Thank you for this! We loved this song in Countdown land (Australia), where it got to # 4. It got to # 6 in Canada and # 11 in New Zealand. But according to wikipedia: The song reportedly was banned by the BBC for its "explicit reference to gay sex" with the lyrics "homo superior / in my interior". Shelley denied this was the intention.[6] However according to then BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale, "Its then risqué lyrics were noted at the time. Didn't stop me playing it on my radio show."
@@colrhodes377 In Australia, the song just got play along with any other hit at the time. There wasn't a content watchdog checking for suggestive lyrics. Joe Jackson's ''Real Men'' and Frankie's ''Relax'' got airplay. The only thing I remember getting banned from daytime play in Australia was the video for Divinyls' 'I Touch Myself'. We (Countdown kids) knew what the song (Homosapien) was about as soon as we heard it. We knew it wasn't just about being a human. Some kids found comfort in that song.
Blooming magnificent. At its very best in a small club played at full volume and a half. At one of those clubs, in Coventry, Pete came along and did a gig. Fully attended and no Buzzcocks songs - nobody complained.
I saw Pete Shelley play this album at a pub in Euston London in 1980/81 it was a while ago😎there were, I kid you not three of us in the audience. He still did a sterling job.
One of my top 10 faves of all time. I've performed it a bunch. I put it on to warm up for practice. Wish you'd gotten to the uncut version. This one is missing a verse. Wonder what you'd think of his Buzzcocks song "I Believe".
Thanx for viewing the Friday Night upload. Unfortuantley, the picture quality was compromised when I worked on this a few weeks ago. I just got into using Davinci Resolve and I had to change blah blah blah, boring boring boring.. You don't need to know... Just that the picture quality isn't as sharp as I would like it to be. It was a lot of work having the track fit the video. At least you get to see a video that the Aussie kids in '82 got to see on all those music shows on TV. Could you guys do a reaction to two Hoodoo Gurus songs in one reaction video? These two songs are fun, and I think you'll like them. Hoodoo Gurus - I Want You Back - 4K Remastered - Official Video 1984 Austech Hoodoo Gurus - Like Wow nzoz1985 (nzoz1985 upload is the best) It'll be a lot fun.
@@ChristyAbbey I think they're good songs. The Haniers should do those too. Hoodoo Gurus - What's My Scene - 4K Remastered - Official Video 1987 Austech Hoodoo Gurus - Miss Freelove '69 - 4K Remastered - Official Video 1991 Austech
Annalisse Morrow was lovely. Before doing Maybe Dolls' ''Nervous Kid'', I'd like to see the Haniers do an early song called ''The Modern Song'' (when Maybe Dolls were The Numbers).
Most of Pete's solo stuff is up to this quality, there's two or three electronic style albums, including one he did before Buzzcocks iirc. This one and the one immediately after are particularly great, though i mix them up, he also did a cool theme for the Tour De France tv show that got used for about 200 years( probably about ten, it just felt longer) . As i remember, there are several 12" versions of this that are pretty good. Never quite understood the BBC ban, but they were pretty touchy in those days, maybe because they missed Lou Reed's, Walk On The Wild Side and were desperately trying to make up for it! Having said that, Mary Whitehouse would have been in full effect at the time, and she had a hard on for anything that hurt gay people, pun most definitely intended. (Context for non UK people, she was a right wing campaigner for her version of what was permissable on UK tv, she didnt want sex, violence, swearing, gay people, ethnic minorities etc on her tv, so imagined that nobody else did either...she didnt like Dr Who ffs!)
I'm 55 and back in the late 70s and early 80s HBO started their movies on the half hour so they played shorts and music videos and this was one I saw. The primitive imagery and special effects are dated, but the artifacts appealed to me as a 12 year old history buff as much as the catchy beat appealed to me as a fan of electronic music.
Hi hanier, Scott here again from England. I know that you like David Bowie, well I've got some live Bowie from his American tour of 1978 at Madison Square garden. The song is station to station and David managed to get the guitarist from Frank Zappa. You can get it on David Bowie, 1978, Madison Square garden, station to station.
There were a lot of scared kids that watched Countdown every Sunday night and were struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. It seemed important to them that this song got as much radio play as possible. A few months later, Joe Jackson's ''Real Men'' also got into the Australian Top 10. There was also an earlier song called ''I Like It Both Ways'', which got to be a big hit for a teen idol band called Supernaut. There's a reason these songs were massive hits in a country that was driven by a masculine monoculture. Countdown was hosted/co-produced by a gay man, and a lot of gay kids watched the show. This song still pulls at my heartstrings.
@@hanierfamily Joe Jackson - Real Men - Official Video - 1982 Austech You can't go wrong. The video and sound together is the best you'll get on youtube. Please use this particular video for the requested song.
One thing I always loved about Buzzcocks lyrics is that they're not gender specific. It's easy to miss on first listen, but you could be a girl and relate to them, guy and relate to them, straight or gay and relate to them. Pete Shelley was bi-sexual, if I'm correct, so makes sense. He was married to a woman and has a son. I could also be wrong, but I remember reading that this song was actually a Buzzcocks demo initially. Was written before the Buzzcocks formed.
Great song! The memories come flooding back. Roy Ferntorp has requested Maybe Dolls 'nervous kid', which is a very good song. I would love to see you guys react to a much earlier song by the same band. Maybe Dolls used to be The Numbers. Please react to the following: The Numbers - The Modern Song nzoz1980 Cheers, Hayley
This was Produced by Martin Rushent who was working with Altered Images & Human League at the same time. Big club hit & unfortunately mainstream radio in North America & The United Kingdom shied from playing it due to a perceived sexual reference. I have the 12" which sounds incredible. Excellent choice !
This was around the time the kids of Countdown turned the boring pop charts into this New Wave fest and the oddballs got their chance for a few years. Pete Shelley suddenly sat comfortably with Survivor and Foreigner. I had mixed feelings because I was a Buzzcocks fan and the Buzzers never had chart hits over here in Oz. Their records were bought by punks and rockers, who'd play their songs in cover bands. A lot of kids I knew loved Buzzcocks, but the Australian pop world was fairly conservative in the 70's... New Wave wasn't punk but it was a lot better than AOR.
Vanessa Sun was an ardent fan of The Church and Icehouse. We didn't always see eye to eye with her. We liked serious stuff like Icehouse/Church (I've been a fan of The Church for almost 45 years), but we also loved our music to be fun and a little quirky. She didn't take too kindly to ''Homosapien'', nor ''Shiny Shiny'' by Haysi Fantayzee. I remember the headache of getting her to push this song in Sydney, and your comment has just brought back that headache. Cheers, Hayley
@@I_was_a_Countdown_Kid-75-83 - Sorry to hear you're not feeling too well, Hayley. Vanessa most likely didn't either, when being prompted to push songs she didn't like, though. 'Shiny Shiny' is fire compared to this here song, in my opinion 😀🔥 I hope you've been well otherwise meanwhile! 😉👍
@@mightyV444 I'm feeling just fine, Volker. Vanessa was a great Countdown kid, and we loved having her over here in Melbourne all those years ago. If Vanessa didn't like pushing for songs she didn't like, she shouldn't have become a Countdown kid. I've been okay. Christmas is around the corner. Thank goodness we're a family that gets along. Gillian is a great cook, so we'll be looking forward to her Christmas meals. I trust you're okay?
If you enjoyed this classic, you should check out a smoking cover (on YT) by a fellow Manchester band, the Whip, featuring the Smith’s Mike Joyce double drumming with the Whip’s drummer.
It was quite disturbing at the time for Buzzcocks fans (I was) to hear such a new wave production from Pete Shelley. If you liked this one, try "Telephone Operator" from the same Pete Shelley (on his next solo album). It's still better. I'm sure you'll dance to it while reacting.
Interesting choice. I have this album. Haven't played it in decades. I'm sure Pete Shelley wrote this song as a bit of a tonge-in-cheek play off the fact that he was gay. Notice the slight delay in his singing of the word homo..sapien, and the part of the lyric that goes "i'm the shy boy, you're the coy boy.
@@colrhodes377 Ooh, I think it'd hurt more for a Scotman to be called English. New Zealanders hate how we claim everything they contributed as being our own. We only disown a successful New Zealander when they begin to embarrass us (ie; Russell Crowe). Actually, you just gave me an idea for Christmas. I'll make Pavlova for the family. It's a suitable dessert for summer. Anna Pavlova, a Russian ballerina, is who the famous Australasian dessert was named after. Do you have any plans for Christmas, Mr Rhodes?
@liveitup67 We're not sure yet. It all depends on whether we'll be moving house over Christmas. We're relocating to the East Yorkshire coast but are not quite sure when it will happen. If not, hopefully, it's just a very quiet time away from running a business. At the moment, it's a real grind. Business is dropping of exponentially, but we still have all the staff to pay .
Great track. I loved this era of cross-pollination of instruments - acoustic guitars with synth pop my wave, it’s a great mix if you get it right like here. The eclectic arrangement is probably responsible for me getting flashes of a bunch of varied songs that exactly unlike this. Girls Talk by Dave Edmunds People and Computer Games by Mi-Sex Ça plane pour moi by Plastic Bertrand O Superman by Laurie Anderson The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan by Marianne Faithfull So Long by Fischer-Z So many songs that this track just brought up, and none of the quite like another.
I was hoping the deeper meaning wouldn't have gone over your heads. The song is about homosexuality. To be fair, we had the lyrics when the song first came out.
Best quality Fischer Z - So Long - Official Video Remastered Album Version - 1980 Austech Give me a couple of days. I'll work on The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan by Marianne Faithfull. I got the original video clip.
This is such a great track, thank you for doing this, C and C. The 12" of this is even better, Pete was Gay and this is about that, in the early '80s it was still somewhat an issue in the U.K.
@@boq780_2.0Thank you, I didn't know that he was bisexual, after checking I see that he was indeed married in 1991 and divorced in 2002 but I can't find any information about another marriage, when was it and for how long?
Still love this song. I remember seeing this clip in the National Top 10 run down on Countdown. It's cleverly written, all you need to do is replace ''homosapien'' with ''homosexual'' and it begins to make more sense. RIP Pete Shelley
This has got to be the low point of his career imho - I REALLY don’t agree with the BBC banning anything , that’s not their job nor their right , we’re not children ! But… if one of his tracks HAD to be banned then I’m glad it was this dross and not something important . I’m a Shelley and Buzzcocks fan it’s ok for me to be disappointed with work of his I think is substandard . ( sad face 😞) 👍🏴
Im a late seventies punk (aged 58) and pete shelley was my generation's Buddy Holly.
I met Pete Shelley snd Steve Diggle at a Buzzcocks gig once and they were absolutely lovely guys
Thank you for this! We loved this song in Countdown land (Australia), where it got to # 4. It got to # 6 in Canada and # 11 in New Zealand. But according to wikipedia:
The song reportedly was banned by the BBC for its "explicit reference to gay sex" with the lyrics "homo superior / in my interior". Shelley denied this was the intention.[6] However according to then BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale, "Its then risqué lyrics were noted at the time. Didn't stop me playing it on my radio show."
I'm not surprised that the BBC banned it. They really took against any suggestive lyrics. E.G. Relax , Frankie goes to Hollywood
@@colrhodes377 In Australia, the song just got play along with any other hit at the time. There wasn't a content watchdog checking for suggestive lyrics. Joe Jackson's ''Real Men'' and Frankie's ''Relax'' got airplay.
The only thing I remember getting banned from daytime play in Australia was the video for Divinyls' 'I Touch Myself'.
We (Countdown kids) knew what the song (Homosapien) was about as soon as we heard it. We knew it wasn't just about being a human. Some kids found comfort in that song.
Blooming magnificent. At its very best in a small club played at full volume and a half. At one of those clubs, in Coventry, Pete came along and did a gig. Fully attended and no Buzzcocks songs - nobody complained.
Takes me back to early 80's.
This is an amazing track and I was surprised when it got as much play as I remember it getting.
I saw Pete Shelley play this album at a pub in Euston London in 1980/81 it was a while ago😎there were, I kid you not three of us in the audience. He still did a sterling job.
One of my top 10 faves of all time. I've performed it a bunch. I put it on to warm up for practice.
Wish you'd gotten to the uncut version. This one is missing a verse.
Wonder what you'd think of his Buzzcocks song "I Believe".
Thanx for viewing the Friday Night upload. Unfortuantley, the picture quality was compromised when I worked on this a few weeks ago. I just got into using Davinci Resolve and I had to change blah blah blah, boring boring boring.. You don't need to know... Just that the picture quality isn't as sharp as I would like it to be. It was a lot of work having the track fit the video. At least you get to see a video that the Aussie kids in '82 got to see on all those music shows on TV.
Could you guys do a reaction to two Hoodoo Gurus songs in one reaction video? These two songs are fun, and I think you'll like them.
Hoodoo Gurus - I Want You Back - 4K Remastered - Official Video 1984 Austech
Hoodoo Gurus - Like Wow nzoz1985 (nzoz1985 upload is the best)
It'll be a lot fun.
Whst's My Scene and Miss Free Love 69 are my two fave Hoodoo songs.
@@ChristyAbbey I think they're good songs. The Haniers should do those too.
Hoodoo Gurus - What's My Scene - 4K Remastered - Official Video 1987 Austech
Hoodoo Gurus - Miss Freelove '69 - 4K Remastered - Official Video 1991 Austech
Greetings from Canada 🇨🇦 , great review ! I haven't this in a very long time, the beat is very catchy and upbeat .
Hey guys. Greetings from Tasmania. When this first came out had a mate who said that Shelley would be the Bowie of the 80s.... big call even then.
Please do Nervous Kid. Maybe Dolls. She was the first person I met when I moved to Sydney.
Annalisse Morrow was lovely. Before doing Maybe Dolls' ''Nervous Kid'', I'd like to see the Haniers do an early song called ''The Modern Song'' (when Maybe Dolls were The Numbers).
Most of Pete's solo stuff is up to this quality, there's two or three electronic style albums, including one he did before Buzzcocks iirc. This one and the one immediately after are particularly great, though i mix them up, he also did a cool theme for the Tour De France tv show that got used for about 200 years( probably about ten, it just felt longer) . As i remember, there are several 12" versions of this that are pretty good.
Never quite understood the BBC ban, but they were pretty touchy in those days, maybe because they missed Lou Reed's, Walk On The Wild Side and were desperately trying to make up for it! Having said that, Mary Whitehouse would have been in full effect at the time, and she had a hard on for anything that hurt gay people, pun most definitely intended. (Context for non UK people, she was a right wing campaigner for her version of what was permissable on UK tv, she didnt want sex, violence, swearing, gay people, ethnic minorities etc on her tv, so imagined that nobody else did either...she didnt like Dr Who ffs!)
I'm 55 and back in the late 70s and early 80s HBO started their movies on the half hour so they played shorts and music videos and this was one I saw.
The primitive imagery and special effects are dated, but the artifacts appealed to me as a 12 year old history buff as much as the catchy beat appealed to me as a fan of electronic music.
Hi hanier, Scott here again from England. I know that you like David Bowie, well I've got some live Bowie from his American tour of 1978 at Madison Square garden. The song is station to station and David managed to get the guitarist from Frank Zappa. You can get it on David Bowie, 1978, Madison Square garden, station to station.
There were a lot of scared kids that watched Countdown every Sunday night and were struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. It seemed important to them that this song got as much radio play as possible. A few months later, Joe Jackson's ''Real Men'' also got into the Australian Top 10. There was also an earlier song called ''I Like It Both Ways'', which got to be a big hit for a teen idol band called Supernaut.
There's a reason these songs were massive hits in a country that was driven by a masculine monoculture. Countdown was hosted/co-produced by a gay man, and a lot of gay kids watched the show. This song still pulls at my heartstrings.
We did I Like It Both Ways.
@@hanierfamily Oh, cool! Lol.. Do you know ''Real Men'' by Joe Jackson?
We will add that one to our list.
@@hanierfamily Joe Jackson - Real Men - Official Video - 1982 Austech
You can't go wrong. The video and sound together is the best you'll get on youtube.
Please use this particular video for the requested song.
No one knew molly was gay back then ...only people in the industry..mainstream Australia had no clue about molly until he came out
This is good.
Been in ads and movies I recall
One thing I always loved about Buzzcocks lyrics is that they're not gender specific. It's easy to miss on first listen, but you could be a girl and relate to them, guy and relate to them, straight or gay and relate to them. Pete Shelley was bi-sexual, if I'm correct, so makes sense. He was married to a woman and has a son.
I could also be wrong, but I remember reading that this song was actually a Buzzcocks demo initially. Was written before the Buzzcocks formed.
Great song! The memories come flooding back. Roy Ferntorp has requested Maybe Dolls 'nervous kid', which is a very good song.
I would love to see you guys react to a much earlier song by the same band. Maybe Dolls used to be The Numbers. Please react to the following:
The Numbers - The Modern Song nzoz1980
Cheers,
Hayley
Real Men by Joe Jackson and Come Anytime by Hoodoo Gurus also dealt with homosexual themes, and were big hits in Australia.
This was Produced by Martin Rushent who was working with Altered Images & Human League at the same time. Big club hit & unfortunately mainstream radio in North America & The United Kingdom shied from playing it due to a perceived sexual reference. I have the 12" which sounds incredible. Excellent choice !
12 inch what?
When you can work on your own group and and the b buzzcocks great song
I'm not sure if I'm a homosapien i drag my knuckles still
Actually the knuckle draggers (neanderthal) were highly intelligent farmers , the homosapiens were the spear chuckers lol .
@@RickyM6666 this knuckle dragging cave Man sure ain't any kind of farmer although i can grow things 😉
I had his whole album
The 12 inch of this is awesome
This was around the time the kids of Countdown turned the boring pop charts into this New Wave fest and the oddballs got their chance for a few years. Pete Shelley suddenly sat comfortably with Survivor and Foreigner.
I had mixed feelings because I was a Buzzcocks fan and the Buzzers never had chart hits over here in Oz. Their records were bought by punks and rockers, who'd play their songs in cover bands. A lot of kids I knew loved Buzzcocks, but the Australian pop world was fairly conservative in the 70's... New Wave wasn't punk but it was a lot better than AOR.
Yeah, I share Vanessa Sun's sentiments around this one 😄
Vanessa Sun was an ardent fan of The Church and Icehouse. We didn't always see eye to eye with her. We liked serious stuff like Icehouse/Church (I've been a fan of The Church for almost 45 years), but we also loved our music to be fun and a little quirky. She didn't take too kindly to ''Homosapien'', nor ''Shiny Shiny'' by Haysi Fantayzee. I remember the headache of getting her to push this song in Sydney, and your comment has just brought back that headache.
Cheers,
Hayley
@@I_was_a_Countdown_Kid-75-83 - Sorry to hear you're not feeling too well, Hayley. Vanessa most likely didn't either, when being prompted to push songs she didn't like, though. 'Shiny Shiny' is fire compared to this here song, in my opinion 😀🔥
I hope you've been well otherwise meanwhile! 😉👍
@@mightyV444 I'm feeling just fine, Volker.
Vanessa was a great Countdown kid, and we loved having her over here in Melbourne all those years ago. If Vanessa didn't like pushing for songs she didn't like, she shouldn't have become a Countdown kid.
I've been okay. Christmas is around the corner. Thank goodness we're a family that gets along. Gillian is a great cook, so we'll be looking forward to her Christmas meals.
I trust you're okay?
Get healthy everybody please that would be a great Xmas present
If you haven't heard this somewhere then I'm a forgetful......?
.....had HE lived, can EASILY see Bolan & T. Rex going in this EXACT musical direction.....
If you enjoyed this classic, you should check out a smoking cover (on YT) by a fellow Manchester band, the Whip, featuring the Smith’s Mike Joyce double drumming with the Whip’s drummer.
It was quite disturbing at the time for Buzzcocks fans (I was) to hear such a new wave production from Pete Shelley. If you liked this one, try "Telephone Operator" from the same Pete Shelley (on his next solo album). It's still better. I'm sure you'll dance to it while reacting.
Interesting choice. I have this album. Haven't played it in decades. I'm sure Pete Shelley wrote this song as a bit of a tonge-in-cheek play off the fact that he was gay. Notice the slight delay in his singing of the word homo..sapien, and the part of the lyric that goes "i'm the shy boy, you're the coy boy.
This should only be called Sapien now because we're not supposed to say homo nowadays
Lamest comment I read all year.
Heath is not Australian! 😮 He's a Kiwi like Russell Crowe and Pavlova !
Of course! Sorry Heath. We knew that. We should have clarified. Australasians?
@@hanierfamily Antipodeans? lol.. I don't know.
Like calling a Scotsman , English 😂. I thought Pavlova was French. Yum yum 😋
@@colrhodes377 Ooh, I think it'd hurt more for a Scotman to be called English. New Zealanders hate how we claim everything they contributed as being our own. We only disown a successful New Zealander when they begin to embarrass us (ie; Russell Crowe). Actually, you just gave me an idea for Christmas. I'll make Pavlova for the family. It's a suitable dessert for summer. Anna Pavlova, a Russian ballerina, is who the famous Australasian dessert was named after.
Do you have any plans for Christmas, Mr Rhodes?
@liveitup67 We're not sure yet. It all depends on whether we'll be moving house over Christmas. We're relocating to the East Yorkshire coast but are not quite sure when it will happen.
If not, hopefully, it's just a very quiet time away from running a business. At the moment, it's a real grind. Business is dropping of exponentially, but we still have all the staff to pay .
Great track. I loved this era of cross-pollination of instruments - acoustic guitars with synth pop my wave, it’s a great mix if you get it right like here.
The eclectic arrangement is probably responsible for me getting flashes of a bunch of varied songs that exactly unlike this.
Girls Talk by Dave Edmunds
People and Computer Games by Mi-Sex
Ça plane pour moi by Plastic Bertrand
O Superman by Laurie Anderson
The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan by Marianne Faithfull
So Long by Fischer-Z
So many songs that this track just brought up, and none of the quite like another.
We Did Girls Talk, Computer Games, and Ca Plane Pour Moi. We will add the others to our list
@@hanierfamily
Yep, I watched those reactions. A varied set of tunes.
Keep up the great music cross section.
Chris, LCD Soundsystem copied the music of this track and put it out as ‘North American Scum’. That might be why it is familiar to you.
I think it’s kind of like Bow Wow- I eat Cannibal.
I was hoping the deeper meaning wouldn't have gone over your heads. The song is about homosexuality. To be fair, we had the lyrics when the song first came out.
Best quality
Fischer Z - So Long - Official Video Remastered Album Version - 1980 Austech
Give me a couple of days. I'll work on The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan by Marianne Faithfull.
I got the original video clip.
This is such a great track, thank you for doing this, C and C. The 12" of this is even better, Pete was Gay and this is about that, in the early '80s it was still somewhat an issue in the U.K.
He was bisexual. He was married twice (to women).
@@boq780_2.0Thank you, I didn't know that he was bisexual, after checking I see that he was indeed married in 1991 and divorced in 2002 but I can't find any information about another marriage, when was it and for how long?
Peter Shelley - Gee Baby, Love Me Love My Dog..this is not Pete
Still love this song. I remember seeing this clip in the National Top 10 run down on Countdown. It's cleverly written, all you need to do is replace ''homosapien'' with ''homosexual'' and it begins to make more sense. RIP Pete Shelley
This has got to be the low point of his career imho - I REALLY don’t agree with the BBC banning anything , that’s not their job nor their right , we’re not children ! But… if one of his tracks HAD to be banned then I’m glad it was this dross and not something important . I’m a Shelley and Buzzcocks fan it’s ok for me to be disappointed with work of his I think is substandard . ( sad face 😞)
👍🏴
Yeah. I had the shits at the time. Maybe this era was his Fiction Romance.
@@royferntorp yup 👍
👍🏴
So you're a fan? That figures, fans are basically stupid. "Dross"?