Welcome to the 23rd episode of the CROSSED CHANNELS podcast — a.k.a. the podcast in which music journalists/obsessives Dan Epstein (the Yank) and Tony Fletcher (the Brit) clash and connect over music from either side of the pond.
Whereas we sometimes cover artists that one of us totally adores and the other one can only just about bring themselves to poke gingerly with a long stick, this month we’re talking about a band that both of us hold in incredibly high esteem: Manchester’s mighty Buzzcocks.
This episode was inspired by Tony’s recent five-part exploration on his Substack about how Buzzcocks invented pop-punk in 1978 with an incredible run of singles — and how his early-teen self reacted to each new one (and its B-side) as it was released.
Dan, on the other hand, discovered the band like most American Buzzcocks fans did back then: via Singles Going Steady, a compilation released in September 1979 by IRS Records, and which was the first Buzzcocks record to come out in the US. Side One of the album presented the band’s first eight A-Sides in chronological order, with their first eight B-sides arranged similarly on Side Two.
For Dan, Singles Going Steady was a powerful introduction to one of the best and most influential bands to emerge from the original UK punk scene, and to the brilliant songwriting of Pete Shelley. Tony, however, has a somewhat different take on the collection, which we discuss in this episode…
We also talk about Shelley’s knack for writing about romance from a gender-neutral perspective, the production genius of Martin Rushent, the underrated brilliance of the band’s guitar arrangements, how Steve Diggle was the “Dave Davies” of the band, and our favorite B-sides from that original batch of groundbreaking Buzzcocks singles.
In addition, we express our sadness at the passing of the great Steve Cropper, a guitarist whose spare, soulful playing was idolized by countless guitarists, ourselves included. Click HERE to read Tony’s 2015 interview with him, and click below to go way back to Episode 4 of CROSSED CHANNELS, in which we discussed Cropper’s contributions to Otis Redding’s music, and to the sound of Stax Records in general.
As always, this full CROSSED CHANNELS episode is only available to paid subscribers of Jagged Time Lapse and/or Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith, though a short preview of the episode is available above for all to listen to. To hear this episode in full, along with all of our previous CROSSED CHANNELS episodes, just sign up for a paid subscription to one of our Substacks — or, better yet, sign up for both of them!
CROSSED CHANNELS can be heard both here on our Substack pages or via your preferred podcast app: just follow the links and instructions on the right. In addition to the podcast, Jagged Time Lapse and Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith regularly serve up previously unpublished interviews and other exclusive content to our paid subscribers.
To those of you who have already shelled out for paid subscriptions to either or both Substacks, we’d like to express our deepest thanks for continuing to support our work — and wish you and yours a very happy and peaceful holiday season.
