3. Boredom

Buzzcocks: Spiral Scratch (New Hormones, 1977);
composed by Peter McNeish and Howard Trafford

From the first nearly homemade record of its primitivist era to move real units with no serious biz money behind it (Pistols and Clash only recorded for major labels) by a great band that would within a few months share a (major) label and producer with the Stranglers. Buzzcocks stayed great, and arguably better in some ways than this bilious version which only very briefly contained the sensibilities of both Howard Devoto – who took his mewling pinhead routine in a more exploitable direction with his own group Magazine – and Pete Shelley who transmuted his own hyper-sexual rage into a tortuous and temporally indecipherable roar of guitars over drums that sounded like a capsized lawnmower left running. Even cheerful, the Buzzcocks sounded like you might lose a finger if you leaned in too close to the machinery. On this track, the band’s disorienting blur broken up by sudden halts and jokey vocal interjections, perfectly contextualizes Devoto’s non-ethos: “You know me, I'm acting dumb / You know the scene, very humdrum / Boredom, boredom, boredom-om-mmm! (Ba-dum, ba-dum!)” It sounds remorselessly fast and dreadfully slow at the same time. It simultaneously encapsulates its subject and turns it all the way around. Punk rock.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (on average) during Advent (or the moral equivalent).