Buzzcocks: Noisy Music To Hum

Concert preview

The Buzzcocks, with Doughboys and Fudge, 9:30 p.m. Thursday, RKCNDY; $17.50; 628-0888. -------------------------------------------------------------------

On June 4, 1976, rock's future was glimpsed at Lesser Free Trade Hall in Manchester, England.

On that day, the Sex Pistols played their first gig outside of London. The show was organized by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto, who, after seeing the Sex Pistols perform a few months before in London, decided to form their own band, the Buzzcocks. Also in the audience was Steve Diggle, who had responded to an ad placed by Shelley and Devoto for a bass player.

At the first Buzzcocks rehearsal, the three gathered to play with 16-year-old drummer John Maher.

"We set up with one cheap amplifier and made this incredible racket," Shelley recalls. "I thought even then, `There's something to this.' "

There still is. After putting out a handful of great records from 1977 to '81, the band broke up as stars in Britain but virtually unknown in America, only to reunite in 1989 for a jubilantly received tour. Now there's a new album, "Trade Test Transmissions," that picks up where the band left off with 17 shots of acerbic, hard-edged pop.

"Seven years ago I never would've dreamed we'd get back together," Diggle says. "Then people like R.E.M., Bob Mould and Nirvana started talking about us as this great influence . . .

"It was almost ridiculous the number of times the adjective `Buzzcockian' was used to describe bands in the '80s," Shelley adds.

Though not as notorious as the Sex Pistols, who imploded after one album, or as long-lived as the Clash, the Buzzcocks were just as influential. The songs, mostly written by Shelley but with significant contributions at the beginning from Devoto and later Diggle, were less political than many punk-era bands, and that enhanced their staying power.

Almost all of the band's lyrical complaints about the status quo were framed in terms of a relationship. When Devoto sang, "I've seen your movie but it doesn't move me," his kiss-off to a lover succinctly summarized the mood of British youth.

The Buzzcocks epitomized the do-it-yourself spirit of punk. Their "Spiral Scratch" EP was the UK's first self-released punk record, and became a prototype for the independent rock scene that flourishes to this day.

The Buzzcocks were about more than music. Their aesthetic encompassed a way of doing business, a look, an image, that subverted corporate notions of production and marketing.

After his crucial role in the band's early development, Devoto departed to resume his education. Shelley assumed most of the lead vocals, Diggle moved over to play guitar and bassist Steve Garvey joined Maher in the rhythm section. It was with this lineup that the bulk of the band's finest recordings were made. With the 1979 album "A Different Kind of Tension," Shelley explored darker themes at length. "It was a culmination of a lot of frustration, and a lot of psychedelic abuse," Shelley says. In a sense, it signaled the end of the Buzzcocks. All they had to say was encapsulated in that song, and less than two years later the band splintered.

Then last March an English oldies label, Castle Communications, put the band in the studio to record what would become "Trade Test Transmissions." New York-based indie label Caroline released it in America a few days ago.

Recorded by Shelley and Diggle with Buzzcocks acolytes Phil Barker on drums and Tony Barber on bass, the new album sounds like a successor to "A Different Kind of Tension" rather than any kind of accommodation with the grunge era. "There's a lot of noisy music out there, but there's not much noisy music you can go away humming afterward," Shelley said.