magic, murder and the weather

So I don't know what happened to my Magazine albums, because I had all four (of the original version of the band's) LPs for a long time - I may even have bought a few of them when they came out* - and now I only have two, The Correct Use of Soap and Magic, Murder and the Weather. MMatW is the poor relation out of them all and generally considered to be not very good but actually I have listened to side two of it today about seven times and well actually it is really good, particularly the song 'Suburban Rhonda' but also the song that opens the side, 'The Great Man's Secrets'. I think probably the reason it's thought of as not a great record is that John McGeoch left after TCUoS and he was a golden boy, but they had other boys, of many glittering hues. 

I'm into Magazine today because after purchasing the Barry Adamson memoir a few weeks ago and having it sitting on my coffee table in the hope that guests would think I was interesting I realised I have basically no guests, well one, who thought I was interesting anyway without some British bass player's autobiography on the coffee table, so I figured, may as well read the thing. It's pretty good though I found it very odd that he claims he could not play the bass when he auditioned for Magazine he just played, like, one note and Howard Devoto decided he was ideal. That one note was what he played when he first heard 'Shot By Both Sides' and obviously by the time it was recorded, like a week later (exaggerating) he's doing a pretty remarkable job on it. Well, I don't mind. It's a decent book and I'm enjoying reading it. 

* Obviously this one's second hand because someone, Graeme Parker perhaps, has written Gram Parsons' initials on it.