Pete Shelley

XL1
Genetic, 1983

Before Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto formed Buzzcocks, one of the first-wave British punk bands, they were members of an electronic music society together at university. So when the group broke up in 1981, it came as no surprise to Shelley's friends that he swapped his guitar for a synthesiser. For most Buzzcocks fans, though, it was quite a shock. Shelley's first single 'Homosapien' was about as punk as a gay disco. Literally. It was soon banned by the BBC for containing "explicit" references to homosexuality – which, by today's standards, were about as explosive as soft cheese – and led Shelley to talk about the "open secret" of his bisexuality previously hinted at in Buzzcocks lyrics.

After an album of the same name as the single, Shelley released his second solo record XL1 in 1983. While it was still largely electronic, a few tracks had guitars as well as drum machines and harked back to the Buzzcocks' later songs – 'Many A Time' sounded a bit like a funked-up take on the band's brilliant 'Lipstick'. Still, there's a reason why Shelley is remembered foremost for his role as lead singer of the Buzzcocks rather than for his solo work. Let me put it this way: unless you're still in the throes of puberty, you should have figured out by now whether glamtastic 80s new-wave records appeal to your taste.

The original pressing of XL1 also had a track at the end of the second side called 'ZX Spectrum Code'. If you try to play it, it sounds like a vacuum cleaner molesting a video game. It was a computer program written for the ZX Spectrum, one of the first widely-available home computers in Britain, sometimes referred to as the UK equivalent of the Commodore 64. The 'Speccy', as it was known, was a blocky keyboard that plugged into a television set and ran programs from a tape deck. To run the program on the record, listeners had to cover their ears, play the track on vinyl while recording it to a cassette, and then load it on the ZX. If you ran the program in sync with the album, it would bring up the lines to each song on the screen like a makeshift karaoke machine. Cool, huh?