REVIEW: The Buzzcocks – The Peel Sessions Album (Strange Fruit)
It’s not right that John Peel is dead. But thanks to you tube and the modern computer age his face and voice is only the touch of a button away. I would only listen to his show a handful of times a year but I would always take a new band away with me from one of those infamous broadcasts. Not being old enough myself I can only imagine how exciting it must have been to listen to his show in the late 70’s as punk was exploding in tiny pubs and clubs around the UK. Here was a DJ on National Radio of all places playing underground, independently released music, brave enough to risk his career by broadcasting music with anti-establishment messages by bands that may have only learned to play the month before he put them out on the air. Not only this but he would hand pick groups he considered worthy to record sessions most of which contained an unreleased song or two or at least a radically different arrangement from the original versions. It must have been a punk’s paradise.
One of these bands he loved and deservedly so was Manchester’s The Buzzcocks. And what is more you can use the The Peel Sessions Album as an introduction compilation album to the band. It’s how I got into them after all. It’s not exactly a greatest hits but you get the gist of a band at their beginnings and height. Notably missing is the all-time classic single Ever Fallen In Love but whilst that song may be indelibly linked to John Peel they didn’t record it for him at any of these four separate sessions recorded between September 1977 to May 1979 so it doesn’t appear hear.
Fast Cars opened the bands 1978 debut Another Music In A Different Kitchen, it does here as well but the bass guitar sounds horrible compared to the proper LP version. Playing in a band myself it reminds me of the floppy fart sound you get when you turn up to a show and you have to use the others band equipment that’s not set up for your rig. It doesn’t put me off Fast Cars none though. What a great song. Pete Shelley’s voice clearly and (almost) tunefully belts through the clutter and made me realise instantly that The Buzzcocks were 10 steps above the likes of 999 and Chelsea. Here was a group of punks not afraid of pop, melody and non-mucho gang style backing vocals. Man, that’s all I want from a punk band. Noise Annoys and What Do I Get? are cases in point. These both have incredible hooks and great choruses. The only place where the band fails in my eyes is with some of the weak lyrical wordplay and clumsy couplets they employ. One of my favourite moments on the record is the track Promises but it contains the lines “We had to change but you stayed the same, You wouldn’t change, Oh what a shame.” But at least the put it in the middle eight. For a punk band at the time to use a middle eight at all was an achievement in itself.
What this record showed me when I got hold of my copy in the late 90’s was just how incredibly exciting it must have been being a music fan and a teenager when these tracks were originally released 20 years before I heard them. They are bursting with energy and sheer joy. It’s just nuts that in England when people say do you like The Buzzcocks, the general population would think you’re speaking about a comedy game show. It’s tragic.
Below is a great interview from ’79 plus a live stab at What Do I Get?
