Music Review: Sex Pistols -- Anarchy in the UK (Live)

I've been a bit disparaging of late of my favorite style of Rock n' Roll, so much so that in my last two posts on the subject, I've used not only the same arguments but phrased them the exact same way. I submit that I did so unwittingly. Nevertheless, that speaks of the disdain with which I view most of the music I enjoy most. Whether that makes me scitzophrenic or just a dedicated critic, I lack the self-knowledge to say.

A great deal of my affinity for punk is that it's a deliciously extreme form of Rock n'Roll, blending by speed and audio leakage the traditional guitar-bass-drums sound into a single distorted, psychedelic hum. It's that sound I love, not the sound as an instrument for certain social goals. I've stated before in many venues that I hold most of the lyrics in this genre at arm's length.

Most punks embrace a childish, narcissistic leftism, of the kind that will fight bitterly for their own "rights," and not give two hoots in hell for anybody else's. On the most recent Sex Pistols DVD, John Lydon argues vociferously in support of their band's album being named "Never Mind the Bollocks" by saying that "Bollocks" was a common working-class word, perfectly valid English. "How can you ban language? How can you ban words?" exclaims Johnny. I can never sit through that without feeling compelled to ask him "How about the word 'Nigger,' John? How about the word 'Bitch'? How about the phrase 'Half-Educated Limey Street Scum'? Those are all perfectly valid English words, too. Yet somehow I doubt you'd respond to them so favorably."

And that, boys and girls, is why Our Boy Johnny is the real tragic figure of punk. To hell with Sid Vicious and his scratchy-voiced girlfriend, two empty-headed drug fiends as boring as they were useless. Sid contributed nothing but a look to punk, and it wasn't even his look to start with, it was Eddie Cochrane's by way of Ron Asheton and Dee Dee Ramone. Beyond that, the wanker couldn't play bass, couldn't give an intelligent interview, couldn't write anything worth repeating. All he did was die. Woopty-crap.

But Lydon had a passion, an intelligence, a sense of self and a sense of theater that made his band worth remembering when so many of those that popped in his wake are justly forgotten. He encapsulated the strained mentality of a teenager, too smart to be a child, too weak to be a grown-up, and shoved that energy out of him in a manner nothing short of explosive.

And twenty-five years later, the dumb mook hasn't moved on. You can read it in his autobiography, see it in any interviews: bitterness. He's still pissed at Malcom McLaren, at the monarchy, at the world. Steve Jones, Paul Cook, and Glen Matlock are all men in their forties, able to look back at their gloried past with detachment, recognizing their achievements and their mistakes with humor and regret. Not Lydon, who still spikes and colors his hair and spits invective. His wit, intellect, and lust for musical creativity, audible on any Public Image, Ltd. record, is swallowed by his terminal adolescence. He's so busy demonstrating how much smarter he is than everybody that the doesn't see everyone shaking their heads at him. That, too me, is true tragedy.

So why in the hell would anyone want to listen to any live Pistols show? The band playing to some tiny audience in some nondescript English Country town, on a crappy PA system? Why, so we can tell ourselves we're listening to "history"?

No. You don't buy a record to listen to history. You buy a record to listen to music. And you buy this record, the complete recording of the Pistols' September 24th, 1976 performance at the 76 club in Burton-on-Trent, so that you can hear the Sex Pistols in their pre-Sid glory (of course, the cover art has a picture of a later performance with Sid. Matlock just can't win). You can hear the tightness of Jones' guitar and Cook's drums, and feel the bottoming power that Matlock's bass added to the mix. You can hear how the Pistols took the brooding, menacing sound of Iggy Pop and the Stooges and added to it the flashpowder youthfulness of the British Mod sound, of bands like the Who. Not coincidentally, the standout tracks on the disc are their cover of the Stooges' "No Fun," and the Who's "Substitute." But the whole set, Pistols originals and pop covers all, is compelling, and exciting, and raucous, and everything Rock n' Roll is, was, and ever shall be, amen.

Lester Bangs once wrote that the future of popular music was as follows: "a small island of new free music, surrounded by some good reworkings of past idioms and a vast sargasso sea of absolute garbage." Most folks would agree with that, whatever their tastes, believing that whatever tickled their ear was the good stuff and everybody else's shit was just that. So, on a certain level, unless you're into Pun Krock already, there's no way I stand any chance of convincing you. If you beleive that Punk was an unfortunate episode in the history of music and culture, and that the Sex Pistols are but one of the "punk" bands that a lot of stupid kids fashionably embraced, you won't be interested no matter what I say. But if you're able to look beyond a label and appreciate hard, fast, slightly irritating Rock n' Roll, then give a listen. It won't hurt, and if it does, CD's make great skeet.