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Originally Posted by Glice
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...
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A really interesting comparison. From my knowledge, the controversy around TG in parliament referred more to their earlier COUM project, which was funded by a public Arts Council grant. The real issue was not what they were up to, but whether the government should be funding it. That said, it's surely undeniable that TG provided a more substantial and coherent form of critique than that offered by the Pistols. It's the fact that, as you say, they emerge out of two different 'narratives': TG coming out of the 'shock' aesthetic of a sixties avant-garde loosely associated with such counter-cultural figures as Burroughs, the Vienna Aktionists, etc, while the Pistols on the other hand were stemming from a more 'established' path which made them far easier for the industry (albeit belatedly) to properly absorb (in essence, MacLaren was doing little more than updating tactics laid down in sixties by the Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham). The Pistols shook up the industry because, by the mid 70s it'd become lazy and self satisfied. It didn't take long however for it to adjust (hence New Wave). TG operated in a sphere that the industry could never possibly adjust to, at least in terms of its 'mainstream'. There simply wasn't the sufficient reference points for it to turn to for guidance.
Without wanting to sound overly pretentious, TG perhaps best illustrate the point made by Adorno that an avant-garde (assuming we might want to think of punk, as MacLaren surely did, as avant-garde) is effective only in so far as its very form cannot be appropriated by mass industry.
I've actually forgotten the point of what I'm trying to say here. Nope, can't remember. Anyway, bloody interesting thing you did there, comparing the Pistols with TG.
Anyway, I'm off to listen to a Dickies album.