Oh Jebus. Picking my favorite band is harder than picking my favorite song. However, I think I have to give the ribbon to Buzzcocks. I’ve been listening to them since my freshman year of college (875 years ago), and their music from the late 70’s and early 80’s still holds up incredibly well. I like a lot of their more recent stuff – they re-emerge into the studio and touring scene every few years – but the older songs remain all-time favorites. There are so many things I love about this band: the plaintive, lovelorn lyrics; the raucous, raw, high-energy sound; the other bands that have sprung from the Buzzcocks well… If I were told I could listen to only one band for the rest of my life, I’d choose these guys and never regret it.
My pay-to-download music source of choice, eMusic, recently made several Buzzcocks albums available in “special edition” format – with demos and other extras – so I have begun to recreate my collection. I’ve started with their first album, 1978’s Another Music in a Different Kitchen, and as far as I am concerned, every single song on the album is a gem. I’ve picked Moving Away From The Pulsebeat for this post, mostly because I am in love with the drumming. First, a video from (I believe) the band’s first reunion tour somewhere around 1989:
And then the album version, which has a hotter tempo and must be played VERY LOUD for maximum joy:
(Not sure why they put that silent bit and then the weird coda at the end. It’s a riff from their song Boredom and then an infinitely rising scale… and it’s all totally unconnected to the rest of the album. Weird.)
Someone's Got To Say It 