Six Degrees of Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.
The Album
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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. By virtue of being uncompromising in its attack (sonically, lyrically), "God Save The Queen" might be the most effective protest song ever written about inefficient governments. "Bodies," the harrowing song centered around a girl who had an abortion is still chilling years later, with Rotten dropping such quaint bon mots as "bloody fucking mess" and "I'm not an animal," while the band churns urgently behind him. Equal parts timeless and time-lapsed, Never Mind The Bollocks remains a blueprint for disenfranchised rockers whose heart and souls identify more with Johnny Thunders and the protagonist character Howard Beale from the 1976 film Network ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!") than whoever is playing the Quaker Oats stage at this summer's Warped Tour.
The Godfather
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In his glowing essay in the book accompanying The Life and Crimes of Alice Cooper box set, John Lydon professes his admiration for "the Coop" in no uncertain terms. Though critics like to cite Marilyn Manson as the definitive godfather of shock-rock's direct antecedent, there's plenty to be gleaned by playing Alice Cooper's 1973 classic side-by-side with Bollocks. The same kind of sonic swagger the Pistols' exhibit on "Anarchy in the U.K." isn't far removed sonically from the audacious table-turned-victim scenario "Raped And Freezing." For sheer outrage factor (both literal and metaphoric), there's not too much gradation of spirit between "Bodies" and "Sick Things." (Think about it visually: One song is a crime-scene photo by Weegee, the other is a George Romero film. You can decide what song designates what band, dear friend.) Remember keyboardist Michael Bruce's tender ballad "Mary Ann," where the hilarious crossdresser punchline comes straight out of left field, prior to a jubilant piano fade-out? How many "tough" high school guys did that song piss off? Consider how many American teens in the late '70s scoffed at that very mention of punk rock with a comment like "How could I possibly take seriously a band with a singer who calls himself Rotten? What a bunch of queerballs. Donna, put on side two of Grand Illusion. That's real music." Truth as well as Cooper's legacy to the rock 'n' roll canon will always remain.
The Catalyst
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One of the most infamous days in the history of punk rock was July 4, 1976, when the Ramones played the legendary London venue the Roundhouse, opening for unsung proto-punks the Flamin' Groovies. That show as well as a smaller-scaled club date the following night was attended by future members of the three crucial Class Of '77 British punk bands: the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned. This historical fact is brought up in many a heated who-invented-punk barroom debate. (On the other hand, Great Britain gave us the Who in all their youth-rebellion, equipment-smashing fury. And America gave the world the MC5 and the Stooges way before the Brooklyn bruddas. ANYWAY) After the last pint glass is drained, the great undeniable proof is that the Ramones' first album was grounded in a stripped-down, pretense-free aesthetic focused more on callisthenic ability (downstrokes, pogoing), comic-book goofiness ("Beat On The Brat, "Blitzkrieg Bop") and straight-up fun. Ramones was such a flagrant one-fingered salute to the conservatory-trained prog-rock millionaires and the bland choices foisted onto the nation's airwaves by chickenshit music directors at radio stations, there was no way it couldn't have launched an international cult following.
![Ramones [Expanded] album cover](http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/117/494/11749477/300x300.jpg)
The Colleagues
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The legend goes that after traveling to London in early 1976 to see a Sex Pistols gig, Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley promoted the first-ever Pistols show in their hometown of Manchester. Excited, inspired and having a knack with placing great pop hooks against the buzz-saw attitude of the new music, the duo created the Buzzcocks and immersed themselves into punks' DIY culture. Despite frontman Devoto quitting after the band's first EP (1976's Spiral Scratch) leaving Shelley to fill the lead singer position, the Buzzcocks' melodic pop sense — and requisite acceleration — remained crucial to longtime punk aficionados and people who were able to take the band's aesthetic to the bank first. This particular collection was recorded live in 2007, celebrating the band's three-decade tenure with classics that are both crunchy ("Why She's The Girl from a Chainstore," "Orgasm Addict") and fizzing with pop power ("Ever Fallen In Love," "What Do I Get"). Okay, okay: Shelley and guitarist Steve Diggle are the only remaining original members and the 'cocks weren't active through much of the '80s, thereby making the title concept of a continuous 30-year career a bold lie. These songs might as well be a time machine set for a period where life was harder, but far more engaging and inspired. And 30 is a far better listen than Filthy Lucre...
The Aftermath
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When the Sex Pistols unceremoniously fell apart onstage in San Francisco at the beginning of 1978, it was the end of one experiment and the beginning of another. John Lydon (n Rotten) announced his intentions to form Public Image Ltd., a new band determined to undermine the punk-rock conventions he helped create. The first PiL album is an impressive document, but the 1980 follow-up, Second Edition (aka, Metal Box, as it was originally released in the UK as three 12-inch singles in a film canister), continues to inform and inspire generations of adventurous souls from Williamsburg to Great Britain in search of new aural possibilities. Bassist Jah Wobble and former Raincoats drummer Richard Dudanski (soon replaced by Martin Atkins) forged a massive dub-influenced rhythm bed for the jagged, trebly guitar distensions and synthesizer abuse of Keith Levene (the only punk rocker whose rsum includes being a roadie for prog icons Yes and an original member of the Clash). Lydon delivered charged performances centering on topics ranging from his mother's death, post-Pistols legal hangovers and crime stories. What Never Mind The Bollocks did for punk, Second Edition has done for musicians trying to reach whole new levels of sonic sorcery that alternate being equally hypnotic ("Poptones"), hypnagogic ("Radio 4") and histrionic ("Chant").
The Progeny
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While there have been plenty of underground bands who have done their best to shake up the complacency of whatever music scene they travel in, nobody has taken it to the mainstream level the Sex Pistols attained in the United Kingdom (i.e., garnering outrage of alleged community "pillars" while having elementary school children knowing the songs). British hardcore outfit Gallows have been following the Pistols' playbook well, credited by many for re-establishing a new voice in British hardcore; reminding journalists that the band's existence is remarkably finite; and getting dropped by the British arm of Warner Bros. after the release of one album, Grey Britain. The record itself is an ambitious endeavor filled with hateful lyrics (dig that endorsement of suicide!) and guitars as sharp as pungi sticks. It also sports piano solos, string arrangements and field recordings of water seemingly leftover from the Who's Quadraphrenia, signifiers that make mohawked "tru punx" recoil in disgust. Granted, none of the above listed points are particularly brazen in a post-Pistols universe. What Grey Britain reminds casual listeners, fans and punk policemen alike, is that at the heart of it all, "punk" means getting the hell on with it your way and not anybody's else's.
