Although I am completely broke and should not be buying anything that I'm not going to eat (or at least smoke), I was compelled to look at the vinyl section of a music tent at the Park Slope street fair. I immediately went to the tiny punk section, which was mostly Siouxie and The Banshees strangely, and found this gem. An original, great copy of Singles Going Steady for $15, which I bought immediately, even though I have no fucking money. The most awesome part is that I know this is an original because somebody wrote on the sleeve: I got this on Tuesday, October 9, 1979.
This record is the second best singles/hits album ever (the first being We Sold Our Souls For Rock n' Roll by Black Sabbath.) I got this on CD, I think, when I was sixteen. This is one of the first records that helped really convince me that punk rock was awesome outside of the Clash/Ramones/Sex Pistols triumvirate. The Buzzcocks are one of punk's catchiest bands, and they are also one of the bands in music that only needs one record to define how awesome they are, and this record is it.
Singles Going Steady is the a collection of the singles that the Buzzcocks released from 1977-1979, (I believe Rhino just reissued the original 45.s on CD as a box set), starting with "Orgasm Addict", a hilarious ode to pubescent frustration, co-written by and featuring Pete Shelly and original singer Howard Devoto, who would go on to form post-punk band Magazine. This song exemplifies so well the rude honesty and nakedness of punk. It's like the song that Ray Davies would have written with the spastic, sexual confusion and energy that he put behind "You Really Got Me," and never played for anyone because the subject matter was so taboo at the time.
This comparison to the Kinks is not accidental, because I often cite The Buzzcocks as being the Kinks of punk, mostly because of their sensitive lyrics, extreme songwriting aptitude and the fact that both bands were terminally too british for U.S. audiences. The Buzzcocks lyrical angle is like that of a British schoolboy, driven mad by sexual urges, being called queer by their fathers' generation. "Why Can't I Touch It?" is a looping declaration of faraway fantasies and evil urges. Their musicality is a lot more precise than many of their contemporaries, and they feature tight harmonies, though they let their british accent hang out a lot more than other bands. Like The Jam, they play less like a punk band and more like the early Beatles, Kinks and Who, but exemplify the strong lyrical qualities of punk.
The formula of these songs may be consistent, sixteen short, fast bullets of song, but none are any less than supremely catchy. "What Do I Get?" is a definitive three chord punk classic, challenging "Blitzkrieg Bop." Most of my generation might have heard the first song as the soundtrack to Enid Coleslaw (the girl of my dreams at the time) dying her hair green in 2001's Ghost World to achieve "an authentic 1977 punk look." My two favorites on the record are the two most vulnerable, "Promises" and the heart wrenching "Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (You Shouldn't Fall In Love With)" These songs get more sensitive and forlorn than anyone had in punk, and maybe in rock n' roll. This gave punk rock the heart and *shudder* emotion that Green Day and Blink 182 would become millionaires doing. The bratty "Just Lust" and "Noise Annoys" are hilarious fun, and "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" as well as "Harmony In My Head" display serious melodies way ahead of Johnny Rotten's cockney warbling.
Also unlike many of their contemporaries, The Buzzcocks are still around today, recording and touring fairly often. I've been able to see them three times and they have never been less than fantastic. In a surreal pairing, I saw them open for Pearl Jam at MSG. They closed their opening set by having Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready join them to play "Why Can't I Touch it?" While it is amazing to see a group like The Buzzcocks still alive, and to be able to be in the audience, to participate, with something so genuine and so punk that you simply can't find in music today, their legacy is still defined by their work on this record, those amazing years 1977-1979 when you could write a pop song about the stains on your jeans.
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