Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley look like the odd couple. Sitting at a table in a drinking ale in London - the duo are together again -albeit very briefly - to reminisce hazily about Buzzcocks' groundbreaking 1977 punk EP - Spiral. Scratch - and about the album's worth of much-bootlegged recordings - Time's Up - which now gains its first legal release in the first week of September. The four-track Spiral Scratch itself gets re-issued on August 5.

Some 15 years since Buzzcocks' debut - Devoto has developed a studious - demure appearance which befits his work in the interim with Magazine and Luxuria - with his outfit topped off neatly by a Panama hat - like some kind of Dirk Bogarde devo-tee ready for the summer heat. By stark contrast Pete Shelley - the guru of new wave pop - sports an ill-fitting patterned shirt - hanging loose over his paunch - with what seems to be exactly the same haircut he sported all those moons ago.

In a way - this original Buzzcocks pair sum up the spirit of punk rock - wherein two quite different char-acters could meet up and - through a love of music rather than a desire to get laid and earn lots of money - just get up there on stage and go for it. Out of the excitement and enthusiasm of 1976 - the Spiral Scratch EP emerged as a benchmark record-ing which all future new wave campaigners would have to surpass.

The group succumbed to "musical differences" almost straight afterwards - with Devoto leaving to form Magazine - and Shelley taking over as main vocalist. After a run of successes - Buzzcocks split in 1981 and Shelley went solo - although he's recently reunited the band - minus Devoto - and they've toured America.

So - what sparked the new noise all those years ago? And how come it came from Manchester? Howard Devoto removes his hat and begins-

"I was just going through the usual music thing - going to see bands on a Saturday at college and not really enjoying it. But music - and The Stooges in particular - meant an awful lot to me. What was dif-ferent about them was that their music was simple - elemental - and I thought - Well - I could just about do this."

Devoto advertised within the college he attended in Bolton and came up with Pete Shelley: "The ad said something about wanting musicians and euphonium players to do cover versions of Sister Ray - " a puzzled Shelley recalls - "and I thought I knew the chords but wasn't too sure."

The band worked on cover versions in the "priva-cy of people's front rooms" according to Devoto. A string of faceless performers joined and departed the duo and tracks by The Stooges - Eno - Bowie and the Stones were explored.

"So there we were - " continues Devoto - "heading in a vaguely Stooge-ish way - when we read some-thing about a band called The Sex Pistols - who also did a Stooges song."

Sleeping bags at the ready - Devoto and Shelley hit London and hooked up with the Pistols. "We thought they were bloody great l" Devoto blurts after a 20-minute debate as to what colour car the duo hit the Big Smoke in. "And we thought - Let's go back to Manchester and be like them- but up North."

As often seemed to happen in those heady days - one gig and the rest was history. The new quartet became a legend - splashed over the rock weeklies after only their first proper show. None of your paying your dues for years: punk rock had moved the goalposts and Buzzcocks - so to speak - were slot-ting in a hat-trick.

"The gig went brilliant - " Shelley remembers - smiling. "Malcolm (McLaren) had brought up a lot of journalists who were sympathetic to what the Pistols were doing and by the next week we were reviewed in all the papers. They loved it. Well - they thought we were better than Slaughter And The Dogs."

"We played three or four other gigs - " Devoto mentions - almost nonchalantly. "The Screen On The Green when The Clash first played and then there was the Punk Festival at the 100 Club. Then - for whatever reason - we decid-ed to go into a studio and record what became the Time's Up album. It was never intended for release; they were simply demos as far as we were concerned."

How long did you have to do the whole session?

"Ooooh - about a long afternoon - " guesses Devoto.

Time's Up was swiftly bootlegged and quickly become a much-sought after item - with its raw ver-sions of You Tear Me Up - Orgasm Addict - Love Battery - Time's Up - Big Dummy - which later became a Magazine song - and a cover of The Troggs' I Can't Control Myself. So - were they sur-prised when they discovered they'd been boot-legged?

"It was quite flattering - " admits Shelley - "but then I found out who did it and how they got the tape. My brother had lent my tape to a mate of his and he'd lent it to this bloke called Dave Bentley and - well - I saw him recently - actually. He's driving trains in Australia."

He probably could have retired on the cash he made.

One of the key recordings in UK punk - the Spiral Scratch EP - made in 1977 - re-released on the Document label August 5. "It wasn't a career thing - because it could have been over with tomorrow."

Have the recordings stood the test of time?

"As we were compiling it - " Shelley enthuses - with a twinkle of nostalgia creeping into his voice - "I think we were quite surprised at the quality - at how exciting it still sounds."

The actual tapes for Time's Up were produced - according to Shelley - "for vanity". There was no Buzzcocks masterplan to get a deal - as Devoto mockingly admits: "We didn't know about things like that. We weren't sophisticated enough. We were from Manchester."

Perhaps more aware was the late Mancunian producer Martin Hannett who - according to Shelley - had worked out a scam where he could get some Buzzcocks records pressed on the back of some-thing he was doing for a group in Nigeria. The deal fell through and the group decided to take the DIY route by getting £500 together and pressing 1,000 singles.

"It seemed like a way to make money - " Shelley declares - proudly. "After all - you had 1,000 records - you sold them for a pound each and it only cost 500 quid - including recording and pressing. But wewere very nervous about it because we were using other people's money. My dad borrowed £250 from the Friendly Society and our manager Richard and us put the rest together."

"It was quite a step up recording Spiral Scratch - " Devoto muses - face distorted as he probes his memory banks - "because this was a 16-track stu-dio. Even though we played it all live and just over-dubbed Pete's guitar solo. The idea was just to do it and do it quickly. We did three takes of Breakdown to get a level - then we just ran through the others once."

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