Another Music, In A Different Kitchen -The first of the Buzzcocks first three albums (and the end of the Buzzcocks, Part One), followed the 1977 EP Spiral Scratch. I lived in Manchester, England at the time and am here to tell you that the EP blew punk sky high on a local basis. A year later, Howard Devoto had left to form Magazine and Pete Shelley upped the anti with the pure punk-pop of Kitchen. Compare "Boredom" off the EP with the rewrite that opens Kitchen, "Fast Cars". "Boredom" is great, and a signal punk emotionalism, "Fast Cars" is great the same way "Blitzkrieg Bop" is great. The guitars are punky attack and the song at first sounds anybody but the riff is in triplicate and it is very very funny. Some of the other songs are less amusing, and all 15 hit very hard, "Love Battery", "Fiction Romance" and perhaps none more so than "Sixteen", The extended mix is nice to have: 26 six songs, lots of demos and live stuff. The problem is, producer Martin Hannet did a pretty damn good job getting it their live sound down so it isn't really a revelation. Grade: A+
Love Bites – Also released in 1978, and if you think the simple power-pop of Kitchen is easy, compare the first albums "Sixteen" with the second albums "Sixteen Again" -a seriously misjudged quasi-blues song. Indeed, only on the single, "Ever Fallen In Love (With Somebody You Shouldn't Have )reaches the same pop perfection heights. Still, despite its sophomore slump, it feels like an a move forwards. "Operator's Manual" is a waltz! Steve Diggle's "Love Lies" acoustic! "Late For the Train" a five minute plus instrumental. Grade: B+
A Different Kind Of Tension – "Paradise" is better than anything on Love Bites, and while the album lacks the consistency of the first one, it is good enough to fit with contemporaries Armed Forces, Public Image, Ltd and All Mod Cons (some year, right?). The last song is the statement of intent, or at least sensibility, the seven minute plus "I Believe". The demo of "I Believe" is worth the price of the Special Edition (38 tracks worth) alone. Grade: A