Despite the various members’ attempts to tarnish its memory with everything from half-assed reunion tours, professions of love for American AOR bands and appearances in commercials for British butter companies, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols continues to conjure the heady days of a genre-defining zeitgeist that was sonically corrosive and improbably influential. While the Sex Pistols’ role in the cultural landscape that was late ’70s Britain under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been well documented (especially in director Julien Temple’s documentary, The Filth and the Fury), the band’s only true long-form musical document still remains resonant three decades after its release.

Remember how the Rolling Stones and the Beatles began their careers revamping American R&B and reselling it to the colonies over here? The Sex Pistols’ aural synergy was derived from such American antecedents as ’50s-styled gutter glam (cf. New York Dolls, the outfit that Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren represented for a brief time); the stripped-down musicianship of the New York scene (cf. the Ramones); and crass controversy (cf. Alice Cooper), all imbued with the subtlety of a caged wolverine being poked with a stick. Armed with limited singing ability and caustic lyrics, John “Johnny Rotten” Lydon articulated… read more »