Buzzcocks Ringtones

The Manchester music scene received a right kick up the arse when The Buzzcocks joined in with the mania created by the Sex Pistols when Johnny and the boys first ventured up the M1 to play outside of London in the red hot summer of 1976. The burgeoning Punk Rock scene arrived in the north of England with an influential bang that still reverberates to this day.

The use of cheap guitars and tiny amplifying equipment helped The Buzzcocks create a unique sound that encompassed the whole DIY attitude of the Punk movement. Two-minute bursts of energy like Orgasm Addict cemented their style and was influential in securing a recording contract with EMI. Their energies were honed to perfection by the time they released Ever Fallen In Love With Someone (you shouldn't have fallen in love with), a song that was later covered,with great success, by The Fine Young Cannibals long after the real Punk bubbles had burst.

A guise of The Buzzcocks can still be found on the gigging circuit - playing a mixture of new and old material - to inquisitive new audiences, who even now, almost thirty years after the band first stumbled their way through a set, find their diminutive frontman, Pete Shelley, a not-to-be-missed figure of curiosity. Japan is a particularly strong market for them.

However, American giants like Bad Religion and Offspring often cite The Buzzcocks amongst their influences, which has helped to maintain the band's status with the modern Punk Rock hierarchy. Even though most of them have never even heard a Mancunian accent in their lives.

Personally, I think they are dead lucky. And The Buzzcocks were, always have been and still are, absolutely shite. I would not pay to see them again if my left lung depended on it. Pete Shelley is an untalented weirdo.

The picture above, by the way, is not of The Buzzcocks but of my favourite punk band of the seventies - Slaughters and the Dogs.

If you must - Buzzcocks Ringtones

What you thought....

I am just contemplating the "right kick up the arse" that The Buzzcocks gave the Manchester punk scene. There really ought to be a commemorative plaque somewhere in Manchester on the exact spot where this kick was administered (under 7 feet of muddy water next to Canal Street!). It was probably more a kick in the teeth for other bands at the time that such a tedious pub band ever managed to sell more than 3 singles and be given some kind of puzzling "cult status". HARUMPH! (Jason, Mirfield)