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Originally Posted by atari 2600
Yeah, I was even about to use that word "image" when I was writing that I sort of "got" your meaning.
Oh well, although we now live with that lossy cultural impact, my perception of what they were all about to begin with is unfazed. I can't help it if future generations don't have much of a clue about the history or meaning of the music of the Sex Pistols.
Watch The Filth & The Fury. There is no band more punk. In today's world, it's not even possible. And yet I take constant shit from people every single fucking time I ever mention them.
They are a band that demonstratively protested every chance they got. Of most note, they did this in their dealings with the press, on television (specifically on the "Today" programme), and with an illegal show onboard a boat on the Thames during Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee (which was a huge national holiday celebrating a quarter of a century of the Queen's rule). They came to be so despised by the government that they eventually became more-or-less completely censored. They were banned from the airwaves, their singles and album sales were not reported in the media, all press presented them as the boogeyman, and they were prohibited from playing gigs in cities. Some even report that they were hounded by detectives and government agents, and that conspiracies were hatched to ruin McClaren...you name it.
And let's not forget their lyrics. Two from songs that come to mind right away are the criticism of the British government with lines like "no future" and "the future dream is a shopping scheme." "Corporate," you write? I think not.
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I often find it interesting that the 'anti-[x]' aspect of the Pistols, while no doubt entirely present and true for those living through the times and shortly after (NB I wasn't anything like born at the time) becomes a narrative, a mode of edification that ceases to mean a great deal by the time my generation comes along - for my part, when people talk about the impact the Pistols had, and Public Enemy afterwards, I tend to think of how Atari Teenage Riot and Asian Dub Foundation impacted the teenage me. That's not to say their incursions into society are meaningless now - I would blithely analogise it to the difference between suffragette-era feminism and the so-called 'third-wave' (itself a broad, indistinct blanket term for 'schools' of feminism occuring after a faint point in the mid-70s). That is to say, while certain 'revolutionary' activities (whether the politically 'proper' revolutions or the cultural-staging revolutions I would put the Pistols under) must maintain their importance and relevence for certain age-groups, it is important that whatever effects the Pistols had be ignored/ rejected/ blind-sided by the younger generations. I don't want this to be considered an ageist sentiment, but there's no doubt that's a latent subterfuge I can't avoid. The point being that the Pistols define punk by being both entirely revolutionary but not revolutionary
a priori. Their mark is felt on all genuinely political 'punk' music, in aspects of British society (I would argue here the Pistols were symptomatic of a wider malaise than instigative, but this doesn't impact their relevence any) and on the alleged mass-marketed facsimiles of punk.
Hmm, long post, exciting. The point I was originally inspired to make was regarding Throbbing Gristle. I find it interesting that, from a pop-culture point of view, the narrative that has
become the Pistols has not quite followed the same trajectory as that of Throbbing Gristle. TG were labelled 'reckers of civilization' in parliament, and like the Pistols, created events that impacted British law. Genesis-P was hounded out of the country (by a few accounts - I may be erring on insubstantiation here) - interesting to note that, for all their anti-monarchistic sentiment, none of the Pistols were refused entry to Britain. Generally speaking, and to weigh in with my own thoughts, while the Pistols' 'culturo-revolutionary' actions are entirely palletable to a certain cache of society for whom the punk narrative is an 'exciting' one, rarely to TG fans care about the similarities between the objective TG narrative and the Pistols' narrative, and it's never used as a trope (noose) with which to describe them. TG make, to my mind, unsettling and troublesome (but by no means 'difficult') music, while the Pistols exact only a staging of 'unsettling' music. I wouldn't label TG as punk, but if the word has any currency (which it doesn't) I'd label them it.
I sometimes wonder why I bother, I really do...