Buzzcocks: Breakdown

Track of the Week - 13 February 2022

Not me thankfully, a bus I was on. I was on my way back from town after my volunteering session and around halfway back the bus driver pulled up, got out, and made a phone call. 

After a couple of minutes he got back on to say that this bus wasn't going any further. There was a problem with the ABS (the bus had been making some grinding noises) and that was as far as he could go. What sort of namby-pamby world do we live in where you can't even drive a mass transit vehicle without functioning brakes? Health and Safety gone mad!

This left me in a dilemma. A bus that took me part of the way home could be along in 10 minutes but there was at least a 10-minute journey and a 10 minute-plus walk at the end of that. Or I could wait until the replacement bus turned up. It was a sunny afternoon (if with an accompanying cold breeze) so I got off and walked home. It took about 40 minutes. Did I see the driver on a replacement bus coming in the opposite direction towards the end of my journey meaning I could have saved 5-10 minutes if I'd stayed put? Possibly.

Breakdown is the first track on Buzzcocks' 1977 debut EP Spiral Scratch which might just be one of the most important records in the history of music. It's not so much the music (Breakdown is a terrific punk thrash of the time with Howard Devoto on vocals not long before he left the group to form Magazine) but the fact it was recorded and released by the band themselves on their own record label. This paved the way for other similar bands to follow the same pattern and release their own material rather than wait to be signed by a major.

Enough of my half-baked history lesson. While Boredom is the best (and best-known) track on the record this is well worth a listen too.