A couple of years ago, the rowdy late '70s Buzzcocks single "What Do I Get?" showed up as the soundtrack to an SUV commercial. Though the use of edgy music in TV ads (and the accompanying snipefests) had already been standard operating procedure for a decade, the English proto-punk outfit drew particularly heavy fire.
"Everybody thinks I got a car out of it, which is ridiculous," says Pete Shelley, Buzzcocks' co-founder, vocalist and one of the band's two guitarist/songwriters. "It's just [the] nature of the business to let people use the music."
Online message boards and websites waxed apocalyptic, claiming Wall Street had trespassed on underground culture to an unprecedented degree. A Philadelphia band called Amoeba Knievel enjoyed brief national notoriety for penning a tune called "Pete Shelley & An SUV." And all of it served to bring the legendary Manchester act more attention than it had enjoyed in quite awhile by giving nu-punk pundits an actual earful of a band they'd been name-checking for years, and also turning on a whole new cross-section of music fans.
For his part, Shelley boils it down to the notion that there's gonna be music in the spots anyway — it might as well be cool stuff.
"I just think it's good to hear [good] music on the TV, in adverts," he says by way of a last word.
"What Do I Get?" is not only an amazing song, but also one that sounds as raucous and leading edge contemporary now as it did 25 years ago. The tune simply could not have come from any of today's biggest pop-punk bands. It's too idiosyncratic, too maverick and too reliant on personality over familiar major-key chord patterns. A quarter century later, the Buzzcocks are still ahead of a game they helped to invent. One need only look to mainstream culture's full-on embrace of catchy punk to see the scope of their influence.
Of the three groups most loudly touted as the original surfers of UK punk's first wave, Buzzcocks are the least apocryphal. They aren't as outrageous as the Pistols and they aren't as political or eclectic as The Clash. Yet their influence is by far the most widespread and indelible. Without getting too exact about it, the band could be seen as filling a gap between those other two legends, tempering the spectacle of the one and the multifaceted sonic activism of the other, but still remaining as substantial and provocative.
"One of the original tenets of punk was that music should be relevant to people's lives, as opposed to some glamorous escapism," says Shelley. "We all approached that in a different way, as we're all different people and different songwriters."
The band's albums have been prone to experimentation and arty indulgence. Early Buzzcocks singles, however, struck a timeless balance between hook, energy and populist lyrical resonance that pretty much single-handedly inspired what's now known as pop-punk. Every band that's ever melded ferocious, guitar-driven rock to catchy, pop-grounded songwriting is in their debt, consciously or not. Even so, Shelley expresses little interest in keeping track of the still-burgeoning genre.
"I couldn't tell you who was on the Warped tour, but it's something you see more and more, especially in Britain," he says. "You see things on TV, hear it on the radio, and think, 'Oh.'
"But I suppose it's the sincerest form of flattery," he adds with an audible smile.
And as countless bands alternately raise and lower the standard of the fast 'n' catchy sound, Shelley, guitarist Steve Diggle, bassist Tony Barber and drummer Phil Barker have continued to explore their own inimitable style since reuniting in 1989. Subsequent albums like Trade Test Transmissions and Modern flirted with both the more mainstream and adventurous sides of the group. But it wasn't until this year's self-titled full-length that they came up with the kind of end-to-end solidity that diehard fans knew they still had in 'em.
Released in America on acclaimed North Carolina indie label Merge (Superchunk, East River Pipe), Buzzcocks drops all pretense of experimentation in favor of an utterly infectious fast-rock sound. At once reminiscent of the band's best work and ahead of the curve, there's not a single track here that mines current pop-punk's reliance on the four-chord anthem or cut-time angst. Instead, listeners are treated to Buzzcocks' signature amalgam of clever riffs and instantly memorable vocal interplay. One hates to haul out the dusty old "back to their roots" cliché, but Shelley says that's part of it — and the fact that these just happen to be the songs they hashed out this time around.
"I suppose so. We thought we'd do an album which was just banging on guitars, and that tends to leave out any other types of things," he reasons. "So yeah, it really came down to the choices of the songs. It just seemed to work that way — as a guitar album."
It's a guitar album that stands with classics like Spiral Scratch and Another Music in a Different Kitchen, and will undoubtedly bring fans new and old out of the woodwork for their current U.S. tour. The group was effectively kaput during the '80s and Shelley is known for his side endeavors (including his collaborations with original Buzzcocks co-founder Howard DeVoto), so who knows when they'll hit the road again. But Shelley's response to whether or not he can see the band again calling it quits in the foreseeable future is encouraging.
"No, not really. There's always new things that come up," he says. "The germ of a song usually starts with an idea, and then you play with it, and it's that playing with it that makes it so fun. It's like tinkering on a car or something like that, a pet project … it takes you away for an hour or so, and you enjoy it."
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2003.