30 Day Song Challenge - Day 11

A song you never get tired of.

Yep, I know Morrissey turned into a dick but I'll never get tired of this song. 37 years and counting from when I first saw them performing this on Top of the Pops. I had a impeccable musical taste for a few years around about this time, and then I fell off the rails a bit in my late teens. I still think it's because pop music because really, really universally shit for a sustained period of time (I'm now too old to comment on present pop music), when even potentially great songs got smothered in very dated and cheesy production. That's my story and I'm sticking to it:

The Smiths - This Charming Man (Live on Top of The Pops November 24th, 1983)

Digging into my brain

There are worse songs to wake up to going through your head:

Paul Morley Tony Morley was once my hero

Further to this post on the blog from a few days back, Snappy Kat was kind enough to post a link to the 'notorious' 1981 TOTP appearance by Magazine.

Sad to discover that it wasn't the 'event' I was expecting from the vivid description in Simon Reynolds post-punk bible. Any stage fright from Devoto had less to do with caught up in the occasion, and probably owed more to being struck dumb by David 'Kid' Jensen's positioning when introducing the band. I always wondered where Ricky Gervais got the inspiration for that pose in the second series of 'The Office'.

Should have known that any story that had the name 'Paul Morley' attached to it would have a certain je ne sais quoi.

However, every cloud had a silver lining and, via the comments accompanying the YouTube clip, I discovered the following nugget of useless post-punk information:

"The guitar lick in 'Lipstick' was given to Devoto by Shelley for use in Magazine's 'Shot by Both Sides', one of 2 Magazine-recorded songs co-written by Shelley, the other being 'The Light Pours Out of Me' by Devoto/McGeoch/Shelley. 'Lipstick' was actually written before 'Shot by...', even though 'Shot by...' was released first on Mon, Jan 16, 1978." [Info via here.]

Shelley, as in Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks fame, not that other Shelley anti-hero bloke from the post-punk era.

What with my trained tin-ear for all things musical, I find it difficulty to hear the overlap between the two tracks. And that's despite the fact that I've listened to both tracks on numerous occasions down the years. But it is a good excuse to post some early eighties stuff on the blog for sampling purposes:

Magazine - 'Shot By Both Sides' mp3

Buzzcocks - 'Lipstick' mp3

Shot By Your Own Side

Excellent music blog, Spinster's Rock,' is currently posting the entire Magazine singles discography on their blog.

Come on: it's late 70s/early 80s post-punk; Howard Devoto had the best cameo in Michael Winterbottom's '24 Hour Party People'; and I currently can't get the Magazine album track, 'Suburban Rhonda', out of my head. I'm obliged to link to the posts.

Mmm, wonder what Simon Reynolds said about Magazine in 'Rip It Up And Start Again'?:

"On the brink of the Top 40, Magazine were invited to appear on Top of the Pops. At first Devoto refused. Asked again the following week, he buckled to pressure from Virgin and agreed. But he remained extremely uncomfortable about miming to the song ['Shot By Both Sides'] on television. 'It was very artificial. The whole thing seemed absurd . . . and scary.' At the last minute he decided to make a gesture that would indicate his disdain for the corny charade. 'I didn't want to jump around in an obedient, "here's your entertainment" way. I wanted to be bloody-minded, but in a fairly understated way.' He got the BBC make-up girl to do him up in whiteface, but instead of a striking glam alien, 'he looked like Marcel Marceau', recalls Paul Morley (who was glued to the TV because seeing a band like Magazine on Top of the Pops was 'so rare' in those days). 'And then Devoto decided, because his mind was racing so quick, that he was far ahead of the game and he'd just be still. Very, very still. And thid great song was playing, but Devoto stood stock-still. And the next week the record went down the charts - possibly the first time that's ever happened in the history of pop, that you get on Top of the Pops and the single goes down the next week. And from then on, everything shut down. Killed stone dead.'

*Nips over to YouTube to try and locate the car crash tv clip.*