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.)

*     *     *     *     *

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.”)

*     *     *     *     *

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.”

*     *     *     *     *

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.

*     *     *     *     *

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:

Buzzcocks -- "Something's Gone Wrong Again" (1979)

Look at my watch, just to tell the time

But the hand's come off mine

Something's gone wrong again

(That's happened to me.  Has it ever happened to you?)

I've never been a big fan of live music shows.  Most of the time, I prefer listening to a band's recorded music than seeing them perform live.  There's usually no comparison between the quality of the music on studio albums and live albums.  

Of course, sometimes you want to be able to say you've seen a band in person.  I'm very glad I've seen the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks, and Blue Oyster Cult, and Leon Russell, and Doug Sahm, and the Flamin' Groovies perform live.  

(Not the Sonic Youth show I saw)

In 1998, I took my 14-year-old son to see Sonic Youth at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.  I love Sonic Youth and I was really looking forward to seeing them perform live.  But my timing was off.

Washington was the band's first stop on a tour promoting its new album, A Thousand Leaves.  The album was released one week after the Washington appearance, so I had no chance to hear it before the show.

I almost never like music the first time I hear it.  I usually have to hear an album two or three times before I start to respond to it.  Because I had no chance to hear A Thousand Leaves before seeing Sonic Youth perform that night, that show was a big disappointment -- with the exception of a couple of more familiar encore numbers, all they played that night were the songs from A Thousand Leaves. 

I bought that album shortly after seeing that show, and it became one of my favorite Sonic Youth albums.  But when I heard that music for the first time at the 9:30 Club in 1998, it was just a lot of noise.

Unfortunately, I had a similar experience when I went to see the Buzzcocks recently.  The Buzzcocks -- a British punk/pop band that was formed in 1976, broke up in 1981, and re-formed years later -- was in town to promote their new album, The Way.

The Buzzcocks then

We've come a long way in terms of digital distribution technology since 1998.  Back then, there was no such thing as iTunes -- if I wanted to listen to A Thousand Leaves, I had to go to a record store and buy the CD.

When I learned that the Buzzcocks had a new album out, I assumed that new album would be the focus of their live show.  That didn't make me happy, but I was prepared to make the best of it by buying the new album online and familiarizing myself with it before going to the live show.  

For some cockamamie reason, the new album wasn't available on iTunes or Amazon.  It was available exclusively through PledgeMusic, a website used by bands who wanted to pre-sell their music.  

Or I should say it had been available through PledgeMusic.  If I had known about the album earlier this summer, I could have downloaded it.  But by the time I heard about the Buzzcocks coming to Washington, PledgeMusic had raised 153% of the band's goal, and so had stopped accepting orders.

The Buzzcocks now

I could have purchased a CD or a vinyl LP -- assuming that I could have figured out how to do so on the PledgeMusic website, WHICH MAKES IT PRETTY MUCH IMPOSSIBLE TO ACTUALLY BUY ANY MUSIC.  

And even if I had figured out how to buy a CD or LP, it would have taken a week or two or longer to be delivered.  I didn't have a week or two or whatever before the show.

It is incomprehensible to me why a band would want to make it virtually impossible for someone to buy its music.  

Maybe it's just as well I wasn't able to buy the album.  From what I could tell at the show, the album sucks.

But I'm not really sure of that because the sound at the venue where I heard the Buzzcocks was so loud and so distorted that what I heard was a lot of undifferentiated noise and two songs at the end that I actually recognized.

In other words, it was a bad news-good news situation.  The bad news was that the Buzzcocks sucked.  The good news was that they played for a really long time -- so at least I got my money's worth.

("It was 35 years ago today . . .")

"Something's Gone Wrong Again" was released in North America exactly 35 years ago today on Singles Going Steady, a compilation album.  I don't think the Buzzcocks played "Something's Gone Wrong Again" at the live show I saw, but I wouldn't swear to it.  

Here's "Something's Gone Wrong Again":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Pete Shelley -- "Homosapien" (1981)

I'm the shy boy

You're the coy boy

And you know we're

Homosapien, too

Actually, you and I are Homo sapiens sapiens.  (At least I am.  Sometimes I wonder about you.)  

That's the subspecies of Homo sapiens ("thinking man") that includes anatomically modern humans, and which began to appear about 200,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens is an older category that evolved from the earlier Homo erectus species about 500,000 years ago and which included several archaic varieties of hominids with a brain size similar to that of modern humans, but which are distinguished from modern humans because they have a thick skull and prominent eyebrow ridges but lack a prominent chin.

Picture the Geico caveman:

Or picture ex-Boston Red Sox player Johnny Damon (who was obviously separated at birth from the guy above):

You can make fun of Damon's looks if you want to, but here's a picture of his wife, Michelle:

(Michelle reportedly made a few of the Red Sox wives and girlfriends unhappy by obnoxiously comparing her eight-carat canary-yellow diamond engagement ring to their engagement rings.)

In 1976, Pete Shelley co-founded the very successful pop-punk group, the Buzzcocks.  The Buzzcocks broke up in 1981, and Shelley released a solo album titled Homosapien [sic] later that year.  The title track of that album was released as a single that same year. 

Homo is Latin for human being, but it is also a pejorative term for a homosexual male.  Shelley's reference to homosapien may simply be a reference to modern humans ("thinking man" in Latin), or it may be a reference to a wise, self-aware homosexual.

"Homosapien" was banned by the BBC for allegedly making "explicit reference to gay sex."  Shelley does not admit to being gay -- or, at least, does not admit to being just gay.  Here's what Shelley had to say in 1982:

That the BBC thought it was a gay song is great, fantastic.  I'm a sexual person, I don't bother delineating myself into homo, hetero or bi, it just depends on the person, the situation and what happens.

In some ways it can be interpreted as being homosexual but it's basically about being a human being and having got over your bestial impulses and fallen in love with someone who's a homosapien rather than a canine or something.

You'll probably interpret that as though I've just had a long affair with an Alsatian dog.  It's just really good that I fell in love with someone of my own species. I  don't take a copyright out on the ideas. I haven't got a monopoly on them.  If a song throws up ideas for people then I'd rather they discuss it amongst themselves.

Whoa, nelly!  Who said anything about affairs with Alsatian dogs, Pete -- although Alsatians are exceptionally handsome dogs.  (Shelley is undoubtedly referring to what Americans would call German Shepherds, which were called Alsatians by the British until fairly recently.)

"Homosapien" was on the mix tape that my late friend Scott made for me about 30 years ago.  Click here to read more about Scott and that tape.

Here's "Homosapien":

Click here to order "Homosapien" from Amazon: