If punk was the sound of disillusionment, rebellion and anarchy then what came next should have been amazing; a blank slate for a new generation to make music that would destroy everything that went before and show the establishment how redundant it was. Instead we got Dire Straits and Neil Diamond. against the backdrop of Thatcherism and Race Riots. Well, sort of. While the mainstream was collapsing under the weight of it's own dirge, the 80's also provided the groundwork for basically every stop-start indie pop-punk band the gets splashed across the cover of artrocker. In fact fuck that, the 80's invented artrock. And at the front runners of this meeting of intelligence and pop were Magazine.
Fronted by Howard Devoto, who'd already turned punk on it's head once as the lead singer of the Buzzcocks, Magazine realised that there was nothing wrong with slicing some spikey guitar with a melodic synth line and lyrics that actually meant something. In fact there was something kind of genius about it. So you get the swooning backing vocals of Laura Teresa on You never knew me, turning a hate-filled tale of a loveless relationship into stylish, refined, bitter-sweet ear candy. Or the concise but precise lyrics that could turn society into self-conscious wreck on tracks like Philadelphia, where Devoto groans 'I have liberty of movement, I have liberty of movement, but I'm so lazy'.
Yet despite their obviously skill at song-crafting and alternative leaning, Magazine were far from musically pretentious. If a song needs a slap bass line, as prominent on Thank You, then the song gets a slap bass line, doesn't matter if that's uncool because it's sounds fucking awesome. It's the same with gospel style question and answer choruses, or male/female double tracked vocals. Magazine knew the components of great pop music and managed to export them into a punk sensibility, all without losing an ounce of credibility.
And their influence is everywhere, not only seared into the arses of every floppy-fringed teenage who's passed through the barfly, but also prominent with some of the biggest indie bands in the world. Morissey regular performs covers of their songs while Radiohead not only covered Magazine's first single Shot by both sides but also managed to nick the same song's main riff to create Just. Sneaky.
Magazine were a band that could bend time. They were championing post-punk before punk even existed, gave the new wave blueprint to pop groups like XTC and Talking hands while showing Television and even new bands like These New Puritans how to strip punk down and start again. They showed the next three decades how to be indie, but unlike so many of the other artists touted as a great influence on the new wave of guitar bands, if you listen to magazine today, they still sound ahead of their game.
You can buy all four magazine albums, although mostly the correct use of soap, at Rough Trade aswell as any half decent second hand record shop. Here are a couple to get started wtih:Magazine - Philidelphia
Magazine - Shot by both sides
