Interview by Momus with clips of standard promo for 'The Beast Box Is Dreaming'
MOMUS(to camera): Howard Devoto was one of the generation of punks that came up in 76. He was the singer in the Buzzcocks - he sang with Magazine - he disappeared from the face of the Earth for four years and then came back with Luxuria with his partner Noko. They now have their second album out on Beggars Banquet - it's called 'The Beast Box' and there's also this collection of lyrics - '1976-1990' - on Black Spring Press. I spoke to Howard in London(????) - today. (positively beaming about this)
CLIP #1
O/V-MOMUS: Erm - will guitar rock last into the 21st century or is it all ready nostalgic?
NOKO: The way in which I play guitar now. (shuffles wildly) When I grew up and when I first started playing guitar I thought guitar meant something in the Seventies. It was like - well okay - erm- somehow during the Eighties it became an unhip thing to even aspire to. So - even though I've got all those skills I think they get used in a slightly more (pondering) distanced sort of sense now I guess - because they are inherently full of semi-logical baggage and you can never really get rid of that. And I think the guitar just isn't a liberated instrument anymore. I think it has so much cultural baggage inherent in every note you play - but- so - I don't know how that answers the question.
MOMUS: But you still play a lot of guitar with-
NOKO: Well I do because that's the way I can communicate best and most articulately.
FULL SCREEN CAPTION OF BOOK COVER
MOMUS: You've had 'It Only Looks As If It Hurts' published. I think you said elsewhere you don't think lyrics stand up on their own - to reading - casual reading - but erm - are you trying to narrow the gap?
HD: Oh well - I think they stand up to casual reading. It's probably really detailed reading - erm - which is where I would expect poetry to stand up or - or to stand up as just a voice enunciating those words. Y'know - they are very much- they're very - they are very much written and were written to music for music to go with music.
CLIP#2-brief
MOMUS: Do you keep a book of notable ideas and do you have it on you and would you care to read a couple of lines at random from it?!
laughter
HD: (pointing) My bag's over there and I can't be seen to move. Erm. I do keep a notebook - yes.
MOMUS: And what kind of things strike the ear and make you think 'I must write that down'?
HD: Er- whoooh. Oh - the usual sorts of things - y'know. The bus is better than the Underground isn't it - generally - for people behind you and the things that they're saying. Er - (shrugs) stuff that flashes across my brain from wherever it may come.
MOMUS: You then mention somewhere that you do a lot of - you invert cliches. You say - "I've got a good face for memories" rather than a good memory for faces and that kind of thing. And is it as if you feel that if you put a cliche on it's head all the copper comes out of it's pockets and you get some sort of new meaning out of it - a new value out of it?
HD: Yes - especially from the fact that it is - that - y'know - that it is a cliche- that - that - it- yes - though those coins that were in the pocket were perhaps very well worne - but yeah - they do get renewed a little bit.
CLIP#3
MOMUS: What would you have been if you hadn't been a singer?
HD: (huge sigh) Oh - I really have no idea. I really have no idea
MOMUS: I mean - when you were eight years old what did you want to be when you grew up?
HD: I think probably the first- the first - er- probably the only ever thing I ever had was when I first started listening to music - erm- of wanting to be the person that chose the music to go with - erm - y'know - whatever I was watching on television or whatever music I was hearing. (brief Noko cut-away - edit?) Because I was finding it so - so evocative. I think I probably wanted to shoot films to certain kinds of music - actually. That was probably more the way around - now I think about it. With certain music that I somehow wanted to get visually.
MOMUS: And - and (sniggering - incoherent-lines to the effect of 'And you?')
NOKO: Yeah - I was always told I was going to be an architect. Er. And I guess really in a sort of 1990s sense - to be an architect is probably more hip than being a musician now - really. (laughs) So - er - I maybe should have done that.
CLIP#4
HD: (smiling broadly throughout) Am I creating a character? Er - erm - er-
MOMUS: No - you did say. You did say in the N.M.E. on Saturday the 6th August 1983 (sniggers all round) No - no - no - erm. That - er - part of your whole creative project had been seeing what you could get away with in public being this character called Howard Devoto and I found that very interesting and I based half my bloody career on it as well! But - erm - how-
HD: It's a bad mistake! Don't - don't - y'know. For heavens sake - save yourself. Stop now.
FULL CLIP TO END
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