As usual, I’m (kind of) closing the blog down over the festive period.

Every day, weekends and holidays included, up to Monday 6 January 2025, you will find an hour-long mix featuring one particular band.

mp3: One Hour of……Magazine

Definitive Gaze
Model Worker
Philadelphia
Give Me Everything
Rhythm of Cruelty
You Never Knew Me
The Light Pours Out Of Me
Because You’re Frightened
Feed The Enemy
Shot By Both Sides
Permafrost
Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
This Poison
Song From Under The Floorboards

Everything would be just fine if I had the right pastime.

JC

aka The Vinyl Villain incorporating Sexy Loser

#055: Magazine– ‘Rhythm of Cruelty’ (Virgin Records ’79)

Hello friends,

this is how discogs introduce Magazine: “Magazine were an English post-punk band active from 1977 to 1981, then again from 2009 to 2011. The band was formed by Howard Devoto after leaving punk band Buzzcocks in early 1977. Devoto had decided to create a more progressive and less “traditional” rock band.”

Well, I think there is no arguing that – in hindsight – Magazine were, at least in comparison to, let’s settle for “Buzzcocks punk”, more progressive and less traditional. But the question is: how did you see this development back in 1978 or thereabouts? I mean, if memory serves correctly, Devoto was seen as a bit of a betrayer to punk when leaving Buzzcocks … just in order to front this strange modern New Wave combo. Comparisons were inevitable – and, as it turned out, they were inevitable for quite some years to come, which was nonsense from the beginning on, as far as I’m concerned.

What I am trying to say is: a lot of people rather wasted their time complaining about Devoto having left Buzzcocks and blaming Magazine for it than closely listening to early Magazine with an open mind. I am convinced that that would have helped everyone a lot, the buying public …. and Magazine as well.

Me, I never had such problems. Why? Well, because I was too young again – I missed both ‘Real Life’ and ‘Secondhand Daylight’ and Magazine only came to my attention via ‘Play’, the live album from 1980. And boy, it blew me away! The quality is awesome and so is the delivery. If you don’t know this album, get hold of it now! But I digress, singles it is in this series and singles it shall be!

There are five Magazine 7”s which are almost equally good, and if my own rules wouldn’t forbid it, they were all included in the 111 – box: ‘Shot by Both Sides’, ‘Give Me Everything’ (because of its B-Side, ‘I Love You You Big Dummy’), ‘A Song From Under The Floorboards’, the 2022 release of ‘The Light Pours Out Of Me’ … but no, this is the one, because it is a) marginally better than the other four and b) will meet with the approval of at least one overseas reader, one which probably would sue me unhesitatingly if I chose something else than this today, just because he can:

mp3:  Magazine – Rhythm of Cruelty

Magazine’s fourth single, still a killer tune – for Jonny.

Take good care, you lot,

Dirk

Magazine released nine singles between 1978 and 1981.   Only two of them cracked the Top 75. The first was the debut Shot By Both Sides which made its way up to #41.  The only other success story came via the eighth single, which reached #54 in July 1980.

mp3: Magazine – Sweetheart Contract

It was a bit of a strange one.   Two previous singles from The Correct Use of Soap had gone nowhere.  A later non-album single also flopped.  And yet, this one, released a few months after the album had enjoyed its brief four-week stay in the charts, made a small splash.

I’m thinking it probably had a lot to do with the fact that initial copies came with an additional, free 7″ as a double pack, offering up three live tracks that had been recorded in May 1980 at the Russell Club in Manchester.

mp3: Magazine – Feed The Enemy (live)
mp3: Magazine – Twenty Years Ago (live)
mp3: Magazine – Shot By Both Sides (live)

The most interesting one is the very different version of Feed The Enemy.

The original, as found on the album Secondhand Daylight, is a slow-paced affair, extending out to almost six minutes in length, in which Howard Devoto  seems to carefully and cautiously select his words over a tune packed with anxiety and menace.   The live version comes in at just under four minutes and is a raucous new-wave take on things played at 100mph, driven along in particular by Barry Adamson‘s frantic bass and John McGeogh‘s angular guitar work.  Over time, I’ve come to enjoy it, but I was shocked and to some extent horrified the first time I played it, given it was such a departure from the version I knew so well.

The singular 7″ of Sweetheart Contact came with this version of Feed The Enemy as the b-side.  You had to pick up the double-pack for the other two tracks.

JC

I typed ‘Magazine 14 February, Manchester’ into Google the other day, and to my astonishment and delight in equal measures, I was guided to a post from the original blog, one that I had long presumed was lost forever.  No apologies are offered for delving back into the vaults for the second post of the day………

———

I’m not sure if I can exactly recall what I’ve done with Mrs Villain on previous Valentine’s Nights. I know we’ve gone out to restaurants, taken in a movie, stayed in with a takeaway (and watched a movie!) and I’m sure there was one year we were both recovering from stinking colds and just shut out the entire world. But I couldn’t ever pin down any precise event in any precise year.

But neither of us will ever forget Valentine’s Night 2009.

Regular readers will know I’ve long been hopelessly devoted to Howard and the boys in Magazine. Along with Johnny Cash, they were the act I most regretted never taking the opportunity to go see live. And after almost 30 years since their break-up, I had long given up hope…..

And just like buses when you’ve been hanging around waiting impatiently for an eternity, two of the damn things come along together – in other words, having made all the arrangements to go to the hometown show in Manchester on Saturday 14th, I got an 11th hour opportunity to also go along to the Glasgow show on Monday 16th.

Both turned out to be quite special, although what I saw in Glasgow was an identical set-list and an almost identical set of spoken intros by Howard Devoto. If it hadn’t been for Dave Formula being hatless in Glasgow, the whole thing could have easily been a facsimilie. Soundwise, the Manchester show triumphed, but I reckon this was as much to do with the poor acoustics in The Glasgow Academy (I know from reading some initial reviews of the home town gig that some fans were critical of the acoustics at their Academy – believe me they are infinitely better than the similarly named venue 220 miles north….for one thing, I heard some great backing vocals in Manchester, last night they were totally lost)

Don’t get me wrong….I’m not saying the Glasgow gig was anything less than stunning…..I was the one who was spoiled by seeing them in a superior location in front of an ecstatic and adoring home crowd.

As I mentioned, it was identical set-lists in the same running order. Much of the set was as anticipated in advance in terms of fan favourites and songs that have appeared on various ‘Best Of’ collections released by a desperate record company over the past 25 years. But equally, there were some real unexpected gems and oddities drawn from obscure b-sides and long-forgotten LP tracks to keep the hardcore fans happy and the casual fans bewildered.

It was of course, just 4/5 of the classic Magazine line-up with Howard Devoto on lyrics, Barry Adamson on bass, Dave Formula on keyboards and John Doyle on drums. Taking the place of the late and great John McGeogh on guitar was Norman Fisher-Jones (aka Noko), formerly Howard’s sidekick in Luxuria. Praise has to be heaped on Noko, for he did a fantastic job when he really was on a hiding to nothing…..

The band were on tremendous form, playing with a passion and an energy that belies their years (the average age must be nearer 60 than 50….). Howard’s vocals were much better than any of us I think could dare have ever imagined….maybe the fact he hasn’t sung on stage that often in recent years has protected his throat and thus allowed him to sound so good. Barry’s bass playing was a joy to behold, especially on some of the real up-tempo numbers where, working in tandem with John, he drove the songs on at a frantic pace yet remaining cool and controlled and making it look effortless. Dave’s keyboard playing??? I think he might have hit a bum note….or maybe two….over the course of each night….but that was probably deliberate (or is it just my ears at my age?) Anyway, every Magazine fan knows how important his contribution to the sound has been over the years, and live, his playing was every bit as soulful, poppy and progressive as you would expect depending on the song.

If I had a grumble, it would be that a few of my own personal favourites didn’t make the set-list, but what was played more than made up for it:-

Intro – The Thin Air (taped..not live)
The Light Pours Out of Me
Model Worker
The Great Beautician/The Honeymoon Killers
Because You’re Frightened
You Never Knew Me
Rhythm of Cruelty
I Want To Burn Again
This Poison
A Song from Under the Floorboards
Permafrost
The Book
Twenty Years Ago/Definitive Gaze
Parade
Shot By Both Sides

ENCORE:
Thank You (Falentinme Be Mice Elf Again)
Motorcade

ENCORE 2
I Love You You Big Dummy

Too many highlights to mention, and not a dull moment in a 90-minute set. But the sheer joy of the opening drum-beats on Saturday as I realised after all these years I was really seeing the band in the flesh will live with me until I no longer have the required grey matter in my brain….and even then I still reckon I’ll get unexpected flashbacks.

On this basis, I have to advise any reader who might not be sure if the fact that one of their all-time favourite bands of old have recently reformed and hit the road for a final payday before its time to pull on the slippers and puff on the pipe that it’s well worth taking a gamble on going along.

Magazine didn’t disappoint – they surpassed every one of my hopes and expectations.

I am one very very happy chappy right now. I think you get the message.

mp3 : Magazine – Permafrost (live)*
mp3 : Magazine – A Song From Under The Floorboards (live)*

*Recorded at Melbourne Festival Hall, 6th September 1980.

Happy Listening.

————

JC

Magazine – After The Fact (1982)

That’s the problem with setting hard and fast rules – they inevitably come back to bite you in the backside.

The #2 position in this rundown should be occupied by The Correct Use of Soap, the album I reckon is as close to perfection as any that has ever been released  – and yup, JTFL, I include the cover of ‘Thank You…..’ in that assessment.   (Click here to be let in on that private joke).

The problem is that I didn’t buy said album in 1980.  As I’ve said before, and it has long been a source of immense regret, I didn’t pick up on Magazine until the band had broken up.

After The Fact was my first purchase. It is therefore, along with some later Magazine material including other compilations, box sets and a much later reunion LP, eligible for inclusion in the rundown, and I’ve decided, after careful and due consideration, that it is just as worthy as slotting it at #2 as ‘Soap’.

Controversial?  For sure.   But it’s my party, and I can ‘cheat’ if I want to.

The ten tracks across the album offer an overview of the band’s career.  Four of them had been released as singles, but at the same time, four other songs selected as 45s here in the UK were left off.  Each album is represented – Real Life (1978) and Secondhand Daylight (1979) both have three songs, while The Correct Use of Soap (1980) and Magic, Murder and The Weather (1981) have two.   The fact that my favourite record is relatively under-represented only added to the utter joy and elation I experienced when I finally bought myself a copy, which would have been just a matter of weeks after the compilation.

The back of the sleeve comes with a wonderfully-written essay from Paul Morley in which he reflects, in his usual rambling but engaging style, as to why Magazine were such an important, essential and always likely to be unappreciated part of the post-punk era. As you can imagine, the essay contains a number of magnificently structured phrases and sentences, but one of the more readily understandable is what really gets to the heart, as far as I’m concerned, about what made the group so compelling at the time and why they remain so relevant more than 40 years later:-

“Magazine took pop music in the direction of a new simplicity: that is, they sought to prove nothing, they were subtle, frank and alluring and there was every chance you would be amazed.”

All of this and more for this very impressionable late-teen.   They became the second group, in very short times, to emerge out of Manchester and make me fleetingly yearn to live elsewhere other than Glasgow.  Joy Division/New Order had been the first, and The Smiths would later prove to be a third.  I had yet to fully discover the wonders of The Fall….and I suppose it’s at this juncture it is worth confessing that Mark E Smith is conspicuous by his absence from this rundown.  I make no apologies and I make no excuses…it just sometimes works out that way.

For decades, I sneered at the idea of bands getting back together and reuniting after years apart.  I never wanted to entertain the thought of going along and seeing old heroes in their dotage doing everything possible to ruin their legacy with a substandard and embarrassing performance in front of fans who really should have been, in the words of Lloyd Cole, old enough to know better.

I did a handbrake turn after the events of 14 February 2009.  A Magazine gig, at the Academy in Manchester, after an absence of 29 years.  My first time seeing and hearing the songs in a live setting.  Two nights later, and I was in the audience in Glasgow.  Later in the year, at the end of August, I’d see them in Edinburgh, on a night when they played two half-sets, with a break in-between.  The first half, and I had no idea this is how it was going to pan out until about the third song in, involve playing The Complete Use Of Soap in its entirety in the same order as the record.  Needless to say, I couldn’t stop smiling afterwards for weeks.

mp3:   Magazine – A Song From Under The Floorboards

I wasn’t aware, when I first got familiar with Magazine, that this particular song was based on the novella Notes From Underground, written by Fyodor Dostoevsky back in 1864. Around the time that Magazine were undertaking the decades-later comeback, which culminated with the album No Thyself (2011), a piece in The Guardian newspaper suggested that basing on a song on a novel by Dostoyevsky was not the action of the typical pop group, but then again Howard Devoto was not a typical pop star. It was a sentence that made me wonder if Robert Forster had been thinking specifically of Howie when he penned these words in the song Here Comes The City, on the album Oceans Apart (2005):-

“And why do people who read Dostoevsky always look like Dostoevsky?”

I do have a quiet smile to myself every time I hear that line.

One more album to go, and the rundown is over. I’d like to think many of you might have worked out who is going to be responsible for it, and most likely the actual LP.

JC

I bought a second-hand CD a long time ago, specifically for the purposes of having a bit of fun on the blog, and I’ve decided to use the normally quiet festive period, when the traffic and number of visitors drops quite dramatically, to go with it.

The CD was issued in 1996.  It is called Beat On The Brass, and it was recorded by The Nutley Brass, the brains of whom belong to New York musician Sam Elwitt.

The concept behind the album is simple. Take one bona-fide punk/post-punk/new wave classic and give it the easy listening treatment.

There are 18 tracks on the CD all told.  Some have to be heard to be believed.

Strap yourselves in.

mp3: The Nutley Brass – Shot By Both Sides

And, just so you can appreciate the magnificence (or otherwise) of the renditions, you’ll also be able to listen to the original versions as we make our way through the CD in random order.

mp3: Magazine – Shot By Both Sides

Taken from the album, Real Life, released in June 1978.

JC

Once again taking my inspiration from The Robster‘s great new series on the imaginary 7″ singles from R.E.M albums, I’m offering up as today’s high-quality vinyl rip what could have been a double-sided single back in 1978.

Magazine cracked the charts in January 1978 with debut 45, Shot By Both Sides.  The debut album, Real Life, was then, and remains today, an astounding listen, with at least two more of its tracks being more than capable of being hit singles.  The only problem was that back in those days very few bands wanted to ever release more than one 45 from an album, which led to the rather less revered, but previously unreleased Touch and Go, being the follow-up some five months later.

Imagine how different things would have turned out if the band and Virgin Records had issued these:-

mp3: Magazine – Definitive Gaze
mp3: Magazine – The Light Pours Out Of Me

Two songs offering wonderful examples of how Magazine, while made up of amazing individual musicians and a very distinct vocalist, really was the sum of their talents.

JC

Album: The Correct Use of Soap – Magazine
Review: Louder Than War, 13 June 2013
Author: Amy Britton

After my reappraisal of what I felt was the “forgotten” Siouxsie and the Banshees album “Hyeana,” I thought it was perhaps time to turn my eye to another oft-overlooked album, Magazine’s third outing “The Correct Use of Soap.” A lot more attention is generally paid to their first two albums “Real Life” and “Secondhand Daylight” – demanding in parts, but all the more rewarding for it. This fact has got some kind of critical appeal – fulfillment of the story of Howard Devoto leaving Buzzcocks to focus on something more complex. But by the time they had reached 1980, the band were starting to embrace a more accessible sound – but were none the weaker for it.

Postpunk as a genre is often distinguished by a kind of nervous tension; almost paranoia, and this isn’t something lost on “The Correct Use of Soap.” It was, after all, not the most comfortable of eras, as Thatcherism established itself and the late 70’s sense of restlessness fuelled by nuclear threat and the winter of discontent still hung in the air. For me, if there is one single line which captures the essence of both the era and the genre, its on the track “Philadelphia” – “maybe its right to be nervous now…”

“Politics,” if we use the word in its driest, most conventional form, was never really Magazine’s thing. Their classic debut single “Shot By Both Sides” (which warrants an essay in itself) was boldly Derridean in its deconstruction of straightforward party politics; and that it a theme that very much continues throughout “The Correct Use of Soap.”

Devoto has claimed that at the time, given the series of catastrophic events dominating the world, he “was on talking terms with an apocalyptic view of the world…I don’t really call that political.” He was not necessarily alone in this (his contemporary, the Pop Group frontman Mark Stuart, has admitted to walking around in full army clothing because he was convinced World War III was about to happen, whilst the Protect and Survive campaign instructing what to do in case of nuclear attack was more terrifying than reassuring); fear was the order of the day.

The opening track of “The Correct Use of Soap,” is even called “Because You’re Frightened,” but it quickly becomes evident that this is personal, not political – its chorus of “look what fears done to my body,” accompanies verses which imply settling with somebody sexually for the sake of it. The politics of fear have met the politics of sexuality, dealt with throughout in refreshingly physical terms.

Of course, the demystification of sexuality was a running theme in postpunk – the Au Pairs, Gang of Four, Wire’s 1.2xU – but rarely has it been delivered with such wry humour and confessional emotion as on “The Correct Use of Soap.” The psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva talks about the abject and the horror in the body – how we want to separate ourselves from what the body really is. The body produces sexuality, but it also produces sickness, and there is a sense of ill health permeating “The Correct Use of Soap.”

Its closer “A Song From Under the Floorboards,” (one of my favourite closing tracks ever) opens with the brilliant line “I am angry, I am ill, and I am ugly as sin,” before launching into a lyric oblique yet distinctly Kafkaesque (its hard not to think of the insect imagery in “Metamorphosis”) over a clever, timeless guitar line from the hugely underrated John McGeoch. (Magazines talent as musicians as a whole is undeniable, but there is a sense that “The Correct Use of Soap,” is its producer Martin Hannett’s album as much as anybody actually within the bands.)

The album’s title also implies maintaining the cleanliness of the body. Our bodies let us down and relationships are, viewed with Devoto’s cynical eye, difficult, with lyrics about loving out of weakness and seeing your former partners new lover wearing “some things I left at your place,” – after all, we are more than just bodies, emotions must be attached as well. However, in their influential work “Anti-Oedipus,” Deleuze and Guattari did term humans “desiring machines,” and perhaps to a point they are right. Its certainly not a concept lost on this album – witness “Model Worker,” in which factory workers become psychologically sublimated with their machinery in order to become to perfect worker (although the maintenance of the human body never leaves, evident in the line “I have been indulging in ostentatious display/ doing little more than eating three square meals a day”.)

This is not an experimental album like its predecessors, but it is restless in its influence, hopping from Roxy Music-esque glam (“I’m A Party”), soul (“I Want To Burn Again”) and funk (“Stuck”), all with equal ease and skill. But don’t just rediscover “The Correct Use of Soap,” for its brilliant songs. Rediscover it for capturing a wider mood in history and magnifying it down to something personal, physical, and a whole new kind of political.

JC adds…….

It’s like the halcyon days of the NME never went away, making direct references to, for most of us, obscure philosophers and psychoanalysts just to remind the reader that the author of the piece is well-read and incredibly clever.

I’ve never claimed to be a ‘good’ writer, but I am passionate about the things I like, albeit I often can’t get beyond using words like brilliant, fantastic or amazing to describe how much a particular record means to me.  I would bet reasonable money that the author wasn’t alive when The Correct Use of Soap was released and has made a lot of assumptions about the era, from reading books and maybe talking to folk who were around at the time (May 1980) that just don’t ring true.

The Correct Use of Soap will always be high up on the list of my favourite albums, but not because I’m able to make all sorts of smart and obscure references from the lyrics.  It’s an album in which all members of the group are at the very top of their games, and yes, it enjoys a production input from Hannet that is unusually crisp and clear without too much gimmickry.  It is a record that deliberately veers all over the place, with punk, funk, pop all to the fore – it even has a soppy ballad, complete with female backing vocals which tug at the heartstrings.  But I’ll just keep coming back to the fact that McGeogh and Adamson, in particular, have never sounded better.

There’s not a duff song on ‘Soap’….it would, on its own make for a perfect ICA.  A position that Devoto & co. seemingly acknowledged by the fact that in 2009, shortly after their brief reformation, they undertook a tour in which they played the album in order from start to finish, before taking a short break and coming back for a second set of songs from the other albums.

mp3: Magazine – Because You’re Frightened
mp3: Magazine – You Never Knew Me
mp3: Magazine – Sweetheart Contract
mp3: Magazine – A Song From Under The Floorboards

 

Written and scheduled for publication before the USA election results are known.  Just seemed to be appropriate, no matter the outcome.

This man is at the door of Hell…somehow it seems to be his destination after a life of subtle stubbornness. He doesn’t expect to find himself waking up out of a dream…he doesn’t expect to pinch himself and wake up and that kind of thing…in fact, the thought of that happening makes him smile. He’s just mildly surprised to find himself there at the door of Hell.

To all accounts, the kindly old man who is the doorman (and who conceivably reminds him of his father) is sat reading a book…but he gets up smartly and without time for either of them to feel that they’re standing on ceremony says, “Hold my book for a minute, would you, while I get the door open!” (Presumably, you know, you need two hands to open the door.) For some reason, the old man doesn’t just put his book down on the chair.

It all happens quite quickly…he finds that he’s made a decision and is already holding the old man’s book…as just about anybody else would have, But it seems a bit curious because…in however small a way you like to consider it…it is as if he’s helping himself enter Hell…the path of least resistance. Of course, at the same time he suddenly thinks..Even as he finally grips the book…”This is my chance for a reprieve…the final test…the straw which will tip the good deeds over the bad.”

Next thing he knows, they have exchanged opinions on the book and he has handed it back to the old man and is being shown into Hell.

mp3: Magazine – The Book

A spoken number that was originally released in March 1980 as the b-side of Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), which itself was Magazine’s excellent, new-wave take on a Sly & The Family Stone number, which itself has an opening line referencing the Devil.

Oh, why not???

mp3: Magazine – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

JC

 

A previous instalment of the cracking debut singles series enabled the spotlight to be put on Magazine and the quite majestic Shot By Both Sides, released in January 1978.

It would be a further five months before the debut album, Real Life, hit the shops, comprising just nine tracks, one of which was a re-recording of Shot…., but noticeably absent was the single the band had released in the intervening period.

mp3 : Magazine – Touch and Go

It’s very much a song of its era, relying heavily throughout on the new wave guitar work of John McGeogh while Barry Adamson on bass and Martin Jackson on drums provide ample support as the rhythm section. And of course, there’s the unmistakable whining vocal delivery of Howard Devoto, seemingly almost breathless at trying to keep up with the relentless pace of the playing. It’s almost as if Dave Formula’s dainty keyboard solo, which comes in at exactly halfway through the song, is there to enable the vocalist to get a second wind.

Touch and Go isn’t a bad song. It’s big problem is that it is a very long way removed from the brilliance of the debut 45 and it didn’t have enough going for it to make it stand out among the other post-punk singles that were being released in 1978. It’s also quite unlike the other songs that Magazine were beginning to write and record – compare for instance with the opening track on said debut album:-

mp3 : Magazine – Definitive Gaze

I recently came across a review of Definitive Gaze that described it perfectly – ‘it switches between a sci-fi love theme and the score for a chase scene’ (Andy Kellman, allmusic). Touch and Go feels lumpen and unimaginative in comparison, and while there was ample space for it to be included on the debut album, it was a wise decision to cast it aside.

The b-side to the 7” was a real hoot:-

mp3 : Magazine – Goldfinger

Yup…..a cover of the theme tune to the James Bond movie as penned by John Barry and sung by Shirley Bassey. It’s almost as if Howie & co are auditioning for the right to compose and perform the next again Bond movie. The thing is, they would have certainly done a better job than what was used in the 1979 movie in the series – can anyone, without looking it up, recall what Moonraker sounded like?

Fun fact pop-pickers.

Despite being one of the most instantly recognisable of the Bond theme songs, Goldfinger only got as high as #21 in the UK singles charts in 1964, albeit it performed better in the USA by hitting the Top 10.

In fact, only one James Bond theme song has ever reached #1 in the UK. And very surprisingly, that accolade belongs to Sam Smith and his rendition of Writing’s On The Wall, which was written for Spectre in 2015.

Every day is a school day round here…………

JC

January 1978.

I was just getting my head around punk/new wave. At 14 years of age, I was still more into playing and watching football than I was getting my kicks from music. All that was to change over the next few years and I think it’s accurate to say that by my 18th birthday in June 1981, my head had been completely turned by some of the most amazing bands and performers who were integral to what we now lovingly refer to as the post-punk era.

It was around then, just as I was about to gear up for going to university that I discovered Magazine – the only problem being that the band were on the verge of breaking up.

There was a really interesting comment left behind not that long ago – I think it was from Drew – in which he said he envied someone discovering a class act fairly late on in their career as there is so much incredibly good music to go back and discover, and this was certainly what happened to me with Magazine. I can’t now begin to imagine being able to develop and expand my musical tastes without owning a copy of The Correct Use of Soap, the band’s third and best album, although there are moments on each of it predecessors, Real Life and Secondhand Daylight, which can held be held up as equally outstanding and memorable.

January 1978 was when Magazine released their debut single. As I said many moons ago when I pulled together an ICA (it was #35 in the series), Shot by Both Sides is one of the great post-punk anthems that had the audacity to reach #41 in the singles charts and somehow trigger off an appearance on Top of The Pops. The sight of Howie & co. – even in an edited two and a bit minutes clip – was something that scared the millions of viewers as sales dropped dramatically the following week and the band didn’t hit the Top 40. Indeed, despite what would become an outstanding catalogue of singles over the next three year, Magazine never got as close to a hit single as the debut.

The tune is one that dates from the fag-end of Devoto’s days with Buzzcocks, as can be seen from Pete Shelley being given a writing credit. Indeed, the latter used the tune himself some ten months later for Lipstick, the b-side to the hit single Promises, albeit, for some strange reason, Devoto’s name totally absent from its credits.

Shot by Both Sides still has the ability, what is now 40 years on (FFS!!!!!!!) to amaze and startle. All 3 minutes and 54 seconds of it, from the opening riff to the magnificently timed climax via the snarling, paranoid and terrified sounding vocal. It’s as near a flawless and memorable a debut as there’s ever been. Such a pity that the world wasn’t quite ready to embrace fully what this most extraordinary sounding and looking band were offering.

Time has been very kind to Magazine in that they gained increasingly in popularity in the years after their demise and their comeback from 2009-2011 in which they toured and released a new album was praised and welcomed in equal measures; at long last, the band members made some money. The one down side was the sad and constant reminder that John McGeogh, whose guitar work had been integral to making the band such essential listening, had passed away in 2004, albeit Noko, who was Devoto’s side kick in Luxuria, did a sterling job in difficult and challenging circumstances.

Is Shot By Both Sides their finest 45? I personally don’t think so and would afford that particular accolade to A Song From Under The Floorboards. But nowadays, if I’m down at the old-fogies indie-disco, I think I’d rather hear Shot…..although if truth be told, I’d much rather dance these days to Definitive Gaze which, when played through expensive and modern speakers, does sound as if it’s from another galaxy altogether.

mp3 : Magazine – Shot By Both Sides (single version)
mp3 : Magazine – My Mind Ain’t So Open

JC

We drank from cups on standard issue sofas under scaffolding
Informed sources said we were seen by observers, it`s a meeting

Howard Devoto has always had a fine way with words. But the thing is, his band always had a fine way with music.

I was very tempted to have Magazine take up the slot on Sundays when the XTC series comes to its conclusion, especially as I’d previously put Buzzcocks under the spotlight, but I’m going elsewhere with it.

This would have been #8 in a series, released in July 1980 on the back of great acclaim for its parent album The Correct Use Of Soap:-

mp3 : Magazine – Sweetheart Contract

The b-side of this 7″ piece of plastic was recorded at the The Russell Club, Manchester on 3rd May 1980. It’s a version that is far removed from the original and shows just how good the band were live back in their prime with Barry Adamson‘s bass and John Doyle‘s drums driving the song on at a frantic pace while John McGeogh (RIP) and Dave Formula batter away at lead guitar and keyboards respectively to create a sonic thunderstorm which will have caused bleeding ears for the sweaty audience in the confinement of such a small venue.

mp3 : Magazine – Feed The Enemy (live)

Compare and contrast with the epic recording of the original, with one of the most sneering vocals ever delivered in history of mankind:-

mp3 : Magazine – Feed The Enemy

JC

This has been by far the most difficult undertaking up till now. I know I keep saying that but its true.

I have 25 Magazine songs that I love in equal measures and picking them out of a hat in a random fashion would most certainly lead to a quality compilation album. I almost went for a cheat by putting together a CD lasting right up to the 78 minutes allowed but realised all that would do is have guest contributors call foul on the fact that they were forced to be disciplined and stick to the 10 tracks. Then I thought about simply replicating the 10-tracks on the 1982 compilation After The Fact, and in doing so copy out the sleeve notes by Paul Morley, but I thought the upgrade from economy to first-class in terms of quality in the writing might have given the game away.  Instead, what follows is all my own handiwork:-

SIDE A

1. Definitive Gaze (from Real Life, June 1978)

It’s the opening track on the debut LP and it was a great way to introduce yourself to the album buying public. It was co-written by Howard Devoto and John McGeoch , respectively one of the greatest post-punk lyricists and one of the most underrated musicians these lands have ever produced. John’s work elsewhere outside of Magazine resulted in the best songs of other bands ever recorded by bands such as Siouxsie & the Banshees and PiL and yet on this track it is the keyboard playing of Dave Formula and the bass notes of Barry Adamson that really make this tune so memorable. It’s a perfect example of how Magazine, while made up of amazing individuals, really were the sum of those talents.

2. A Song From Under The Floorboards (single January 1980 and then included on The Correct Use Of Soap, March 1980)

The band’s third album is rightly lauded as their finest moment with not a duff songs amidst its ten tracks. Indeed it crossed my mind just to feature the album in its entirety as the contribution to this series and leave it at that (see….this is a posting that really has had me thinking!!!).

The Correct Use Of Soap is an unusual album for the fact that it closes with its strongest and most memorable song when the rule of thumb is that you put those first or at a point when you perhaps think it is time to bring a ‘wow factor’ back when things are flagging. Thirty five years on, Floorboards remains a piece of music that has the ability just to stop me in my tracks when it kicks in. And the opening couplet, which I’m told by literary loving friends is derived from the opening lines in a Dostoyevsky novel, remain my favourite lines in a song of all time. I even have the t-shirt.

PS : Think of all the songs in the history of pop music that have made the singles charts and then join me in being bewildered that this didn’t crack the Top 75….

3. I Love You, You Big Dummy (b-side of Give Me Everything, November 1978)

I have never quite understood the attraction of Captain Beefheart and outwith one song on a compilation album I have nothing within what most folk would describe as a very extensive and eclectic record/CD/cassette collection. And yet I adore Magazine’s take on a song that originally featured on the 1970 album Lick My Decals Off, Baby. The simple explanation is that the cover sounds nothing like the original as Howard & co deliver what I feel is the perfect blend of punk and glam rock with its catchy riffs and sneering delivery complete with additional lyrics from the angry, ill and ugly as sin protagonist to get the message across.

4. You Never Knew Me (from The Correct Use of Soap, March 1980)

The track that helped me get over my first seriously broken heart. I didn’t want to turn around and find that I’d got it so wrong. I had stepped into the deepest unhappiness and while I wasn’t sure if I had ever got to know her I could say in all certainty that she never ever really knew me.

It’s very rare for new wave/post punk acts to nail a ballad in a way that it could be held up as being among their best songs, but Magazine, aided by an achingly beautiful backing vocal from Laura Teresa, pull the trick off with aplomb.

5. Permafrost (from Secondhand Daylight, March 1979)

The ‘difficult second album’ syndrome affected Magazine in that Secondhand Daylight is a fair bit away from any sort of post-punk sound and at times seems to steer awfully close to prog rock. And yet, it was only in subsequent years as the new wave of synth bands emerged from their bedsit rooms, did we all come to realise that much of Secondhand Daylight was ahead of its time, although I’m still not sure about The Thin Air which is a four-minute instrumental that is more or less a John McGeoch saxophone solo (albeit I was fond of including it on compilation cassettes that were designed to be played with the lights dimmed or even totally switched off whenever my girlfriend was in the room with me – she adored sax).

Permafrost is perhaps the ultimate in sneering creep vocals that Howard Devoto seemed to specialise in at the time….its suggestion of taking revenge on an ex-lover in a very unambiguous way meant that this never stood any chance of ever making it onto any smoooooth compilation cassette.

SIDE AA

1. Because You’re Frightened (from The Correct Use of Soap, March 1980)

One of the ideas behind today’s compilation is that you can play either side and you have a classic side of vinyl in your hands. That’s why I don’t have a Side B but instead am going for a Double-A side album.

This is the song which opened ‘Soap’ . It immediately indicated that it was going to be an LP with a pace, energy and sound that was a lot different from its predecessor with the band seemingly returning to the punkier new wave rifts and leaving other bands (e.g. Simple Minds) free to explore, develop and deliver the synth based Art/Krautrock side of things. It’s also one of the finest demonstrations of just how great, and I mean GREAT, a guitarist the band had.

2. Hello Mr Curtis (with apologies) (from No Thyself, October 2011)

The idea of Magazine making a new album after a gap of 30 years was worrying. The comeback gigs had been triumphant and in Noko (who had worked closely with Howard Devoto in Luxuria in the late 80s) they had someone with the ability to fill the very big boots of the late John McGeoch who had sadly died in 2004 at the young age of 48. But the idea of new songs was, as I said worrying.

No Thyself is an album that, for the most part, dissipates those worries. It is certainly a superior effort to 1981’s Magic, Murder & The Weather which was recorded at a low point with McGeoch having left to pursue alternative options and Devoto depressed by the failure of ‘Soap’ ; fans and critics alike were of the view that it had been a sad way for the band to initially bring their recording career to an end.

The ‘comeback’ album had a lead-off single and the most immediate thing was that it sounded as if McGeoch was playing on it…it really is uncanny. It’s a tune that wouldn’t have sounded out-of-place in their pomp and heyday and to this fan highlights just how ahead of their time they really were.  The lyric meanwhile, is biting and savage and just a tad controversial. At least we know Howard has no intention of topping himself…..

3. Shot By Both Sides (single, January 1978)

One of the great post-punk anthems, the debut single had the audacity to reach #41 in the singles charts and somehow trigger off an appearance on Top of The Pops. The sight of Howard & co obviously frightened everyone concerned for instead of it climbing into the Top 40 the following week thanks to being exposed to millions of viewers/listeners it dropped like a stone. The band never got near the singles charts again despite releasing a run of cracking 45s over the next three years.

The album version of the song is marginally different (the thing most noticeable is that each chorus of the single begins ‘Shot, Shot by both sides’ while the LP is simply ‘Shot by both sides.’ It’s a tune co-written with Pete Shelley who loved it so much that he used it for the track Lipstick some ten months as the b-side to the hit single Promises but rather naughtily didn’t give Howard a writing credit……….

4. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (Peel Session, May 1979)

Magazine didn’t do too many covers but when they did it wasn’t in any half-hearted or lazy way. It was inconceivable for a post-punk band to do a take on a #1 soul single from 1970 far less for them to make it sound as if it was a post-punk piece of music. The band and the label knew they had something special here and released it as a single in March 1980 hoping, forlornly as it turned out, for greater success than ‘Floorboards’.

It would subsequently appear on ‘Soap’ a few months later and become a firm favourite among fans, but it was only in 2000 that most of us got to hear the Peel Session thanks to the release of a 3xCD box set (unless of course we had been paused over the pause button when it had been broadcast in 1979 as part of a session promoting songs from Secondhand Daylight).

5. The Light Pours Out Of Me (from Real Life, June 1978)

A classic album should ideally end with a song that makes you want to flip it over and listen to the whole thing again. This does exactly that…….

It will always have a special place in my heart as it was the first song I ever heard Magazine perform in a live setting when I went, with Mrs Villain, to see them in Manchester in February 2009.

There are tracks missing from this compilation that I can’t believe I’ve left off. I know I haven’t chosen my favourite ten Magazine songs but I feel what I have done is completely in the spirit of this particular series.

mp3 : Magazine – Definitive Gaze
mp3 : Magazine – A Song From Under The Floorboards
mp3 : Magazine – I Love You, You Big Dummy
mp3 : Magazine – You Never Knew Me
mp3 : Magazine – Permafrost
mp3 : Magazine – Because You’re Frightened
mp3 : Magazine – Hello Mr Curtis (with apologies)
mp3 : Magazine – Shot By Both Sides
mp3 : Magazine – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (Peel Session, May 1979)
mp3 : Magazine – The Light Pours Out Of Me

Enjoy

(A repost from 8 April 2010)

For years, I thought that the Factory mogul was the brains behind the production of this, the third single from Magazine released on 17th November 1978.

Turns out it was a totally different Tony Wilson…one who for years worked at the BBC. Stupid me…..

For some artistic reason, Howard Devoto insisted that Give Me Everything be released without any marketing campaign and with no review copies to be sent to the music press. Almost as if he wanted it not to succeed. And almost as if he wanted to avoid dealing with any music journalists.

However, the review penned by Dave McCullough in Sounds showed that the strategy somewhat backfired:-

At last I have Howie and his chums sussed. They’re really The Muppets in disguise laughing their scraggy-heads off while the hundred thousand punks STILL take them seriously. This is dreadful – the lyrics proving more cringeworthy even than usual. ‘You’re so oblique and easy’. Look – Howie – you’re as much a poet as Len Fairclough is a poet – so why don’tcha sod off – you baldy little pain?

Or had it backfired?? Howard’s response was to send the journalist a cheque for £10 with the words:-

Your review of Give Me Everything was so unbelievably sympathetic, was so to the point that this £10 of my enthusiastic and shrieking money must go to you. You’re not so oblique but you’re so easy. You must have it. I hope you can see that. I’m sorry it couldn’t be more. Please cash it. Have a Christmas. Howard.

Which was of course printed in full in the following week’s edition of the paper…….an incident that helped inspire the later song Feed The Enemy.

mp3 : Magazine – Give Me Everything
mp3 : Magazine – I Love You You Big Dummy

The b-side is a cover of a Captain Beefheart song (now there’s something I never ever got….and as a consequence have nothing of his/theirs on vinyl or CD). It remains one of the most popular Magazine recording ever as evidenced by its inclusion in the sets of the comeback gigs in February 2009.

I wonder if the journo and Howard ever kissed and made up??

Oh and as a wee bonus, here’s yer Peel Sessions versions:-

mp3 : Magazine – Give Me Everything (Peel Session)
mp3 : Magazine – I Love You You Big Dummy (Peel Session)

Broadcast on 24 July 1978, some four months before the 7″ single was released.

Happy Listening.