Magazine at the Forum

by Parsley on Thu, 2009/02/19 - 9:27pm Post to Twitter

PARSLEY’S COMMLOCK
Concert Review: Magazine, The Forum 12/02/09
Before I describe what it was like to be at a Magazine concert in 2009, I feel I should let you in on what it was like to be at one approximately thirty years previously at the Roundhouse in Camden Town.

On that occasion I think I was with my brother and we sat in the gallery above the band looking down at them. At my tender age (late teens) I was genuinely afraid of what I thought was a deeply subversive musical experience.

Lead man Howard Devoto was sneering at punk. He’d left The Buzzcocks so he could make oblique indecipherable comments about I don’t know what. The stage was dark and it was very unclear what the hell was going on. On bass, Barry Adamson was monolithic and magnificent. Every real band needs a Barry. Dave Formula’s keyboard sounds were full of experimental surprises and I couldn’t work out what he was doing. And more than anything Howard Devoto was a genius. At the risk of ending up in psueds’ corner, he was the equivalent of an extremely attractive woman that everyone stares at when they walk in a room despite trying not to. Only instead of beauty it was the magnetic charisma of his mind that was making everyone stare.

The audience were the cool intelligencia of the rock scene. They were the people that were too intimidating for you to talk to. Not necessarily obviously attractive, but having a poise and self-confidence that left you feeling child-like and that you’d strayed into something that was out of your league.

They encored with Bond-theme Goldfinger, and everyone was tickled and delighted with the idea of Devoto as Shirley Bassey - he was our diva.

When I was a student in Manchester, Magazine were a reference point for things that were cool and artistically worthy. I remember joining a band called ‘A Trip To The Pig Builder’, and recording in a studio in Chorlton that Magazine used to rehearse in. We were all interested to hear about what they were like from the guy who engineered there, and he told us that they would come in and play through the songs repeatedly without mistake or comment. There were echoes of the story about Captain Beefheart locking himself away with his band for the rehearsals of Trout Mask Replica for 8 months.

Back to the present, and I try to avoid blatant plugs for myself when I review things for ArtRocker (honest!). However, to tell the whole story of my Magazine concert I will have to mention that I am planning a Magazine covers gig on Sunday March 22nd (under the name Magazine Covers) at the Bull & Gate (100 yards from the Forum venue).

This led me to be standing in the snow in my zebra suit dishing out flyers as the members of the sold out Magazine concert audience flocked past, dodging me as they were dodging the team of ticket touts.

As I did this I was able to get a good look at the people who were coming to the concert. They all looked around my age. I was enjoying dishing out the flyers despite many people refusing to take them and it being very cold. I particularly enjoyed a ‘refusal’ from a sheepish looking Tim Vine. Vine is a comedian who specialises in absurd comedy that I really like. To see him looking serious and somehow embarrassed on his way to the very serious Magazine concert felt strangely like fun.

I owe a big thank you to my friend Paul Lester, who got me my ticket for the show. It was absolutely rammed and the audience stood in stoic reverential silence. To be blunt they were squeezing the life out of an enjoyable gig.

Devoto was on great comic form, opening with a voiceover from behind the scenes offering an explanation for the reunion by saying that he had a woman to impress. ‘We’re still Magazine’ he declared.

All the songs I wanted to hear got an airing, including the wonderful ‘Permafrost’. In one song, this summed up the concert for me. The chorus of the song states ‘at the place where we’re lost I will drug you and f– you on the permafrost’ and musically it does it in a very subversive disturbing way. But tonight Devoto changed it first time to say ‘you want me to drug you and f– you’. It was as if thirty years ago the audience had been shocked by the lyrics’ sadistic intent, but now they were self-declared masochists and it was exactly what they wanted to hear.

Devoto stood larger-than-life like a perverse villain in a Batman film. Formula’s keyboards were still doing some weird buzzing and warbling, bizarrely and accidentally pastiching the Robin’s Nest and Grange Hill theme tunes that eighties synths had come to accompany. Generally though, piano and Hammond-esque organ sounds predominated.

The backdrop was an extended version of their first album cover with distorted faces floating like balloons. ‘Rhythm Of Cruelty’ was one of the most successful tracks at getting some movement from the static audience. The booming sound of the large venue managed not to ruin it.

It was very egalitarian to allow everyone to calmly watch Magazine in clear detail like a rare flower, but personally I’m looking forward to delivering the same songs in the menacing intimacy of a smaller less predictable Bull & Gate venue next month.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]