bevedog

I wrote most of this a few months back, then got hung up in changing from Substack to this WordPress blog. I’ve kind of moved on, but it’s all written and y’all might be interested anyway, I hope. -SL

“Punk was great, but then it became something else,” Wobble says. “You had all the beer boys getting involved, and they had that reactionary thing going on. Then of course you get this thing – it’s mainly people in their 50s, I notice – of people who are younger than me who just missed out on it. It becomes a bigger deal to them even than it is to the younger generation. It’s a bit like the people who missed out on the Second World War, but who can’t stop going on about it.” – Jah Wobble

I forget what got me going on this, but for the past two months or so I have been in a 1970s UK punk mood. I read John Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, which is an excellent history of the very brief career of the Sex Pistols and the two or three years when punk first flourished in the UK. I feel like it really benefits from focusing tightly but not exclusively on the Sex Pistols. Savage doesn’t try to write about the entire history of punk, including US bands like the Ramones, instead keeping mostly to London and a bit of Manchester etc.

One of the best things I have read or watched about punk and the Sex Pistols is this “London Weekend” episode from late November, 1976, mere days before they called TV host Bill Grundy a “dirty fucker” on live TV. Siousixe Sioux manages to almost steal the show in both episodes. I admire that even though Janet Street-Porter in the “London Weekend” story asked some of the same dumb questions the Pistols seemed to always get asked (“what other bands do you like?”), she seemed to be genuinely interested in punk as a phenomenon, and not just something to sneer at. Probably helped that she was only about 30 years old, though the Pistols in that clip are all only 20-21 years old, and Siouxie is a teenager.

When these shows aired, the Pistols had been playing live for just over a year and had just released their first single. Just over a year after these shows aired, the band would break up.

Punk Rock Syllabus

Listening

I have listened to all the albums these songs come from and more. Some of them aren’t “punk” according to a strict definition, but they are all part of the wider scene from 1976-1980. Many of the songs and bands I knew already from the excellent Rhino Records compilation DIY: Anarchy In The UK – UK Punk I (1976-77).

One of the biggest surprises to me is how good X-Ray Spex were. Because all I knew about them was that they had a teenage girl singer and a teenage girl saxophonist, and the only song I knew was “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”, I kind of thought they were a novelty band. But Germ Free Adolescents is a really good record start to finish.

Reading

• England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond by John Savage, as mentioned above.
• Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs by John Lydon, Keith Zimmerman, and Kent Zimmerman. John Lydon/Johnny Rotten’s autobiography is one-sided and tendentious, but also funny and illuminating. It can be quite repetitive, but the smartest thing about the book is that about a quarter of it comes from people other than Lydon, whether that’s in blockquotes inserted into Lydon’s narrative, or entire chapters that are the reminiscences of Lydon’s friends and other people in his orbit. The last chapter, where his father talks about his feelings for John and John’s close relationship with John’s mother, brought tears to my eyes, even though (especially because?) by the end of the book I was pretty fed up with Lydon.
• Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century by Greil Marcus. I read this many years ago, and it’s indispensable if you want to understand the Pistols in the context of Dada and Situationism.
• Kleenex/LiLiPUT is Marlene Marder’s memoir of being in the Swiss punk band Kleenex (later LiLiPUT) in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is extra-illustrated with tons of contemporary photographs, fliers, interviews, zine articles and the like. A unique document of the time.

Viewing

• Sid & Nancy or “Everybody Hates Nancy.” Really an unpleasant film, excellent performances from the leads, absurdly bad casting of the guy who played John Lydon. Best/saddest moment is when Sid doesn’t understand why they can’t stay with Nancy’s family. “Because they know me,” Nancy says.
• 24 Hour Party People: Beginning with the famous Sex Pistols concert in Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall, this is a fun movie centered on Tony Wilson and Factory Records. It breaks the fourth wall, plays with what is true and what is legend, and I thought the first half was very entertaining, right up to and including when the guys from Happy Mondays poison all the pigeons (Shanon had to check on me I was laughing so hard at that bit). After that, I care a lot less about “Madchester” than I do about the post-punk era, but still worth watching.

• Jubilee by Derek Jarman: Not a good movie in most regards, but it’s fun to see Jordan and Adam Ant and other scenesters on film.
• Filth & the Fury by Julien Temple. Released in 2000, this gave the guys about 25 years to look back on the scene. Everyone calls Glen Matlock a “cunt.”
• D. O. A.: Great live performance footage of the Pistols and several other bands, and documentary film of how people and cities really looked in 1978.

New site

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