WAS's Awesome New Wave Song Of The Week #43: Pete Shelley - Many A Time

The Awsomeness that is Pete Shelley is no secret to our frequent readers!  Having scored #136 on Marc’s Top 200 with “If You Ask Me (I Won't Say No)” - and mentioned in several other places - Pete is one of those New Wave geniuses whose talent manifested itself over and over again.  Whether it was forming the Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto or breaking new ground in his solo career, he always crafted memorable songs, usually with a killer hook.  But he was so much more than that ….

His first full solo effort “Homosapien” is a spectacular example of his ability to look far ahead of his time, from it’s crunchy title-track groove to the Commodore PET computer on it’s cover.  But this week’s Awesome Song is “Many A Time” - and comes from the same album as Marc’s #136 pick, a record called XL-1.  XL-1 is fantastic from start to finish, and would be a Top 5 “Awesome Album” of mine from the 80s (the era being mainly singles-based, very few New Wave albums qualify for that title!)    “Many A Time” is 6 minutes and 43 seconds of superbness, from it’s over-the-top bass line to it’s wild drum rhythms and great synth work.  A long song by New Wave standards, it’s so great it actually seems too short!  Enjoy “Many A Time”!  

But wait!  There’s more …

XL-1 was groundbreaking in another way …. it came packaged with computer software for the long-dead Sinclair Spectrum ZX personal computer that generated graphics to watch along with the lyrics - timed to match the audio - for the entire album!  Yes, Pete Shelley was a multimedia master at the dawn of the personal computer era!   Even though we are all about the 80s here on Marc’s Top 200, we also love modern technology… so rather than ship every reader cassette tapes and floppy discs, here’s a YouTube video of what you would have seen had you gone through all that trouble 35 years back. 

Enjoy the full album of XL-1 as it was originally meant to be experienced - with both sound and vision!