogs in 1980.

Dogs frontman Dominique Laboubée

The Dogs formed in Rouen – the French city where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake – in 1973.  The band took its name from the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

Allmusic described the Dogs as a “treasured cult band,” but none of the dozen or so albums that the group released were big sellers.

In 2002, the Dogs travelled to the U.S. for its first American tour.  The band’s frontman and songwriter, Dominique Laboubée, collapsed during their first concert – which took place in Worcester, MA – and was taken to a local hospital.  The 45-year-old Laboubée was diagnosed with cancer, and died two weeks later.

Click here to listen to “Boy,” which was released on the Dogs’ second studio album, Walking Shadows, in 1980.

Rousers – "Nice & Friendly People" (1980)

The way people make me do the things

I really don’t want to do

Don’t want to do

DON’T WANT TO DO! 

Sanford and Son was a bad TV series.  (Today it would be viewed as not only bad, but also offensive.)

But Fred Sanford was a wise man, as this meme demonstrates:

All you parents, teachers, bosses, wives, and girlfriends who need a really good New Year’s resolution for 2020 could do worse than to follow Fred Sanford’s advice.

(That would be a good New Year’s resolution for 2021 as well.  And for 2022.  And for . . . well, you get the picture.)

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I know you think you’re doing me a favor by getting all up in my business and giving me a lot of unsolicited advice, but you’re not.  (Trust me.)

The singer of today’s featured song – an office clerk who “used to be a bright kid” but now is “just a misfit” – knows that even well-intentioned folks need to mind their own beeswax:

Although they are nice and friendly

They have got to let me live my life!

That should be as plain as the nose on your face, but there are a lot of people in my life who just don’t get it.  (If you think you might be one of those people, YOU ARE!)

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Like the two Rousers songs featured in the two previous 2 or 3 lines posts, you best believe “Nice & Friendly People” is a stick of dynamite.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why the Rousers weren’t a bigger success.  They were a Dutch group, so maybe it’s not that surprising that they didn’t do well in the UK or the U.S.  But why didn’t the Dutch buy their records?

If Steven Lorber wasn’t the only American DJ to appreciate the Rousers, he’s the only one I know about.  He played a number of Rousers tracks on his “Mystic Eyes” show on WHFS back in 1980.  Otherwise, I would have never heard of the band – and neither would have you.

Click here to listen to “Nice & Friendly People.”  (That video – which was posted in May 2017, and is the only video of the song I’ve been able to find online – had attracted all of 67 views before I put a link to it in this post. )