So to begin at the beginning: It is an Autumn, moonless night in Manchester, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, courters’-and- tramps’ railway arches limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, barge-bobbing shipping canal.
Buzzcocks Love Bites, as Ian Dury said, there ain’t half been some clever bastards and make no mistake Buzzcocks are four of them.
Much as I love their debut LP the Buzzcocks’ 1978 follow up is better and marked that rarest of things, a young band living up to and exceeding every last aspect of their immense promise*. They took their joyous spasming punk energy and used it to hot wire their melodically ambitious songs of love, lust and regret, tapping into their admiration of Can on the way. Almost incidentally they scored their biggest hit, the evergreen ‘Ever Fallen In Love’. Clever bastards.
I love the individuality of the Buzzcocks, they refused to let the tumult of the punk phenomenon ossify around them; no daft safety-pin and leather uniforms for this lot. Love Bites greets us with a nice portrait of four keen looking young men looking young enough to have just bunked off school that morning for the photo shoot. The LP cover is a doozy too, the band name embossed over the portrait, ‘Love’ embossed’ on the front cover and ‘Bites’ embossed on the rear** in Magritte-borrowing script.
It starts with an appropriately loud racket for 1978 too. ‘Real World’ hoves into view guitars sawing like, erm, saws – a fabulously cold metal din. Then Steve Garvey’s bass slithers in to add some melody and the tune grinds on with Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle’s guitars sounding belligerent. As always Shelley’s vocals are great, beamed in direct from a secret lair halfway between angry and ennui.
I will ignore ‘Ever Fallen In Love’, you know how great that is. I remember the comedian Stephen Wright telling a joke about having a tape of The Best of Music^, well if I was compiling one ‘Ever Fallen In Love’ would probably be the opening track on it. I’ve spent many a sweaty night happily bouncing around a dance floor to it. So consider it ignored for the purposes of this review then. Yup, so, like totally ignored.
I have a bit of a thing for the churning, pulsing ‘Operators Manual’, the band shoehorned all manner of time changes and melodies into a song lasting only 3:33. I love the nascent cynicism of ‘Nostalgia’, there’s a different kind of tension here stretching a young man’s past present and future, ‘nostalgia for an age yet to come’; all that good existential bollocks that young folk have got the time to worry about.
‘Just Lust’ and ‘Sixteen Again’ take us careering down the same paths as ‘Nostalgia’ did, albeit with a few new hormones in the mix. The Buzzcocks are a wiser, weightier, somehow sadder band than the ones who cracked off ‘Orgasm Addict’ only 10 months earlier. Again the band are absolutely firing on all cylinders here.
Love Bites chucks us an instrumental to kick off side 2, ‘Walking Distance’, a spritely bit of rocking features some great chiming guitars and busy drumming from, the ever brilliant, John Maher. The Steve Diggle penned and sung track ‘Love Is Lies’ is up next, featuring an (be shocked punk!) acoustic guitar and a lovely tune that sails down the Manchester Ship Canal to fraternize with a distinctly Merseybeat tinged tune.
But 47-year-old steely eyed nihilist that I am, I enjoy ‘Nothing Left’ rather more, even though it cops some tricks from ‘Real World, hoping you might have forgotten what was happening 8 songs ago. Again the guitar sound is particularly yummy and deep, breaking out nice and discordant to the left and right of the thrumming rhythm. Whereas ‘E.S.P’ is just a superb, dark tuneful racket, that I found myself humming in a lift this morning.
The crowning glory on Love Bites for me is the excellent closing instrumental ‘Late For The Train’, a close cousin to Another Music In A Different Kitchen‘s ‘Moving Away From The Pulsebeat’. My mate had a Can compilation where Pete Shelley wrote the liner notes and you can hear the Krautrock influence ringing true and through this closer. JUST LISTEN TO THOSE DRUMS!! Bunch of skinny kids who can’t play? that definition of punks just doesn’t fit here. I would happily listen to albums and albums worth of Buzzcocks doing this. It is a shame they didn’t.
Endlessly inventive, rather arch and naïve, euphoric and melancholy. Sitting back all this time later, having lived with these tracks for almost 30 years now, I wonder if any band ever captured all the contradictory feelings and crisis of being a smart aleck adolescent as well as Buzzcocks.
Love Bites, it really does.
896 Down.
PS. ‘There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards’ by Ian Dury & The Blockheads features my second favourite verse of a song about Albert Einstein ever. True story.
Einstein can't be classed as witless.
He claimed atoms were the littlest.
When you did a bit of splitting-em-ness
Frightened everybody shitless
*even if there was only 6 months between the two LPs, bands had to work for a living back then.
**much like my own.
^and only liking the first side of the tape.
Before my time, but certainly warming up to it. 63′ was also a good year, some say the best. Can’t tell you how long I have been searching for good Vinyls though, even when I wasn’t. I mean, I know they are buried SOMEwhere. But I must submit that the new stuff these days (of course it is still early in the year so not all of it is out yet) is fiyah! Or as the little DooDoos some time say Bodd.
Before my time, but certainly warming up to it. 63′ was also a good year, some say the best. Can’t tell you how long I have been searching for good Vinyls though, even when I wasn’t. I mean, I know they are buried SOMEwhere. But I must submit that the new stuff these days (of course it is still early in the year so not all of it is out yet) is fiyah! Or as the little DooDoos some time say ‘Bodd!’.
Hi Nick (Nicholas?) cheers for dropping by my gilded palace of nonsense.
The ‘Cocks were always a class act, lightyears ahead of most punk, they were just so fleet-footed. Umm, Fiyah! it is.
Well, better late than never, right? My flare for music (I’m sure you know that burning desire mate!) just keeps on getting brighter and stronger, brighter and stronger (8)
There. Is. No .THE…you should know this 😀
Haha, I tried damnit, I tried!! The definite article is a right tough bigger to avoid. 🐖
I like the sound, the band name and I can dance to it.
I don’t know much by them, but I’m with you about Ever Fallen In Love. One of the best ever. And that’s coming from a guy who isn’t much of a, eh, punker.
Some good inventive melodies here. Trust me, I’m a doctor.
Cheese taken! Perfect review of a perfect album. I agree that the Buzzies come into their own on this album – and indeed would not conform to the stereotype ‘punk’ or ‘new wave’ labels. But in a way, that was the real heart of Punk. Think X-Ray Spex, Pistols, Stranglers, SLF, Adverts, Siouxsie Sioux.. even The Undertones. (I mean what self-respecting punk wears a roll-neck sweater on TV? Or even goes on Top Of The Pops!) They were all able to be themselves after hitching a ride on the punk band wagon. Put down your glue-bag and your arse-flap will follow. (Yes, Yoda was a punk rocker, according to The Ramones, or did I hear that wrong?)
Notice I didn’t add The Clash there? But of course there was even room for middle-class politie-punks, and although I would rather listen to Inflammable Material than London Calling, there was a place for everyone – a grotty little pub backroom with a shit PA and half a set list. Oh, those were the days my friend (I’m surprised no punk outfit covered that Russian folk song, apart from Mary Hopkins, or did they?) One, two three four. Those were the days my fiends, We sung and pogoed forever and a day. We’d sniff the glue we choose, we’d fight and never lose, for we were young and Tom Robinson was gay. Come on, sing along. La la la la la la…
Have I done my ‘Nurse! The screens!’ reply recently?
They’re just not nearly feted enough, the ‘Cocks. Such an incredible band, maybe too subtle. You ever see them in their heyday?
I take what you mean entirely, I guess when punk became a fashion the idea of what it looked like coalesced.
Yes, they were a good live band too. For punk bands, that’s was a rare thing… that nobody really cared about that much at the time. The Dead Kennedy’s, for instance, were so fast when they played live, that they tripped over themselves and everything just tumbled into a noisy, babbling heap of speed freak. Shame, as I love the guitar on Fresh Fruit to this day.
I ate your nurse, with a nice drop of special brew. Please send another.
Friend of mine saw The Damned last night … Only 33 years too late I reckon (counting roughly from the date of Eloise).
Waits was right, there is a world going on underground.
Can I just point out that I had no prior knowledge of Mr Shelley’s sad passing.
How surpassingly clever of you to hook in King Crimson fans and aspiring Mersey poets in that first para. Then deliver a neat coup de grass (a drug reference, probably) with a quatrain of vintage Dury in the footnotes. You should run a university class on this stuff.
BTW, I have a CD that has the first two albums easily accommodated (they didn’t really band on much, did they?). Have pulled it out for a spin tomorrow morning. Cheers.
‘bang on’
Thank you Bruce, thats kind of you, one day you’ll be widely quoted by my biographers.
I don’t tend to associate the opening with KC, Dylan T is a local boy made good for me. I listened to Under Milk Wood on the way to work the other day which is why I was thinking of it.
I was raised on Duty but I don’t own any at all. That’s shameful.
I love Buzzcocks – a band which everyone adds ‘the’ to, but shouldn’t; I have only just noticed that.
Does ‘starless and bible black’ come from Mr Thomas? Didn’t know that. But then, most of my knowledge of literature comes from progressive rock albums.
Yup it’s the opening, I do a very good impression of Richard Burton reading it. Well, I say it’s good.
Just seen this remark,,,redeemed somewhat.
I love the title song
..”In the dead of night..”
I can only assume this band is huge in beekeeper circles.
I begin to see what you did there!
How many bands made racket back in 78? Pistols and these guys….
Nah, there were lots of spiky little buggers out there making a 3 chord racket by ’78. I love how tuneful this lot are too.
I like the sounds of that densely pack 3:33 – and I’d never say no to deep & delicious guitar tones either!
Quite right Geoff, you are clearly a discerning gentleman.
I have moments!