"Why are you so edgy, kid, asks the man with the voice,
one thing follows another, you live and learn, you have no choice..."
Great lines that. Shot By Both Sides was was written by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley when both were still Buzzcocks, but a punk-desillusioned Devoto ran away with it after forming his own band. Packed in the rather beautiful sleeve pictured above and released in January ´78, both Shot and the sax-driven b-side My Mind Ain´t So Open sounded way punkier than the stately sound Magazine would later explore, probably just because they didn´t yet have a keyboard player at the time of recording these tracks.
The title is said to have come from an argument about politics between Devoto and his girlfriend, who remarked that he´d "end up shot by both sides". Devoto turned this remark into a classic ode to paranoia - "they must have come to a secret understanding..." - where nothing is what it seems and the victims must have been part of the conspiracy all along.
Magazine - Shot By Both Sides MP3
Magazine - My Mind Ain´t So Open MP3
7 comments:
...and what a particularly fine sleeve design it was, too.
Yup, by Odilon Redon. Thanks to my pal Wal for refreshing my memory on that one.
Ah! Thanks for that prompt, Wim; I just googled Redon here and now. Fascinating. I'd hitherto believed the illustrator to have been far more contemporary.
"Like music [he allegedly put on record] my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate."
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/R/redon.html
The ambiguous world of the indeterminate huh? Very fitting that. Thanks!
As I get more distance from it, I would happily say that Magazine is the more timeless of all the Manchester post-punk bands. Having to choose between giving up my Joy Division, The Fall and Magazine albums, I think I'd part with the latter last.
I fully agree Hector. They have aged well.
Post a Comment