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August 20, 2008
Ripping Vinyl, part 4
After many years of musical obsession completely removed from a record player, my pile of vinyl now grows incrementally, aided by the quality LP sellers of New York City. Baubles from the treasure chest will be posted here whenever it seems appropriate...
The sharp-dressed man who appears to be sitting in Adrian Veidt's office* on the cover above is none other than revered Buzzcocks' frontman Pete Shelley. By end of the 70s, the Buzzcocks were straining a bit at the creative seams. 1979's A Different Kind of Tension was the end result of a dramatic creative growth that leaped from wanking lyrics to Burroughs quoting (I guess the scope of that leap depends on your literary tastes). Despite continued growth, the 'cocks weren't charting like they used to, and as such, weren't too flush with cash. Shelley had holed up with future Human League knob-twiddler Martin Rushent and fell deeply in love with the possibility of synthetic instrumentation. Seeing diminished need for his bandmates, he got his lawyer to fire off a quick letter disbanding the seminal Manchester punks. Goodwill all around, obviously. A cloud of bad feeling may have marred the 1981 release of his first solo record, Homosapien, but the sharp pop tunes in contains are ripe for re-examination.
The album's title cut preceded the album and became an underground hit despite facing a total ban by the BBC. Their grounds were that the song contained "explicit" references to gay sex, though the meaning of that term has clearly been tightened in the intervening years. Looking at the lyric sheet now-- with its coy boys, shy boys, and cruisers--it does seem very much a statement on Pete's up-'til-then quiet bisexuality. The way he stresses the "homo" in homosapien is a clever way of reclaiming a schoolyard taunt, while affirming the basic humanity of the stigmatized. It's also a pretty slammin' synth-pop number, confirming that Shelley could write memorable hooks in his sleep. I'm certainly not the first to make this observation, but try singing "North American Scum!" over "Homosapien Too!" for an easy demonstration of the song's continuing influence.
Pete Shelley - "Yesterday's Not Here"
Of all the painfully on-the-nose lyrics in rock history, "Looking back on life, is such a retrospective thing..." has to win some sort of a prize of infamy for attempting to sound deep while saying absolutely nothing. It's so clunky and obvious an opening line that it almost becomes charming again. The rest of the track needs no rationalizations. Again, Shelley can't help but write a huge anthemic chorus, which Rushent complements and improves with energetic Moroder-lite synths.
* It's interesting though probably coincidental to note that Watchmen's Veidt takes his alias from the works of another P. Shelley
Previously:
- the Raincoats, live @ the BBC
- Linear Movement play "the Game"
- A hole where the Romeo should be
Posted by Jeff Klingman at August 20, 2008 10:50 AM
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