No one got into a song quite so fast as Pete. By about 50 seconds, he was already winding down. Arguably the best album from that time was Buzzcocks Greatest Hits, A sides on one side, B sides on the other. Both equally perfect. Momento mori.
This thread is not getting anywhere near the attention it deserves. Just listened to Sixteen Again, a 3 minute masterpiece. A little known thing is that the brilliant music for the late 90s channel 4 Tour De France programme was by Bis, a Pete Shelley alias. Coincidentally Paul Sherwen, the knowledgeable co commentator with the sycophantic Phil Liggett died a couple of days ago.
Oh boy, I missed the Sherwen one. Whilst his cycling commentary was excellent, it was his fascination with eleventh century Cistercian abbeys which lingers in the memory.
That might be because the punk music genre just isn't up there in most peoples fondest memories. So, whilst Pete may be right up there on some peoples memories, I would imagine that most members on here would have had to check out who he was. Personally, I found the punk movement to be a right noisy racket. I saw a number of punk bands in the 100 Club in the 70's. With the exception of Generation X, who were reasonable, it was an extremely unpleasant experience. It was merely an excuse for yoofs (mostly lads) to swear and release an unpleasant amount of various bodily fluids. Childish, I thought. In the early 80's I "arrested" one of the more famous punks who had collapsed, either drunk or drugged up, in Finsbury Park in the middle of an extremely cold night. Ambulance people wouldn't touch him, so we stuck him in a warm cell for the night for his own good, might have even saved his life. Not a hint of thanks though.
Very sad. I saw the Buzzcocks a couple of years ago at the Roundhouse and they were still excellent. Did anyone have the Pete Shelley solo album XL1? You could wire it up to your Sinclair ZX Spectrum and it made patterns on the screen! Very cutting edge in its day! I've still got mine - the album not the computer
