No Moon on monday

I've just treated myself to a nice 'Panasaki' HDD Multi-Region DVD Freeview Recorder thingy. It looks cool but it's taken me hours to figure out how it works. The Freeview pictures are better than what I was getting via Cable, recording to hard disk is great and I've managed to successfully copy stuff onto +R and -R DVDs. There are still a few things I'm stumped on though. The manual says I should be able write to +RW DVD discs but I've not had much joy with those so far. Grrr. Modern technology is becoming more complicated and harder to use. Does the average person in the street really know about 720p, 1080i, HDMI, HDD, RGB, +RW, RAM, NTSC, SD, VCD, XP, SP, AV2, and EXT1? And that's just half of the technobabble involved. I'm about 90% fluent but I still find myself struggling. Did I say it looks cool? Yeah, slim, shiny and black.

One task that I thought would be tricky to do was to hook up my ancient VCR and then copy stuff from my old VHS tapes onto the hard disk. This turned out to be a piece of cake! I've got some old family home movies, originally shot on cine film and transferred to VHS, now successfully transferred onto DVD. I'm really chuffed about that. I've also rescued a few things that I taped from TV many years ago - Bruce Springsteen's live from Glasgow 1992 TOTP appearance... anyone? OK, what about this rarity - A Pete Shelley TV concert, aired in 1986? Well I'm impressed even if nobody else is!

Back in the eighties I loved Pete Shelley's post-Buzzcocks solo albums. My favourite was his third and last - Heaven and The Sea. I saw Pete play at the Electric Ballroom, Camden on the tour for that album; It was, and still is, one of the best gigs I've ever seen. So it's a real thrill for me to watch the, previously lost, 'Cue The Music' TV broadcast again. 45 minutes of Pete Shelley on the telly! The audience appears to have been dragged into the studio from the street outside, but despite this it's a well shot, great performance from Pete and his band. Here's an ever so creepy, atmospheric, 'out-there' song from the show (best watched at night with the lights turned off). Enjoy.

Pete Shelley - No Moon
And since I'm in a good mood, here's one of the great singles from Heaven and The Sea...

Pete Shelley - Never Again
Pete Shelley solo myspace

Didn't Know What Love Was For....

You still don't know now...

I was thrilled to find this on YouTube this morning. Pete Shelley. 1983. Pure Genius.

Pete Shelley - XL1
I've found some other old gems too - the videos are a bit dated and cheesy but they take me back to my yoof and when it was OK to wear white socks:

Screaming Jets - Johnny Warman - I bought this 7" single because it had Peter Gabriel all over it. Turn your volume up it's a bit quiet. The space suit looks familiar, what film is it from?

I Like 'letric Motors - Patrick D. Martin - A very obscure, Plastic Betrand meets John Foxx type tune. Awful vid, but the song has kept bubbling up in my brain for over 25 years! From the same planet as Telecommunication (A Flock of Seagulls) and Electricity (OMD).
'Electric motors have no fears'!

Thanks to the posters.

Hot Music & Computer News (1983)

Pete Shelley was indeed in tune with the times. Perhaps slightly ahead. The program on the cassette generated 'visualisations' and lyrics to the 10 XL1 album songs. Fingers crossed, you loaded the program from the end of the cassette side 2 onto the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, flipped the cassette over to side 1 and pressed play, simultaneously running the program on the Spectrum. A cool idea but I could never get the audio from the Cassette Player and TV Images in synch. Still it was a great album... you just had to remember to stop the tape after the songs finished else you were hit by an eardrum splitting schreeeeeching as the computer program 'played' through the speaker! Arrgh!

A wave of ZX Spectrum nostalgia has hit me... time to play some games:
Remember this classic?

Ant Attack
More old Spectrum stuff to play on your PC (no rubber keys sadly) can be found at World Of Spectrum

Diamond Geezers

Mick Jones and Tony James continue to make free music available as Carbon/Silicon. The best of the new tracks, The Whole Truth, I've added to the Get On The Beam Jukebox (see sidebar). Check out their site for more. www.carbonsiliconinc.com

More old geezers now, a few pics from the Buzzcocks concert in Camden last Thursday. Koko is a really great venue, although just 5 yards from the stage the sound sucked for the main set, which was a shame since it was good for the support band (The Adored) and the encore.

Buzzcocks were on top form, seemed to be enjoying every minute of it and the vibe spread around the bouncing crowd.


After blasting through 7 tracks from the new flat-pack philosophy album they raced into their hits without pausing for breath.

How Pete Shelley can sing so many words so fast is beyond me. Steve Diggle (Guitar & Vocals), Tony Barber (Bass) and Phil Barker (Drums) provided the driving energy.

Low res mobile phone camera photos are of course going to come out fuzzy and blurred.




This is a bit frustrating but they can capture a moment well and even accidently look a bit arty!

Setlist (Courtesy of Secret Public): flat-pack philosophy/wish i never loved you/sell you everything/reconciliation/i don't exist/soul survivor/big brother wheels/sixteen again/get on our own/friends of mine/harmony in my head/i don't mind/fiction romance/autonomy/i look alone/isolation/fast cars/what do i get?/love you more/ever fallen in love/moving away from pulsebeat///sick city sometimes/noise annoys/breakdown/promises/orgasm addict/boredom

Until The Razor Cuts

Before 'Homosapien' and his excellent 3 solo albums, Pete Shelley was of course in Buzzcocks - arguably the greatest punk/New Wave/Pop band to come from the UK. If there's anyone out there that doesn't think that Pete's Ever Fallen In Love (With Some You Shouldn't've)? is one of the best songs ever written then... you are already dead.

After reforming in 1989 Buzzcocks have been releasing consistently good albums. flat-pack philosophy is the latest. You can hear the excellent new single wish i never loved you here. They'll be playing @ Koko in Camden, London on March 9th. Having said all of the above, how can I not be there?

Support is from a Californian band called The Adored. They've got an EP out that features Pete on a couple of tracks - one of which you can download for free - the very tuneful TV Riot. It's one to make you jump around your living room.

Homosuperior In My Interior

Pete Shelley - Homosapien (1981)

[Banned By The BBC]