3/6/07: Magazine “My Mind Ain’t So Open” (1978)

By the end of the ’70s, post-punk politics had been carefully established. You weren’t going to get a write-up in Rolling Stone unless you were lecturing the kids about how Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were going to turn the world into a cinder in space. Every post-punk band wanted a write-up in Rolling Stone.

This help explains why a classic like “My Mind Ain’t So Open” was originally a mere B-side on an early Magazine single. The band still stood out as free thinkers in a stifling scene, with frontman Howard Devoto ready to speak out against all kinds of idiocy—including that within the genre he was pretty much inventing.

The band broke up in 1981, and American kids finally got to discover “My Mind Ain’t So Open” on the After The Fact compilation LP from 1982. Before that, Magazine was mainly a hit with young mod Republicans for their UK hit “Shot On Both Sides”—which resonated in a world where punk’s anti-hippie stance had been subverted by sympathies worthy of addled folkies. “My Mind Ain’t So Open” was quickly added to mix tapes as a conservative comfort, with a simple opening line that defied all that would become college-rock: “My mind, it ain’t so open/That anything/Could crawl right in.”

The song—as typical for the best of Magazine—is a quick and catchy blur of a sentiment. Devoto still finds time to close the tune with an explanation of why we all just can’t get along. “My life,” he explains, “happens around me/Your life/Happens around me, too.” The guy wasn’t kidding. If it were up to Devoto’s contemporaries, our minds would’ve opened up to a new wave of flower-power dolled up in leather jackets.

Make it your own: The entire Magazine catalog—and Devoto’s fine Jerky Versions of the Dream—gets expanded and reissued next Tuesday. “My Mind Ain’t So Open” finally takes its rightful place amongst the other tunes from the band’s 1978 debut Real Life. More casual listeners can find the song for cheap on the Scree compilation.

 

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