Buzzcocks: “We wanted to create something that caused people”

Saturday 4 October i Buzzcocks In the only Italian date of their European tour, they will perform at the Casa del Popolo di Grassina, in the province of Florence. The English band should have exhibited at the Viper Theater in Florence, But last August he was devastated by a firea change of location was therefore necessary. Fortunately, the concert was not canceled, but the question remains suspended: but who are (for those who do not know them) the Buzzcocks?

In mid -seventies such Howard Traffordthen a student at the University of Bolton, he published the most classic of ads to put together a band: the requirement requested by Howard was that they shared the passion for the song of Velvet Underground “Sister Ray”. To respond to the appeal was Pete Shelley. As for the name of the band, Shelley himself tells how he jumped out. In February 1976, Shelley and Trafford – who had taken the name of art Devoto Howard – read an article on a band called Sex Pistols who had just played in London. “It was the awareness that someone else was doing what we already wanted to do,” Shelley explained to Reuters. The two, in the car, driven from Manchester to London to look for the Sex Pistols. The story continues Shelley: “We bought a copy of Time Out, who did not mention them. But there was a preview of a TV series called Rock Follies in the magazine. The title was: ‘It’s the Buzz, cock’. And that’s how we invented the name.”

Oh yes, in that 1976, in Great Britain, the punk wind was severely blowing and Buzzcocks They were an active part of that scene. In those days things happened very quickly. They debuted in full punk style with the individual, “Orgasm Addict”, Song that speaks of masturbation, and that was immediately censored by the BBC for its sexual texts: “You Still Keep Beating Your Meat to Pulp “.

In January 1977 the band, which was completed by Steve Diggle on bass and John Maher On drums, he published the self -produced EP “Spiral Scratch”. That disc consisted of four songs, among these “Boredom”, Pete Shelley He said in this regard: “We wanted to wake up people. We wanted to create something that would cause people, that she shocked them, almost like in Zen Buddhism, where they come to hit you with a stick. Think: ‘No, no, it can’t be’. Then suddenly you see any possibility.”

Boredom, boredom. And it was boredom that the frontman and founder of the group Devoto Howard He left his companions declaring that he is easily bored and adding that the punk rock had already become restrictive and stereotyped. Shelley certainly did not get soul: he entered formation Steve Garvey On the bass, Diggle smeared the guitar and he took charge of the burden of singing. In 1978 i Buzzcocks they released not one, but two albums: before “Another Music in a Different Kitchen” and then “Love Bites”.

These two records are the best of the English group “I Don’t Mind”, “What do i get?” (released as a single) e “Ever Falle in Love (with Someone You Shouldn’T’Ve) “ I am among the best published. The third album “A different Kind of Tension” From 1979 he was not up to the previous ones and in 1981 the band melted due to disagreements with the record label. After the eighties, in the early nineties the band met with only the shelley and diggles of the historical nucleus. In 1993, after 14 years from the previous one, he reached the market their fourth album entitled “Trade Test Transmissions “. In the meantime, everything had changed around them: when they left they were labeled as punk, without knowing it now their old music was called pop punk. On the album “Trade Test Transmissionions” Five other records followed. Then, in 2018, a heart attack took away Pete Shelley. Steve Diggle the impact and, now the only original member of the band, continued on the road of the Buzzcocks publishing another album in 2022, “Sonics in the Soul”to date the last of a saga that, after the eighties, aside, next year will cut the 50 -year finish line.

The current formation of Buzzcocks it consists of Steve Diggle (guitar and voice), Danny Farrant (drums), Chris Remington (bass) and Perazzoli hands (guitar and voice). They will be to get on the stage of the House of the people of Grassina next October 4th.