Ever read a Pete Shelley tribute blog (you shouldn't've)

Well have ya, punk? No, you probably haven't - ie you probably haven't read an actual Pete Shelley tribute blog, good or bad. But you will definitely have seen lots of "tributes". Soundbite-y mini-statements peppering the next-day media coverage of Shelley's death last week. So that's what I'm here to talk about. The fall-out from a rock star death. (Was Pete Shelley a rock star? Yes, kind of). In general, the fall-out detritus depresses the hell out of me. The more so if the person involved was an important musical figure (Shelley obviously was). And more so still if it was someone I had some kind of artistic/emotional investment in (which I did in this case). It was the same with Mark E Smith at the beginning of the year. The same with John Peel all those years ago. The same with any of them. Leave it to the "music commentators" from the main news outlets and you're going to hear a 24-hour news cycle regurgitation of the same few facts and the same worn-out anecdotes. No depth, no genuine sensitivity, no feeling. (What do I get? No love). On the other hand, with Pete Shelley there have - it's true - been a few decent essayistic analyses from people who actually know a fair bit about the music and the history: eg Simon Reynolds's piece. So where does that leave you? In a strange position, I think. The news bulletin snippets on Shelley and Buzzcocks, with their ultra-compressed triteness - "Sex Pistols concert ... songs of unrequited love ... run of perfect pop songs ... influence on many" - are borderline horrible and just stir up a vague resentment. It's Shelley for dummies. Buzzcocks for the uninterested.

Who loves Buzzcocks the most?  (image:  Malcolm Garrett)

But it's how the mainstream media always does it. Today it's some singer from a Manchester pop-punk band; tomorrow an actor from a nineties sitcom. True, if you dislike all this and care about the music you can search out the more interesting stuff, but that doesn't feel quite right either. Within about a day of Shelley's death I was so sick of hearing/seeing the same few things about Ever Fallen ... and Homosapien that I felt utterly repulsed. Here I am, a longtime admirer of Buzzcocks and Shelley in the weird position of wishing everyone (including me) would just shut up about it all. (You spurn my natural emotions ...). It's a strange business, this public emoting over dead pop stars. On social and other media people are saying all this stuff (mostly a very narrow range of stuff) which invariably misses the point, crudely over-simplifies everything or just says what's obvious. Meanwhile, there are also plenty of those self-referential faux-tributes: the "Another part of my youth just died" kind. Not only is this particularly dull, it's not exactly very sensitive when someone has actually died. No, it's hard to wade through all this shallow praise without feeling rather ... bilious. Obviously at one level it's just part of the usual Faustian fame pact (or maybe semi-fame in Shelley's case). Go on TV, give a few interviews to flog your record/tour ("They say we're vile and obscene. Do I look vile and obscene?") and you've sold your soul. Years later, the obits will come back to haunt you. The same clips, the potted Wikipedia biog. All recycled in perpetuity. For some people it's a sort of badge of honour to publicly grieve. Britain's love affair with public grief is usually said to have started with Princess Diana, but I think pop music culture's always done it. Elvis, Marc Bolan, Sid Vicious, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain: demonstrations of public grief ("Sid lives" badges etc) were part of the proof that you were a true fan. So now whenever someone dies there's a race to put a YouTube video on Facebook with an RIP/best band I ever saw message. We all do it, me included. So what am I saying? That people are wrong to lament the deaths of musical "heroes" from their youth? No. I guess it's natural. Part of the "human condition" or something. But there's a queasy mix of narcissism and nostalgia in a lot of this. Tributes from 50-year-olds to a man in his sixties are really tributes to a much younger version of that fallen idol. And at a deeper level they're tributes to their teenage selves for having farsightedly bought Orgasm Addict from their local Virgin Records shop in Chelmsford in 1977. (And I wish I was sixteen again ...). In effect, every tribute of this kind to Shelley/Buzzcocks just adds to the overall conservativism of a popular music discourse already saturated in backward-looking nostalgia, not least when it comes to the deeply conservative punk-as-heritage genre. And I confess that even holier-than-thou Niluccio occasionally does it too. To one extent or another I reckon we're all surfing on a wave of nostalgia for an age yet to come.

From Linder Sterling's exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, London, 2017

Buzzcocks are a good example. Their 1976-1981 music sort of looked both ways - Beach Boys/Beatles-like harmonies fused with jagged edges and an adrenaline rush. I don't agree with Reynolds' assessment that they were timelessly "modern", and I would have absolutely hated seeing them at that 2012 Dutch punk festival he enthuses over. But it's true, as Reynolds says, that Buzzcocks had this amazing "serrated surge" quality to a lot of their music, and I'm sure that this was a major part of their intoxication for energetic teenagers of the seventies and part of the Proustian memory rush for old-timers suddenly remembering - almost re-experiencing - how it felt to be young when they reached for YouTube upon hearing of Shelley's heart attack last Thursday. People who over-identify with punk often protest too much. They're backed into a corner. They can look at stuff like that Spiral Scratch revival concert in Manchester in 2012 and tell themselves it's decent stuff, not a slightly cringeworthy nostalgia-fest. The original music was great when it was great (and is still great now in the right context), but doggedly holding onto it in this way is depressing and futile. If people living in 2018 like this music they should break from the familiar comforts of YouTube (or their worn-out Singles Going Steady LP) and go off to see some current bands doing similar-ish stuff - outfits like Pale Kids or Thee Mightees (and probably half a dozen others). To return to the beginning and my opening question - ever read a Pete Shelley tribute blog (you shouldn't've)? I guess your answer might now be: "I hadn't. But having read this long-winded Niluccio on noise nonsense, I have now!" Which ... would be fair enough. It's a dangerous business, blogging about much-loved people and much-loved bands. And to do it in my habitual stand-offish/mannered way is just asking for trouble. (Who do I think I am? Howard Devoto or something?). So, lest I'm accused of disparaging other people's genuine love of Shelley and Buzzcocks, here's a nice song from A Different Kind Of Tension. As Mr Shelley himself said, There. Is. No. Love. In. This. World. Any. More ...