Buzzcocks

Led by the perenially heart-broken Pete Shelley, the Buzzcocks took the angst and anxiety that punk thrived on and, instead of aiming their fully loaded guitars at everything around them, made implicitly self-mocking songs cut with a heavy dose of wry wit. Backed by the ringing guitars of Steve Diggle, the frenetic drumming of John Maher and the even-keeled bass of Steve Garvey, Shelley made light of adolescent troubles and adult love woes, offering self-deprecating lyrics to unrequited loves and explicitly frank tales of teenage sexual discovery. "Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've?)," and "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" expressed the desperation of failed relationships and disillusionment with love, while "Orgasm Addict" needs no explanation. And on "I Don't Mind," a nasal-voiced Pete Shelley remarked, "...Everything I see/Just makes me feel you're putting me down/And if it's true this pathetic clown'll/Keep hanging around/That's if you don't mind/I don't mind." The Buzzcocks are one of the smartest, most influential bands in punk, and their music sounds as relevant and impossibly perfect now as it did 20 years ago.