Buzzcocks:
Live At Shepherds Bush Empire 2003
Picture: C-
Sound: C- Extras: C+ Main Program: B-
Punk Rock should be the province of the young; a
perpetually renewed sweat-glazed hormonal torrent of emotion and weirdness and
rebellion speaking up and acting out with dentist drill guitars and jackhammer
drums and the keening, snotty voice of a singer who mumbles and yawps his way
through songs as perfectly explosive as split atoms. So why is it that only people over 30 seem to give a damn about
Punk? Has Punk passed its cultural
moment? Has the fact that corporate
America has sunk its teeth deep into this once thrashing dangerous beast and
supped upon its fiery blood, thereby co-opting it and tragically, almost
laughably turning Iggy Pop into a spokesman for cruise ship family vacation
packages and using the saw blade sharp twin guitar fusillade of The
Buzzcocks to underscore the hardcore rebelliousness of driving an SUV,
finally rendered Punk pointless?
I don’t doubt that there are still some kids out there who
are right at this very moment dropping the stylus on Marquee Moon or Rocket to
Russia or Damned Damned Damned for the first time and experiencing that purely
exquisite cherry-popping blast of white heat bursting from the speakers and blowing
open vast new vistas. Every virginal
ear bent to these first wave Punk records is met with the promise of the
new. But mostly what I see is a bunch
of 30 and overs buying Punk records, talking about Punk, and attempting to live
an aesthetically Punky lifestyle i.e. very DIY, politically/communally
conscious, etc. The kids wear CBGBs
t-shirts yet have never listened to even one of the bands that put the club on
the map. And that’s just sad, really.
It leads me to wonder what exactly the target demographic
of Buzzcocks Live At Shepherds Bush
Empire 2003 could be. Are there any
kids out there that care about The Buzzcocks?
This concert, filmed almost 30 years after the group’s inception,
probably won’t convert any new fans.
Unfortunately, the audio is substandard which results in the songs
sounding an awful lot alike and the vocals are almost completely drowned
out. That’s a shame because The
Buzzcocks were one of the most melodic of the first wave Punk bands. They pretty much invented what is today
termed Pop-Punk.
The direction and editing of the show seems to be out of
the late-80s hair metal music video playbook.
Think Motley Crue but without the delicious cheesiness of the required
slo-mo Vince Neil boogaloo.
The best feature of this DVD is the hour-long interview
with founding Buzzcocks Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle. Both wear their years pretty well and are
quite open and humorously nostalgic about not only the beginnings of their band
but also the beginnings of the whole Punk movement. Again I have to wonder if any kids out there will even see
this. Or will it simply be older fools
like me that continue to care about this sort of thing? I hope not coz that would just be tragic.
- Kristofer
Collins
Kristofer Collins is an editor at The New Yinzer and the
owner of Desolation Row CDs in Pittsburgh, PA.
Visit Desolation Row at www.myspace.com/desolationrowcds
for more.
