A band that can open with 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' can't really go wrong and as this latest incarnation - dubbed Magazine version 6.0 by Mr Devoto - showed, they've got the back catalogue and they're not afraid to use it.
When Magazine reformed in 2009 there was a sense of it being an exercise in experimentation, rather than a full blooded reunion. Always too arch to do the obvious, God forbid 'play the game', you got the impression that Magazine needed a reason to justify breathing life into the old corpse again after twenty odd years. And we're not talking pension plan top ups here (although I'm sure it's a pleasant by-product).
Here at the pleasingly full Slade Rooms - that's pleasingly full of Old Men - we got our answer. Alongside, 'Permafrost' 'Thank-You' and 'Motorcade' we get a brand new shiny song. A new Magazine song. A new Magazine song in 2011.
OK, let's rewind. It's been reported for some time that the band were working on new material and no doubt an album's in the works. But in amongst a 45 minute greatest hits set (this was a warm up for their Hop Farm Festival appearance supporting Iggy & The Stooges and Morrissey, in Kent...you couldn't make that up, could you?) up pops one previously unheard of song to confound us.
On one listen it owes something of a debt to Joy Division, with a naggingly familiar Hookyesque foundation. Time will tell, but it fitted in with a set that illustrates why Magazine have stood the test of time so well, why they are so often referenced and why they will probably bear listening to in another 20 years.
Having said all that there is still that element of cabaret as with all reformations. Barry Adamson's other commitments mean that Jon 'Stan' White has stepped into the old Jazz Devil's shoes for this tour. Big shoes to fill and while White can't hope to be the same character as Adamson had become by the 2009 dates, he certainly did a good job musically (although I know others would disagree).
It's the same dilemma as guitarist Noko faces. Clearly a good musician in his own right, but how much is he (can he) give of himself, when he's got the sizable task of filling in for the late, great and criminally under-rated John McGeoch? To a lesser extent Noko is also covering for 'Correct Use Of Soap' era guitarist Robin Smith, [edit: see comments for correction to my schoolboy error] but it's McGeogh's work that always fought with Dave Formula's keyboards for attention. Both running through Magazine's back catalogue like the greeting on a seaside stick of rock.
It's the same dilemma as guitarist Noko faces. Clearly a good musician in his own right, but how much is he (can he) give of himself, when he's got the sizable task of filling in for the late, great and criminally under-rated John McGeoch? To a lesser extent Noko is also covering for 'Correct Use Of Soap' era guitarist Robin Smith, [edit: see comments for correction to my schoolboy error] but it's McGeogh's work that always fought with Dave Formula's keyboards for attention. Both running through Magazine's back catalogue like the greeting on a seaside stick of rock.
So how good are Magazine 6.0? I've no idea and to be truthful nobody will have until we get to hear the result of those new recordings.
What I do know is that live they're doing justice to a great and much neglected body of work and if the version 6.0 lineup can recapture some of the magic of those first three albums then Magazine will have found their reason to justify their reformation.
Badly shot clip from way too far back, but you get the picture.
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