Friday, April 09, 2010
Malcolm McLaren RIP
Played Never Mind the Bollocks on the way to work this morning as a tribute. What an awesome album it is. I bought it when I was at school, during my Marxist-Anarchist-Bolshevist-Nihilist phase. Playing God Save the Queen as loud as my tinny speakers could manage with my bedroom window open was about the biggest danger I posed to bourgeois western capitalism, but it got me through.
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8 comments:
I always liked buffalo gals.
Jealous that I never had a Marxist-Anarchist-Bolshevist-Nihilist phase.
Unbelievable though it might seem, to look at me know, but I came to London in 1976 as a full-on punk and then proceeded to spend the next year and a half completely immersed in the punk world, even to the extent of working for Stiff Records.
Ever the contrarian, when I arrived at university the following year and found others discovering their inner punk, I rapidly donned a three piece suit, starched detachable collars and spotted bow ties (No, not bloody ready-made ones, thank you very much).
Maclaren was, in many ways, a complete t****r, but he had the ideas, the energy and the balls to create something uniquely English and good. Requiscat in Pacem.
Recu, perhaps at uni you were a progenitor of New Romanticism? Or Young Fogeyism?
Brit, you rebellion reminds me of a story a best friend tells of how he plucked up the courage to go to the shops to buy God Save the Queen by the Pistols (he was 11 or so). Anyway, he pulled it off and arrived back home safely enough. Then it all unravelled - his Mum made him take it back. He said he still burns with shame.
Curiously expressive music - and the good news is that punk is still alive and well.
S'funny thing, I can't listen to that music anymore.
It now seems to be 'of it's time'.
I had a bootleg (yeah, right) of NMTB which I preferred.
I saw the Sex Pistols at Leeds Uni on the Anarchy In The U.K. tour.
The Clash were first on, all hissy spitty, followed by the Dammed, who were like an express train with all it's windows open going though a station while the passengers hung out of the windows shouting expletives. Johnny Thunder's Heartbreakers (music I can still listen to) were really slick and, dare I say it, professional.
The Pistols changed the direction of my life. I quit my job at Leeds UBO the following week and got a job in a factory. After 12 years there my revolutionary zeal sort of faded a bit.
My other 'I've rubbed shoulders with them' experience was making tea in the studio as Spiral Scratch was being made.
I was struck by how small all the Buzzcocks were and the fact that Pete Shelly used gaffer tape to hold the pick-up on to his guitar.
Y'try to tell the youth of today and they just won't listen.
I'm going to listen to 'Living On The Road In Soweto' and cheer myself up by dancing about in my wellington boots.
O.S.M. B:52
I suspect Outa_Spaceman just won the all world, free-style, music division, best intertube comment ever.
Yep, great stuff OSM.
Re: being 'of its time', after a while the message is lost and it just becomes music, on which count NMTB stands up surprisingly well. Definitely not scary any more though - Johnny Rotten is the pantomime nut from the butter ads now.
To be fair to Mr. Lydon Brit, in an interview on the Kulture Show, he did point out that the butter ads were a financial 'necessity' to get P.I.L. back on the road.
Humanity - dignity = cash.
Q.E.D.
O.S.M.B:52
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