Never Mind The 25th Anniversary

jonerik writes "Considering that much of the controversy surrounding the Sex Pistols was centered around Queen Elizabeth II's silver jubilee, it's somewhat ironic that the band is now celebrating their own: The group's seminal album, "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols" was released 25 years ago today, according to this article from Reuters. Interestingly, although the album was hugely influential (and remains so), like most punk albums of the time, it wasn't a huge success in the U.S. at the time, taking until 1987 to be certified gold and another five years to be certified platinum. God save the Sex Pistols - we mean it maaaaaaaaan." Yeah, so it's not precisely topical - but still, whata band.

Comments

Huh.

[global_diffusion]

I'm not trying to troll here, but I never did quite understand punk. What is the purpose? The punks I know talk about punk meaning not caring about anything and not conforming, but they spend all their money on punk clothes and releasing their music on vinyl. I mean, what is the appeal? Just what does punk mean and why is it so popular?

Re:Huh.

[leviramsey]

Punk and metal are both subcultures which consider themselves to be outsiders but have both developed fairly rigid (and sometimes contradictory) musical and sociological codes, with artists and fans judged to some extent on how much they stay within the codes.

Metallica, for instance, is reviled for being perceived as having broken the metal code (some portions of which they revised and extended in the 80's) with the Loads.

Re:Huh.

[Kierthos]

Well, I'd also say that part of Metallica's loss of "credibility" among metal fans has to do with:

1) Starting their rise to fame on the power of bootlegs passing between fans, but slamming Napster once they were famous.

2) Jason Newstead leaving the group, for various reasons. (What, you think I listened to Metallica for Lars' drumming?)

Kierthos

Sex Pistols were a farce

[An Ominous Cowherd]

The Pistols were a marketed, packaged commodity -- the punk equivalent of the Spice Girls. Many other bands maintained a semblance of integrity, and deserve more credit: the Damned, the Ramones, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, hell, even the Clash.

What exactly is there to celebrate about a band that was all hype and zero substance?

Re:Sex Pistols were a farce

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

They were a conceptual, situationist art experiment by Malcolm McLaren. I know it all sounds pompous, when referring to four yobs, only one of whom could even grasp "situationist" ans an idea...

McLaren was self-referentially, critiqueing the packaging and marketing of popular culture - by packaging and marketing something repellent and contrary to that culture. He demonstrated the obvious - blind greed is the paramount value of culture as industry.

God help me! I sound like fscking Julie Burchill!

Cash from Chaos

Re:Sex Pistols were a farce

[An Ominous Cowherd]

Yeah, I seem to recall the Clash's integrity last time I saw that Jaguar commercial with London Calling in it.

I said "semblance" of integrity. Tough to name any bands from the 75-78 period that didn't sell out, unless they broke up.

Maybe Mick's finally getting his teeth fixed.

Re:Sex Pistols were a farce

[zazas_mmmm]

There's no question that Malcolm McLaren created the Sex Pistols as, as you put it, "an...art experiment", but this is no reason to be dismissive about the Pistols' music and importance, and McLaren's legitimacy.

McLaren was a force in the cutting edge of 1970s music and culture, from managing the New York Dolls, to coining the term "punk rock" (though his forays into rap in the 80s are a disgrace...Buffalo Girls? Puh-lease). Malcolm McLaren sowed the fertile and largely underexplored ground of pop-proletarian art. Note the Da-daist artwork on the cover of "Never Mind the Bollocks" harkening back to the art radicalism and anti-modernism of the early 20th century.

In many ways McLaren's role with the Sex Pistols is no different than Andy Warhol's role with the Velvet Underground. McLaren got together 4 musicians (and I refer to the original line-up since Sid hardly qualifies for the M word), gave them a look, an attitude, and a subject line. Where Warhol gave VU the topic of S&M, McLaren gave the Pistols the topic of nihilism. Mind you, I'm not calling McLaren the greatest innovator in the history of music--since in fact he borrowed his turn of the century proletarian radicalism from Richard Hell and Lydia Lunch (who invented the ripped clothing and safety pin look copying the turn of the century Bohemians and whose writings borrow heavily from the turn of the century radical art and poetry).

But listen to how "Never Mind the Bollocks" brings it all together: the musical minimalism, the snarling proletarian, vaudvillian lyrics, the Dadaist artwork. It's a true classic in the history of Rock.

I could name a handful of other, more important artists and albums from within a 5 year period (Television, The Clash,The Ramones,The Birthday Party, Gang of Four, etc., etc.) but that doesn't mean that Mclaren, the Pistols, and "Never Mind the Bollocks" aren't legit.

Oh yeah, and the album rocks.

They saved music

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

The Sex Pistols and all the bands that spawned from it seriously degraded music. As much as you may have liked their attitudes, punk requires no real talent -- they could barely even play a few power chords on their instruments.

Fast forward to the the punk-inspired grunge revolution, where hair metal bands -- many including excellent guitarists such as Steve Vai, Slash, or Ritchie Sambora -- were declared obsolete, and Nirvana's minor-key power chording ruled the day. No solos, no exotic scales, nothing.

Go forward from grunge and you have the mallcore bands -- my favorite genre -- such as KoRn, Limp Bizkit, Taproot, Adema, POD, Disturbed, and so forth, of which none know anything when it comes to scales, arpeggios, solos, etc; in many song, one string is played or bent. It's all about detuning and creating the proper timbre, not showing off knowledge of Lydian modes or doing sweep picking and so forth.

There are no amazing guitarists to look up to today, unless you listen to power metal (Stratovarius, Rhapsody, Blind Guardian, etc) or evil power metal like Children of Bodom, and that's a good thing.

Mallcore for life.

Re:They saved music

[Fuzzle]

Who cares? It's music man. It's about entertainment, and in the case of "real punk" (such a retarded label), an attitude and a commitment to changing the world. Honestly, PunkRock and the Open Source Movement are kindred spirits. The DIY ethic, the distrust of large corporations and the "scene" support all mirror each other.

Sex Pistols == Punk Backstreet Boys

[toupsie]

Sex Pistols were to punk music what RATT was to heavy metal. They were nothing more than a put together Punk band fueled by a money hungry promoter, Malcolm McLaren -- who ran for mayor of London once. Adding Sid Vicious was nothing more than marketing. He couldn't play worth a damn. If you ever get to hear bootlegs of their US tour, you will know what I mean. Rush tribute bands sound better live.

Pretty Vacant for damn sure. But still I like Bullocks, it had a beat and you could puke to it.

Good to see a story like this on /.

[Junky191]

We nerds ain't so good at appreciating the most significant artistic achievements of our respective generations. Maybe more art-related stories on here would broaden a few horizons? :)

Re:Good to see a story like this on /.

[RevAaron]

Because "nerds" often listen to shitty music, like the Sex Pistols, Def Leopard, or Brittany Spears. Most of the nerds I've known listened to the same shitty music that makes them feel special, just like everyone else, nerd or non-nerd. Many nerds think if they listen to music born of the same intent, but of a not entirely mainstream genre, with bands like the Pistols, MxPx or Marilyn Manson.

Then again, a lot of nerds listen to tripe because they actually like it, not just because they're fed it by the media. Makes no sense, but nerds often love awful music.

Re:Good to see a story like this on /.

[ozbird]

No no no... Nerds listen to Sex Pistols and Def Leopard; they look at Britney...

Truly classic music is that which stands the test of time. Apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Garbage), the bulk of my music collection is over ten years old. The Sex Pistols aren't everyone's cup of tea, but they are a classic; Britney will be lucky to be remembered 25 months from now.

(To stay on topic, Unix is your classic OS; Windows is Britney - nice to look at, but soon forgotten.)

Re:poseurs....

[Drath]

I dunno, Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Kennedys were more California Hardcore than straight british punk. And I don't know Corrosion of Conformity but according to their allmusic.com writeup they seem more metal than punk. Related but diffrent. Stuff like the Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Buzzcocks and so on are more dirivated from the british punk vein of the pistols creation.

I think of Hardcore as the most comparative of the American punk offerings to british punk (ie. Politically Relavant subject matter), but sonicaly Pistols-like it is not.

Oh and if you haven't seen "The Filth and the Fury" (the 2001 version) check it out it's a good documentary on the pistols.

I was more into The Clash, myself...

[Graabein]

I was more into The Clash, myself. The distinction was very important, or at least it seemed so, back then.

In any case, anyone claiming to be punk today is only demonstrating all to clearly that they haven't got a fscking clue what punk was all about.

It was about broken glass, gloom and hope. Yeah, I know that doesn't make sense, but then again we're talking about punk here, OK? You had to be there, the early Thatcher years, the early Reagan years, the mainstream world hurling ass-backwards back to the values of 50s while unemployment was skyrocketing and mainstream rock and pop was more toothless than ever before in recorded history. On top of that both sides of the cold war had their fingers on the button 24/7.

The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones and the rest set us free, free from all the BS going on around us.

yes, some relevance to Slashdot

[EricHsu]

Well, current punk scenes have some overlap with free software movements ethically: the do-it-yourself ethic, the desire to avoid conformity, de-emphasizing monetary reward as THE incentive to be creative.

I say current, since we're pretty far away from 1976. And I'm not saying all punks (or free-software types!) live up to those values, but they those are commonly expressed values.

There's also a more intellectual connection via those who consider the Pistols to be the all-time Situationist art piece linked to anarchism linked to certain anarcho-trends on Slashdot.

Anyway, even if you dismiss the Sex Pistols as hype (true enough), you've got to hand it to them:

1. They did start an amazingly creative movement which influenced music (via 70's British punk, then New Wave, then 90's grunge).

2. They left behind a pretty polished set of incredible singles. "Anarchy in the UK" still sounds modern, and "God Save the Queen" may still be the best music ever produced in post-Beatles England. Their producer, Chris Thomas, did an amazing job getting a sound out of them that sounded powerful and raw despite the layers of production. And if you read the histories, hype or no hype, most non-punks in England were really pissed off about the Pistols. As opposed to now, when punk is just another fashion choice.

3. They did allow Johnny Rotten to produce the first two Public Image Limited records, "Public Image" and "Metal Box"/"Second Edition". The best tracks of "Public Image" out-punk the Sex Pistols material. The best tracks of "Metal Box" are still ahead of their time.

Re:They saved music from The Great Kat

[Anonymous Coward]

punk requires no real talent -- they could barely even play a few power chords on their instruments

Oh god, spare us the guitar-weenie pomposity already. Punk rock came in and washed away a pile of doodly-doodly-doodly "solos and exotic scales" and frankly, a bunch of tuneless *wankery*. And if grunge finished off the job, that's a good thing.

Playing music that resonates requires talent. Knowing theory and memorizing scales doesn't, and the former is not dependent on the latter. But you can't teach "memorability" in the latest issue of "GuitarYanker" magazine, so....here's how to play doodly-doodly-doodly in Mixolydian, dooooodes......

Steve Vai, Slash, or Ritchie Sambora

[sarcasm]Yeah, and the state of guitar art is so much poorer for losing the talents of Slash and Richie Sambora, innovators who have been unjustly passed over.[/sarcasm]

I mean, where's the mention of quarter-tone guitarists like you'll hear in ambient music? By the criteria you seem to be going by, exotic tone systems are a step beyond knowing which pentatonic scale D Phrygian maps out to, right? Christ, if you'd at least mentioned Fripp, I might have thought you even knew what you were talking about...

No solos, no exotic scales, nothing.

See above. This is a Good Thing.

Go forward from grunge and you have the mallcore bands -- my favorite genre -- such as KoRn, Limp Bizkit, Taproot, Adema, POD, Disturbed, and so forth, of which none know anything when it comes to scales, arpeggios, solos, etc; in many song, one string is played or bent. It's all about detuning and creating the proper timbre, not showing off knowledge of Lydian modes or doing sweep picking and so forth.

But by the same overgeneralization: Go backward from grunge and you have the heavy metal crowd, almost none of whom know anything about riffs, melodies, or songwriting; in many songs, 10 to 15 different riff changes are yoked together for no apparent reason except to present a facade of "complexity." It's all about showing off chops, like knowledge of Lydian modes or doing sweep picking, or copping riffs from classical composers instead of actual songwriting or experimenting with textures, timbres, dynamics.

I'm sorry, but the guitarists worth looking up to today (or yesterday, or 30 years ago) don't put such a cartoonish overemphasis on "exotic" scales or hyperfast arpeggios -- and the power metal bands you've named are weak throwbacks to a style that died out somewhere in the mid-80s. Ditto "progressive" metal; it's just hilarious, IMO, that so much "progressive" rock & metal, by placing so much emphasis on chops and theory, ends up trying to pretend that Yes and ELP and __(fill in your fave Shrapnel Records act here)__ is on the same level as 400-year-old Baroque music, even if none of these guys could write a memorable three-part fugue to save their lives. We've seen where that kind of "progression" leads: The Great Kat.

Hate Nsync? Hate Sex Pistols?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel kind of bad saying this, and i'm sure that it will get modded to shit, but while the sex pistols were a huge influence, they were put together just as much so as your cookie cutter boyband. Now the ramones, theres a punk band.

--Dextr0us

Re:"Whata band"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wha? Are we talking about the same Sex Pistols here? The shallow exercise in media manipulation masquerading as YOOF KULCHA? The shamelessly-pimped whores invented by publicist Malcolm McLaren who staggered from one carefully-planned media event to another?

THAT, my oh too earnest correspondent, was the joke and the genius of the entire thing. They were a prefab outrage in the most blatantly crass and twisted manner. It drips with irony and delicious cynicism. You just don't get it.

My mallcore music beat up your punk music

[Powercntrl]

Let's face it... Music just boils down to personal taste. If I want to crank the bass boost on my amp so high the subwoofers drown out the vocals and I don't even hear what the song is about, that is my (insert deity(s) of choice) given right. If I like the way it sounds, I'll listen to it. I could care less what skin color the artist currently is (or what color he/she used to be), what gender or sexuality or who he/she is sleeping with, whether or not they're RIAA-owned or indie. All I care about is if the song(s) they've created are something I find enjoyable.

I know this post is kind of geared more towards music in general than to the Sex Pistols, but the attitude on Slashdot seems to lean towards "My x music is more closely represents the genre than yours" or "Band X is cool until they sell out, then they're just commercialized pop." I can understand having a beef with a video card cause it gets texture flickering in the latest Quake-engined game... That's something you can back up with actual facts. Music is meant to be entertainment.

I can respect that your music tastes are different than mine. Arguing that your artists or genres are better is like arguing chocolate is better than vanilla. Do I enjoy any music The Sex Pistols have released? No. Am I going to point out artists that I think are better than the Sex Pistols? No - the Sex Pistols created their own catalog of unique songs and comparing them to other artists' different songs would be comparing apples to oranges.

Re:My mallcore music beat up your punk music

[Triv]

"Band X is cool until they sell out, then they're just commercialized pop."

Sit down, my friend, while I tell you a tale. (with apologies to Peter Sellers) :)

There's this musician. A guitarist. He put out an indie album (on Aware Records, the indie side of Colombia), coffee-house recordings. 10 Tracks or so. real rough cuts. Real heartbreaking. Lyrics were kinda juvenile, but in a waspy, nostalgic sorta way.

Someone higher up hear this guy and said: "Hey. He's good, but not mainstream enough. Throw some money at the problem. Get him a band and some studio time. Have him rerecord his songs. See what happens."

So he does. Goes into the studio with a drummer who knows one beat and only one beat (DUM-dum-CHICK-dum-dum-dum-CHICK), and Dave Matthews' producer (who has the uncanny ability to make everyone he produces sound like Dave Matthews, regardless of what they sounded like before.) They rerecord his heartbreaking coffeehouse songs, and as if with a scalpel, remove the emotion, the edge, the cute mistakes, the personality and the vibrancy. The remove the profanity. They clean up the solos.

And lo and behold this completely transformed pop-star starts getting gigs at Irving Plaza in New York City and airtime on LITE-FM. People walk around singing his pointless renditions of once-beautiful songs.

HE SOLD OUT. That in and of itself isn't too bad, they gotta make a living. The problem is he changed from being honest to being a shill for Colombia.

The only thing I had over people was "Guys, I know he's vapid now, but LISTEN TO THIS: It's his first album. Completely raw. Try it. It's really really good, and it's out of print. You'll see what he used to be like."

And you know what those bastards did to me? They rereleased his first album like it was some kind of 'discovery'. They used ad slogans like "Before his success," and "Work from his younger days." (HE'S NOT EVEN 30 FOR CHRIST'S SAKE). But he's played on LITE-FM. He's on the Barnes & Noble Compilations (they're subsidised for the music they play in the stores.) He's gone.

So yes. To me, selling out is a horrible, horrible thing - once the sheeple like something, any substance that was ever there, any FUCKING ART that there ever was hsd been do diluted for mass consumption, so stripped of emotion that there's no point any more.

Ever. Wow. I'm crying. damn.

Triv

Re:"Whata band"

[BiOFH]

I don't agree with the Coward that you don't get it, but I do agree with the spirit of what he's saying.

It's kinda like 'imagine if the Spice Girls had turned out to be really fuckin cool _despite_ being slapped together in a boutique'. The Pistols never should have sold records cuz we liked the songs. They were supposed to sell records cuz they looked cool and thus sell clothes. But.. damn if 'Never Mind...' didn't kick serious ass. It still gets me going to this day.

Maybe we could split the difference with: "Steve Jones, whata band". :)

Yes, the Pistols sucked. But they sucked so fucking well. :)

An old Punk who's showing her age...

--

Pistols were THE band,..we need it again....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

1. They hated each other
2. They hated you
3. They made one stellar, brilliant album
4. They broke up

Now THAT is a rock band! Too many bands continue after the "plane crash album", sad really.
The hottest thing on the charts when the Pistols came was Hotel California. The trend would later continue when Nirvana decimated (and I don't mean grouping into ten) glam metal.

Sigh. It's time for someone to come along and decimate today's cock rock in the same manner.

Two words

[mabinogi]

Fuck You.

That's the purpose of punk ;)

The 'You' being either conservative british government, or Fleetwood Mac, depending on who you ask....

Re:Phil Collins

[bjb]

I'll agree that Phil was a "lame excuse" for Peter Gabriel when talking about when he replaced Peter as the singer for Genesis in 1976. However, two things:

1. It was generally approved by the fans that someone from inside the group replaced Peter rather than having some outsider come in and try to act like Peter. I personally prefer 1970-1975 Genesis myself, but then again, the 1976-1980 music isn't all that bad either.
2. Phil a weak drummer? I disagree. Phil was QUITE a drummer, however, once he started with the lead singer position, he "stopped playing drums", as I like to put it. Once Genesis started going more commercial, their music became the lame 4/4 stuff which doesn't allow for good (interesting) drumming.

Just a rant, and off-topic, but I had to respond to this one..

Warning: Flamebait

[GypC]

English music is like a funhouse mirror of American music. While occasionally there are interesting results (The Beatles, Black Sabbath), it's mostly only a pale imitation with little "soul". The Sex Pistols don't hold a candle to American punk bands that came before them like The Ramones or The Stooges. No bands from England have ever quite had the visceral punch of, say, The Doors, Janis Joplin, MC5, Black Flag, The Pixies, Jane's Addiction, Nirvana...

Anytime English bands get popular in the States it's only because they're superficially exciting in an over-the-top kind of way.

Of course, American music is itself only a reflection of African-American music. I know that there are lots of black people in England, but they tend to be very... well... British. The black American has a very special creole culture that constantly innovates musically. You might think that punk rock is purely a white-boy phenomenon, but consider that the Ramones' sound is a simplified and aggressive form of 50's rock'n'roll ala Elvis and Buddy Holly... and Elvis' sound was merely a countrified R&B (country music itself was already heavily influenced by blues and swing at this time).

African-American music is always evolving in it's own direction while the white boys jump on a tangent and run with it or take ideas from their current sound (note the influence that hip-hop currently has in rock music). Occasionally someone will step into the white man's game (Hendrix, Bad Brains) and prove that they can still do it better.

Remember, rock'n'roll is just African-American slang for sex.