Whether or not this was a punk show, depends on how you define punk. Are you talking about a style of music, loud and fast and out of control? Or are you talking about punk as a lifestyle fueled by rebellious rage and frustration? Because when discussing Buzzcocks live in concert in 1999, this distinction must be made.
Buzzcocks burst vividly out of the late-Seventies British punk scene, playing pointedly furious music that, at its heart, was some of the most finely-structured guitar pop since the Beatles. They made it sound easy, and you'd call their songs "carefree" if all the lyrics weren't about how much life sucks bollocks. Broken up in the early Eighties over the usual nonsense, the group's two frontmen, Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle, reunited about a decade ago with a new bass player and drummer. Not so much a comeback as a resumption of working-band status, the reunion has produced three respectable studio efforts (including a new album, Modern) and French, an astonishing live recording of a 1993 gig.
While Modern isn't quite the apex of Buzzcocks' career, that's quickly forgotten when you see the band live. They waste no time, tearing into new tunes and old favorites alike with ruthless efficiency and a bare minimum of chatter. New tracks like "Soul on a Rock," "Why Compromise?" and "Don't Let the Car Crash" (a weird number that starts all trance-like before mutating into Def Leppard arena rock) benefit from a lack of studio noodling that has obsessed Shelley since his quasi-techno solo hit, 1982's "Homosapien." With only a four-piece band to play them the old fashioned way, these songs had a terse ferocity on stage, making them fine additions to Buzzcocks' canon of flame-thrower pop. But the unquestionable highlights of the show were the classics: "What Do I Get?," "Ever Fallen in Love," "I Don't Mind." In those instances, the band and crowd shared in the joy of music that aims for the angry young heart and hits it, dead on.
The irony, of course, is that the crowd wasn't very young and the musicians certainly weren't. Nor did it seem like there was much genuine anger in the air (other than one guy who seemed to be having a nervous breakdown while lip-synching every word of "Boredom.") The music had all the torrid hallmarks of punk, but the show lacked verisimilitude, and the band spat more bemusement than venom. Still, can you blame Pete Shelley -- 44, married and completely gray -- for flashing a wry leprechaun smile while singing "Orgasm Addict" for the ten zillionth time in twenty years? Diggle, likewise, was once known for his Townshend-esque stage leaping, but his one timorous jump this evening led Shelley to gaze at him and mouth the words "you're crazy!" The crowd wasn't much different. Sure, there were more than a few old-school, pierced-septum punk holdouts, but you could have had the vast majority of those people cleaned up and ready for an interview at Microsoft inside of twenty minutes. Dignified strangers stood around before the band took the stage, warmly recalling fond memories of Buzzcocks shows of yore.
There's an ad on currently on TV for some car (Volkswagen or something -- shows you how well advertising works) that uses the original recording of "What Do I Get?" as its soundtrack. Rather than seem like a sellout -- how many people are really going to recognize that song? -- the ad seems more like a tribute to the Buzzcocks' music, to its immediate appeal and the instant energy it can lend to something as prosaic as yet another dumb car commercial. So while the punk attitude, lifestyle and mission may not be the main thing at a Buzzcocks performance these days, the music -- the part that really matters -- has everything it needs to be punk at its best. It's fast, it's loud and it's exciting - even after a quarter century.
NOAH TARNOW
(October 22, 1999)
