What Do You Know

Album: Parts 1 – 3 EP
Year: 1980

As the final release of the original incarnation of the Buzzcocks, the Parts 1 – 3 EP was the sound of a band that really didn’t know what they wanted to do anymore beyond release singles. So it was mostly experimental expansions to their basic sound – or copies of other people’s sounds (“Airwaves Dream” is pure Joy Division) – that really didn’t go anywhere. 

With one exception: the glorious Psychedelic Furs pastiche “What Do You Know?”, the last single they ever released in their original run.

Over the normal roaring guitars augmented with a saxophone that might as well have been the Little Furry People’s Duncan Kilburn (even though Wikipedia says it wasn’t), Pete Shelley is once again talking about belief:

Everything happens
Don’t look for patterns
You only perceive what you believe
You need only believe to believe

Meanwhile, Steve Diggle is questioning him at every turn:

What do you know?
What do you know? 
What do you knowwwwwwwwwwwwww?
What do you knowwwwwwwwwwwwww?

Maybe he’s driven crazy by the sax, which is finding it’s way into every available space, but as the song builds and builds, Shelley’s getting more and more hysterical. At the end, it’s a call-and-response between Diggle’s calmly insistent question and Shelley’s increasingly unhinged answers:

What do you know?
(There’s no turning back now)
What do you know?
(I’m under attack now)
What do you knowwwwwwwwwwww?
(I see the skies are open)
What do you knowwwwwwwwwwww?
(And I hear the word spoken)
What do you know?
What do you know?
What do you knowwwwwwwwwww?
(You only perceive what you believe)
What do you knowwwwwwwwwww?
(You need only believe to believe)

By the time that Shelley has gotten to the point where he’s explaining that you on need only to believe to believe, his voice has gotten so cracked and broken with frustration at being questioned that he’s singing in a register that he’s never even come close to hitting before or since.

And of course, the question gets the last word, as it damn well should.

What do you know?
What do you know?
What do you knowwwwwwwwwwwwww?
What do you knowwwwwwwwwwwwww?

And the only thing that I do know is that if it wasn’t for “I Believe,” this would be my favorite Buzzcocks song.

“What Do You Know”

“What Do You Know” performed live

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