Post by Fuggle on Feb 2, 2009 18:50:32 GMT -5
Sid Vicious and Sex Pistols
punk legacy still has punch[/color]
Paul Williams
February 01, 2009
LEGACY ... 30 years after he died, Sid Vicious and
the Sex Pistols are still remembered for their political,
musical and personal anarchy.
THINK of the most offensively cacophonous musical ensemble imaginable, then treble it. You still wouldn't be close to how the mainstream press pilloried one British band of the mid to late 1970s throughout their luminous yet explosively short career.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death, at only 21, of Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols. Three decades on, Vicious, whose real name was John Simon Ritchie, remains for many the quintessential punk: an original incarnation of pure musical and personal anarchy.
Despite his pseudonym, one adopted after an encounter with a testy hamster of the same name owned by Sex Pistols lead vocalist John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Ritchie by all accounts was a shy man who had produced talented work at art college.
But that mattered little to a tabloid press eager to cultivate an image that middle England, on the brink of economic collapse, could unite against in their common hatred of all that was different.
The band played its first gig in late 1975, only to have the plug prematurely pulled. But, after a profane live television appearance in 1976, they would face more prohibitions amid fears of social corruption. The Sex Pistols' release of politically charged songs, with the blisteringly short riffs and tortured vocals of such numbers as Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen, did nothing to ease tensions.
But, for thousands of dispossessed Britons disillusioned with a postwar economy that delivered only unemployment and despondency, these songs became anthems for change.
The intimacy of the Sex Pistols' performances in tiny, claustrophobic venues, and the inventiveness of their askew musicality, offered a new way of thinking about tunefulness, creativity and life.
In that sense, punks were more concerned with wrenching their own insipid peers from an enslaving commercial culture than they were about the intergenerational conflicts of that older, horrible musical invention, rock 'n' roll.
Indeed, the term punk rock is erroneous. Many argue The Sex Pistols are closer in raw emotional honesty to Mozart, Mahler and Elgar (whose Land of Hope and Glory the Sex Pistols covered) than they are to the Rolling Stones. Where tacky rock 'n' roll implores audiences to look at me in all my (sham) splendour, punk challenges audiences to look at yourselves in all your supercilious stupor.
After their zenith in 1977 and during an ill-fated American tour, the Sex Pistols disbanded in early 1978. It seemed punk, or at least its first wave, was dead. But not before spawning a score of equally influential, if more successful, bands such as The Clash, The Buzzcocks and The Jam.
Before long, a second wave of punk bands emerged across the globe, from The Dead Kennedys in the US to The Sugarcubes in Iceland. By the early 1980s, punk had morphed into the more commercially acceptable new wave, with Australia spawning more than its share of original acts such as The Models and The Numbers.
Indeed, Brisbane – that crucible of political and cultural oppression in the 1980s – became a particularly fruitful hothouse of new musical expression for bands ranging from The Go Betweens to The Pineapples from the Dawn of Time.
But one must wonder what, if any, musical legacy Sid Vicious has left three decades on. While, at least superficially, there remains a hint of punk in such third-wave groups as Green Day and The Prodigy, it seems mainstream music has come full circle.
Today, record companies, armed with marketing research, cultivate and manufacture musicians, especially warbling female vocalists, with the express purpose of producing a colourless musical monoculture. We now live in airspace dominated by wailing white-bread waifs, whose machine-written songs are piped en masse to an unquestioning generation of teenage consumers who, in turn, will produce the next generation of soulless, unimaginative performers.
But John Ritchie, who died of a heroin overdose in New York while awaiting trial for the alleged murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, remains part of a broader cultural legacy that arrives perhaps just once in a century.
He and his contemporaries at least reminded us that music and creativity, like beauty and even ugliness, remain in the eye of the beholder.
Imagination and self-expression will always be what individuals make it.
punk legacy still has punch[/color]
Paul Williams
February 01, 2009
LEGACY ... 30 years after he died, Sid Vicious and
the Sex Pistols are still remembered for their political,
musical and personal anarchy.
THINK of the most offensively cacophonous musical ensemble imaginable, then treble it. You still wouldn't be close to how the mainstream press pilloried one British band of the mid to late 1970s throughout their luminous yet explosively short career.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death, at only 21, of Sid Vicious, bassist for the Sex Pistols. Three decades on, Vicious, whose real name was John Simon Ritchie, remains for many the quintessential punk: an original incarnation of pure musical and personal anarchy.
Despite his pseudonym, one adopted after an encounter with a testy hamster of the same name owned by Sex Pistols lead vocalist John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Ritchie by all accounts was a shy man who had produced talented work at art college.
But that mattered little to a tabloid press eager to cultivate an image that middle England, on the brink of economic collapse, could unite against in their common hatred of all that was different.
The band played its first gig in late 1975, only to have the plug prematurely pulled. But, after a profane live television appearance in 1976, they would face more prohibitions amid fears of social corruption. The Sex Pistols' release of politically charged songs, with the blisteringly short riffs and tortured vocals of such numbers as Anarchy in the UK and God Save the Queen, did nothing to ease tensions.
But, for thousands of dispossessed Britons disillusioned with a postwar economy that delivered only unemployment and despondency, these songs became anthems for change.
The intimacy of the Sex Pistols' performances in tiny, claustrophobic venues, and the inventiveness of their askew musicality, offered a new way of thinking about tunefulness, creativity and life.
In that sense, punks were more concerned with wrenching their own insipid peers from an enslaving commercial culture than they were about the intergenerational conflicts of that older, horrible musical invention, rock 'n' roll.
Indeed, the term punk rock is erroneous. Many argue The Sex Pistols are closer in raw emotional honesty to Mozart, Mahler and Elgar (whose Land of Hope and Glory the Sex Pistols covered) than they are to the Rolling Stones. Where tacky rock 'n' roll implores audiences to look at me in all my (sham) splendour, punk challenges audiences to look at yourselves in all your supercilious stupor.
After their zenith in 1977 and during an ill-fated American tour, the Sex Pistols disbanded in early 1978. It seemed punk, or at least its first wave, was dead. But not before spawning a score of equally influential, if more successful, bands such as The Clash, The Buzzcocks and The Jam.
Before long, a second wave of punk bands emerged across the globe, from The Dead Kennedys in the US to The Sugarcubes in Iceland. By the early 1980s, punk had morphed into the more commercially acceptable new wave, with Australia spawning more than its share of original acts such as The Models and The Numbers.
Indeed, Brisbane – that crucible of political and cultural oppression in the 1980s – became a particularly fruitful hothouse of new musical expression for bands ranging from The Go Betweens to The Pineapples from the Dawn of Time.
But one must wonder what, if any, musical legacy Sid Vicious has left three decades on. While, at least superficially, there remains a hint of punk in such third-wave groups as Green Day and The Prodigy, it seems mainstream music has come full circle.
Today, record companies, armed with marketing research, cultivate and manufacture musicians, especially warbling female vocalists, with the express purpose of producing a colourless musical monoculture. We now live in airspace dominated by wailing white-bread waifs, whose machine-written songs are piped en masse to an unquestioning generation of teenage consumers who, in turn, will produce the next generation of soulless, unimaginative performers.
But John Ritchie, who died of a heroin overdose in New York while awaiting trial for the alleged murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, remains part of a broader cultural legacy that arrives perhaps just once in a century.
He and his contemporaries at least reminded us that music and creativity, like beauty and even ugliness, remain in the eye of the beholder.
Imagination and self-expression will always be what individuals make it.