Tables and Chairs Provided for the Benefit of Those Unwilling to Get

1978 ANUhR

but doesn't really convey the full-scale picture. On that So It Goes he came an audience unfamiliar to him to suss him instantaneously. Then at the onwith the most powerfulpresence I'd seen since the first time I clapped end everyone's looking around expectantly wondering from which end of eyes on Johnny Rotten or Elvis Costello or Ian Dury. The kind of guywho's the stage Devoto is going to appear. going to get a big hoopla but who deserves it. Suddenly- surprise!- the unassuming figure on the end doffs headgear, Wham, a first single: the darkly powerful "Shot By Both Sides"- jacket and guitar and stands revealed in red pants and T-shirt and thunderous, melodramatic, richly textured, naggingly memorable, gleaming scalpasHoward Devoto! paranoiac, self-important, an adolescent fantasy captured and expressed Wowee Howie! And he didn't even have to change in a phone booth! He with adultpower-barn,afirst hit andacuriously unimpressive and movesthe mic to stage front'n'centre and crashes into "Shot By Both Sides". unexpressive Top OfThe Popswhere Devoto appeared too static and The band are excellent: no novices or passengers. McGeoch alternates sluggish behind rather sillyeyemakeup and where John McGeoch's guitar hard, slamming rhythm with hyper -thyroid screaming lead and solo came out and said what Devoto's vocal performance merelyhinted at. menacing riffs, Adamson's bass is an agile anchor, Formula's keyboards By next week they'll be a big deal. The most convincing post -punk band so add texture, depth and witty, adept solos and special effects, and Jackson far. The true inheritors of the mantle of the original Roxy Music. never lets the pressure drop for an instant. Owing to the layout of the club, it's impossible to decipher much that ITHE "F" CLUB in Leeds is a reggae/punk crossover no-man's- Devoto sings or says if you're standing right at the front. Ifyou're hearing land. Small, grimy and lively, witha spattering of incongruous material with which you're familiar from records under such tables and chairs provided for the benefit of those unwilling to circumstances it's not much of a problem -after all, as someone once said, get pogoed on but who want to get- to co-opt Mr Zimmerman's at gigs one doesn't so much wish to hear lyrics as to be reminded of them- felicitous phrase -just far enough in to be able to say that they've been but when dealingwith unfamiliar songs it can be somewhat annoying. there, it plays music compounded of equal parts of reggae, newwave The only numbers thus recognisable, therefore,were"Shot By Both and David Bowie. Sides", which as well as opening the set proper also closed it, the old The customers vote with their asses as to what they want to dance to, Buzzcocks chewn "Boredom", and the set's sole non -original, John and "Heroes" emerges as something of a clear winner. In between Barry's "Goldfinger" from- natcho -the movie of the same name. records, forthcoming gigs at this and othervenues are announced. Devoto gives the impression of being slightly offended when I ask him if The instrumental members of Magazine- guitarist John McGeoch, "Goldfinger" is included for its "amusement potential. bassist BarryAdamson, drummer Martin Jackson and newest addition "Thankyou verymuch! No, itwas notsupposed to beapisstake of Dave Formula (keyboards) had spent the period between the soundcheck anything. It's a song that I like very much, and I like the version that we've and the gig sitting around in a Chinese restaurant waiting for a large and got together of it. I wanted to do a song from that sort of stable of songs and expensive paid -for -by -visiting -firemen -from -Virgin -Records -type meal. that one just fitted in verywell with what the rest of the songs are about." It arrived just in time for the assembled company to eat the first course Which isn't quiteasabsurdas itsounds. John Barry wouldseem tobea and then light out. Devoto didn't joinusfor dinner. It's his habit to lock hilariously unlikely "influence" for a Modern -World band like Magazine, himself up in a room by himself before performing. This solitary but those menacing tempos and eerie Duane Eddy guitar licks and red- sequestering is but one of his eccentricities: another is never doing alert horn parts (expertly evoked by Formula's synthesizer) are oddly interviews on the same day as gigs or recording (when he does do echoed in much of the rest of Magazine's work,as acasual aural glance at interviews, that is). "Shot By Both Sides" should suffice to illustrate. Does he meditate, read or cloister himself in the bog to take painful giant Howard Devoto sings Shirley Bassey? Why not? It's certainly no weirder shits? "It's just to clearmyhead, stampupand down theroom abit and to than, say, the mayhem wrought byAlex Harvey upon numbers like sleep. I frequently sleep. I'm trying to get out of "Delilah" and "The Impossible Dream". the habitnow,but it'sabit like I'm conditioned to Their pace and attack (not to mention their it at the moment. I just sleep for half an hour to clothes) bag them firmly as an outgrowth of anhour. It's impossible toarrangethingssothat "I'm really thenewwave,but their depth, solidity and I can get in about eight hours and then walk onto invention give them a musical strength which the stage. That's just not possible, but I've been should make it worthwhile for people withno able to get in the odd hour. not interested taste for ramalamadolequeue and one-two-free- "I don't know whether it'sagood thing either. faw to investa generous quantityofear -time. It got to the point where it was all part of a ritual. in being Devoto's dry, crackling vocals are never less This had to happen and then this had to happen than half -buried in the enmeshing drive of the and then I had to have a sleep and then this and band (an arm and a leg sticking out, you might this would happen and it'd be the gig. At one of recognised" say) even on record, and maybe they should stay the gigs none of that happened, and it was one of there until he develops more confidence and the... itwas agood gig." More prosaically, Devoto probably spends a Devoto on stage certain amount of his meditation hour putting with Magazinein 1978 alongside John on his eye makeup. McGeogh(left)and Does he find ritual comforting or worrying? Barry Adamson "I don't really indulge in it very much. I suppose only at important moments, and I suppose in that way it is comforting, but I'd become worried if Iwaslivingaritual all the time..." The opening of Magazine's set is an excellent double -bluff,onethat will undoubtedly achieve the status of ritual if they keep using it. Of course, then it'll become like a conjuror's trick when the audience knows how it's done; afavourite bedtime story to which all the kiddies know the ending. See, what happens is this: the band all come on and launch into a near -instrumental with Devoto standing on the extreme left of the stage playing rhythm guitar and wearing a flat 'at pulled down to hide what he describes -wryly, I hope -as his "distinguishing feature". He sings a few bars towards the end, but not enough for

34 IHISTORY OF ROCK 1978