Devoto's Derision, Magazine's Ambition

When Howard Devoto left The Buzzcocks in 1977, legend has it that he told the English music press: "I'm not stupid and I won't pretend to be. It was Devoto's indictment not so much of his bandmates, but of UK punk, which was, at the time, undergoing a radical change youth-culture rebellion to pop-cultural conformity. Devoto and Pete Shelley formed the Buzzcocks in 1976 —not long before they'd infamously book the Sex Pistols to play in Manchester— and combine to on 1977's legendary Spiral Scratch EP.

But the satirical "Boredom" effectively signposted Devoto's feelings on being stuck in punk-rock's sudden orthodoxy, condemned to playing music fast, aggressive, and repetitious.

In response, he formed Magazine, who became, in some ways, quite literally the first post-punk band. Devoto wanted his new band to be able to employ everything that had quickly become forbidden in punk circles: musical talent, slick production, ambition, long songs, instruments other than guitar/bass/drums. With co-founder John McGeoch (pre-Siouxsie and the Banshees) wielding both guitar and saxophone, and Dave Formula on keyboards, Magazine immediately set themselves apart from their peers.

And they set to work quickly: by early '78, they'd released their debut album, Real Life, which may've proved a peculiar, puzzling proposition for punk purists. Filled with four and five minute songs, the set finds Magazine playing in odd meters, with unexpected angularity, and sound somewhat menacing even as work with chiming piano, synthesizer squiggles, blasts of saxophone, and squalling guitar leads that, gasp!, even break out into actual guitar solos.

Largely side-stepping the frenetic nature of punk, they often played at a slow, ponderous pace; informed by David Bowie's Berlin albums and sounding, to many critics, a little too much like punk's sworn enemy, prog-rock. No one would've mistaken it for punk, but few may've recognized as the dawning of post-punk, a musical movement that would be infinitely more interesting yet eternally less hyped than the tabloid storm from which it sprang.

Intellectual Debt, Intellectual Theft

The more sedate pace and Magazine's slurred, into-the-early hours vibe proved a perfect setting for Devoto to hone his singularly shtick; carving a frontman's persona that went on to be hugely influential. With his smart-ass lyrics, casual intellectualism, unusual delivery, projection of anxiety, and slight hint of perversion, Devoto influenced all manner of famed English frontmen: Morrissey, Jarvis Cocker, Luke Haines, Thom Yorke. Momus was such a student that he'd write an ode to Devoto entitled "The Most Important Man Alive."

Not that he'd begrudge those devoted to Devoto; intellectual theft, after all, having a long and distinguished history. "What is legal is just what's real," Devoto smirks, like some bizarro-lounge-singer, mid-"Shot by Both Sides," Magazine's first classic single. "What I'm given to understand is exactly what I steal." Though "Shot by Both Sides" may be its best-known jam, there are songs on Real Life that far better captured Magazine, as they were: like the piano-dappled closer "Parade," which flits back-and-forth between love-song and anti-love-song; or the scrambling, gnarled "The Light Pours Out of Me"; or the odd, uneasy prog-funk of opener "Definitive Gaze."

United by Devoto's inimitable take on the frontman, Real Life hangs together as an album when, at times, it feels like a new band wandering through sound, exploratory and free. In such, it fulfills a dual role for decades-on listeners: being both an important landmark and something that sounds enjoyable, odd, and thrilling, still.

Record Label: Virgin
Release Date: April, 1978