THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1978 - The Light Pours Out of Me by Magazine

Meanwhile, post leaving the Buzzcocks, in an entirely other realm of 1978. Howard Devoto, having had the briefest sojourn away from the limelight, reveals the first fruits of his distinctly peculiar vision.

Magazine, formed in 1977 were one of the first bands whom you might call Post Punk. There was the sense that Devoto just wasn't going to wait for the punk bubble to burst as it inevitably would, he'd puncture it first himself. Releasing Shot by Both Sides in January of 1978 which reached 41 in the charts. Perhaps encapsulating in song the furore that greeted his leaving the Buzzcocks.

There was always a feeling that Magazine were really the then unfashionable thing - an albums band. So it was not til the LP Real Life that you got a fuller more rounded sense of what they were really about. This album contained a cache of songs that Devoto had originally written with Pete Shelley before he'd even left the Buzzcocks.

The stand out track is The Light Pours Out Of Me. It has the most recognisible and instantly captivating openings of any song. The pounding opening drum, the rumbling thrum of its bass and the magisterial guitar that proudly rings out the architecture of its riff. As though declaring the entrance of some beast, emporer, or nascent thing of importance. Its also as moody as hell. There's the expectant build up, then enters the hammy theatricality of Devoto's proto goth vocal intonations. Bleakly menacing as though the living dead were given voice - Time flies, Time Crawls, Like an insect, Up and down the walls - The light pours out of me. 

As with many Devoto songs there's an existential dilemma being worked out through imagery in song form. The tune is addictive listening, but it's lyrical opacity is so deliberate. Evocative but not allowing you to perceive its true meaning - Is this person deluded, a danger? Who on earth do they think they are? Some sort of Magus, a demon, a godlike figure? What drug are they being consumed by?

Devoto's visual style of performance possesses no charm, a nerdy creep, rather than creepy.. He was fortunate to have assembled behind him a band of hugely talented musicians, containing the inestimable Barry Adamson and John McGeogh within it. The Light Pours Out of Me has just one of McGeogh's guitar riffs and its a classy corker. It's not for nothing he is rated by his contemporaries as The Guitarist of his generation. But his contribution to Magazine was not to last long. McGeogh left in 1980 to ornament the golden years of Siouxsie & the Banshees, and Magazine entirely folded the following year.