Sex Pistols at the Roxy, October 25
By Randall Roberts
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and fuck you. Fuck you Johnny Rotten for wasting most of your No Future -- the first two PiL albums excepted -- making mediocre music and stealing album titles from Flipper. Fuck you Steve Jones for waxing your chest. Fuck you Glen Matlock for liking Paul McCartney – you are still not forgiven. Paul Cook: fuck you because you were my favorite. While the rest of the idiots stumbled about making fools of themselves and creating the templates of what would become their caricatures, you played the drums and shut the fuck up. You seem to have some sense. Please stop this. Tell them, Paul. It doesn't work.
A pox on all of you silly old men sweating and wheezing and singing a song from 30 years past about the Future -- how there isn't one -- when the very fact of the performance negates the declaration, simply highlights the fact of how lame your Future ended up. Thirty years ago this Monday, Never Mind the Bollocks was released. It remains a beast of an album, so ferocious and angry and of its time that any attempt at replicating it is doomed to fail. Maybe if Pissed Jeans or Fucked Up were up here it'd rock, but these skids?
The Sex Pistols at the Roxy, sponsored by Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. Need I say more? Yes? Good. The band waddled onto stage, two fat fucks (Jones and Rotten) and two civil-servant-looking fellows, one of whom (Matlock) was wearing a leather vest. He looked like a minister at a costume party. Rotten grabbed the mic, opened his beady eyes wide and made the first of hundreds of facial expressions that indicated, variously, disgust, disappointment, rage, anger, bemusement, boredom – and none of them felt the least bit real. It was like he was standing in front of a mirror trying them on for size, or had studied videotapes of himself when he mattered. The band moved through much of Bollocks – from “Holidays in the Sun” to “No Feelings” to “EMI” (the only song that remains relevant, but for different reasons) – played the requisite covers, blew the requisite snot, spit, rocked, and so on. But even on the most primal level it seemed weak, unnecessary, inconsequential.
Most of the members of Velvet Revolver were in the crowd taking notes on how to suck ass well into the 2020s, how you can flog one good idea until it's rendered useless, return to it every half decade, declare yourselves “courageous” -- as Rotten did during a break – for reuniting in the face of expected failure. Great. That bodes well for the Future. Toward the end, the band took an unplanned break because Johnny Rotten had to pee. When he returned, he intimated that he had gone ahead and taken a dump while he was at it. What's surprising is that he had any shit left in his system to poop out.
Before my dad died, he told me that he wanted a closed casket because the last image he had of his father was of him dead in a casket. My father didn't want to be remembered as a dead man. I honored his wishes, and have never regretted not seeing his dead body. I wish I would have requested a closed casket last night.
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Comments
There are 6 comments posted for this article.
wow, i feel like I was there. great review. Im gonna go take a dump now.
Posted on October 26, 2007 12:18 PM by Ryan
Randy's a hero! Live to tell the truth! Rock On, Mr. Roberts!
Posted on October 26, 2007 7:14 PM by matt amato
Yeh WE get to rant, but geezers who write for "Alt-Weeklys" we don't even know what revolution they wanted to lead/start/lead into the Pacific (when they's waz yout), MAAnnnnn! Should they (Fux Pistoleros) kept at it it OR refuse to succeed, or suckceed like like them Clash (see "Rock the Casbah" bllhhhhh!). Yar, this is the review the Rottens and Vicious are narsty enough to swallow and scag barf back. Rock on Chuck Berry . . . .
Posted on October 28, 2007 4:12 AM by Karl Popper
What a shit review. I'm sad I wasted a google click on it.
No mention at all about how the bad sounded, how the crowd reacted... this was nothing more than an essay of the relevance of punk (done before!) with a few notes mentioning Johnny's bowl movements.
I was there. The band sounded incredible, for those of you interested. Much better actually than the bootlegs I've listened to from the 70s. They are better musicians now. And who cares when the songs were written? Is all music rendered worthless after 5 years? You must have quite a limited collection then.
Posted on October 28, 2007 8:14 PM by Jessica
Jeez, lighten up will ya'? Not all of us were lucky, or old, enough to see these guys at their peak. Snippets on VH1 documentaries or bootleg concert audio/video is NOT the same as seeing them in the flesh. I don't care how rusty they were or may be, I would have loved to have been lucky enough to been at the Roxy that night. If you had this attitude going in, why did you bother going? Why not pass along your press pass to someone more objective.
Posted on November 1, 2007 6:04 PM by armando Sosa
RE: Armando's snipe. No one wanted to love this more than me. I loved the Sex Pistols. Still love the Sex Pistols. Just because I got in to the show doesn't mean I have to buy in to their bullshit, though.
Posted on November 5, 2007 4:20 PM by Randall