This compilation © 1989 Virgin Records Ltd. Design by The Leisure precoss Approx running time: 23 minutes VVC 579

1. [Motorcade]
2. [The Light Pours Out Of Me]
3. [Touch And Go]
4. [Feed The Enemy]
5. [Cut-Out Shapes]

Magazine was one of the more adventurous acts to emerge from the punk rock wasteland of the late 1970s. The group was founded and led by Howard Devoto (ne Trafford), who had achieved earlier celebrity as the original vocalist with Manchester's most notable punks, the Buzzcocks - he sang on their debut single, 'Spiral Scratch', before leaving to form his own band.

Magazine never quite achieved the success predicted for them by magazines as diverse as Rolling Stone and Melody Maker, and cannot be said to have set the charts alight, but Devoto's uncompromising attitude to his music has always been admirable.

Of the songs included on this collection, three were released as singles.'Touch And Oo' from 1978 demonstrates the group's punky roots, while the nightmarish 'Feed The Enemy' and 'The Light Pours Out Of Me', both from 1980, show the increasing sophistication which emerged when the band tried to move closer to rock's mainstream.

'Cut Out Shapes' was included on and provided the title for, the group's second album 'Secondhand Daylight' (1979). Several other members of Magazine were mentioned in dispatches for their extracurricular work.

Original guitarist John McGeoch (who also played saxophone) spent many months working with Siouxsie & the Banshees (whom he eventually joined perman- ently) and Magazine simultaneously, while McGeoch, Dave Formula (keyboards) and Barry Adamson (bass) were also members of Visage, the hitmaking 'New Wave Supergroup' featuring Midge Ure and Billy Currie of Ultravox, Rusty Egan from the Rich Kids and Vocalist Steve Strange.

Pete Frame in his 'Rock Family Trees' wrote of Howard Devoto "There is always room for the pngted idiosyncratic writer and performer, but like his early idol Captain Beefheart, he was never able to become more than a cult figure. The Orson Welles of punk". A well deserved accolade for which many might kill! John Tobler, For The Record, 1989