Amoeba Music

By Oliver Hall

Howard Devoto brought the concerns of a modernist poet and a smart, bored adult to punk when he formed the Buzzcocks with Pete Shelley in 1976. Devoto declared that he was abandoning punk in 1977 and formed Magazine, whose early singles resembled punk, though the band quickly developed a distinct style of its own that does not fit into any pop genre. Magazine set the dour tone of what was called “post-punk,” though the band’s dourness was not an identifying mark of a genre, but the tone of Devoto’s solitary preoccupations.

Early in 1976, Devoto and Pete Shelley traveled from Manchester to London to see the Sex Pistols, about whom Devoto had read in NME.... Read More