Let's get right to the point, as the Sex Pistols would have done. This is music, played with speed, intelligence and anger. It's not "hardcore." It's not "emo." It's not anything that came before it. This is an album that outgrew its origins to become one of the most influential releases to modern alternative rock. Thank you, boys, for: The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division, X-Ray Spex. Which inspired bands like: The Dead Kennedys, The Cure, Black Flag, Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Pixies, New Order (nee Joy Division), The B-52's, R.E.M. Which inspired bands like: Green Day, A.F.I., Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction, Hot Hot Heat, Interpol, etc. etc. etc.

This album is product (to the point that the CD has been released with less garish cover colors than the original record). It was made solely to make a noise. Malcolm McLaren, owner of a bondage boutique named Sex, decided to get a band formed for the sake of pushing units, with one John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) on vocals, Glen Matlock on bass, Steve Jones on guitar, Paul Cook on drums. None of them really knew how to play yet. Sid Vicious, every punk's anti-hero writ large, was not even around for the band's first singles (he was drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees at the time).

Now McLaren would like the world to believe that, because this band was manufactured by him, it was nothing more than a joke that the world didn't get. Nice try, Malcolm, but as manufactured as the band's meeting was, these songs are pure youth rage and intelligent angst -- beyond the cash-simple desire of selling a shock record. In fact, the Sex Pistols's entire career was a study in being dropped from label after label, until Lydon ended the band in January 1978 by telling a concert crowd "Ever get the feeling you're being cheated?" and walking off the stage.

Their first single, Anarchy in the U.K., rightly became a classic. Nobody before had ever started a song with the words "I am the Antichrist." And nobody before had taken the blunted edge of nihilism and turned it not inward -- but pushing out like flames into the whole world. The lyrics by themselves are powerful enough, but with the band surging behind Lydon's voice, pushing out into a solo that sounds ilke every instrument is breaking as it's being played, you believe every word. After this single was released, E.M.I. dropped them from its label -- a fact screamed about on the track "E.M.I."

Virgin took the band in for a single. This would be "God Save the Queen," a scathing attack on the English monarchy released just in time for the Queen's Silver Jubilee, complete with photo collage of the Queen with a safety pin through her lips. With the hatred pouring out -- "God Save the Queen, she ain't no human being!" and "the fascist regime" and, most importantly, the screaming chorus of "NO FUTURE, NO FUTURE, NO FUTURE FOR YOU!" (directed at the listener) the song rose to the top of the charts; the BBC banned it; the Sex Pistols were dropped again.

Pretty Vacant was rather tame by the Sex Pistols standards. It did showcase their sense of humor and ennui, with the continued line of "We're so pretty, oh so pretty, pretty vacant," and the music behind it was monstrous, but this didn't cause nearly the stir that the previous two did. Musically, it will stick in your head for days. Lyrically, it will fall out of your mind the second "Holidays in the Sun" is played.

You can hear the Sex Pistols chewing up their insides and spitting them out with Holidays in the Sun, the final single of their original line-up. Nothing can prepare you for its ambiguity and burning desire to stop existing. It opens with marching feet, then guitars falling like bombs from the speaker, and Johnny Rotten snarling "A cheap holiday in other people's misery" before wishing he could visit "the new Belsen," a gas chamber during WWII. The song moves around in huge strides, taking the listener from the singer's room, to the thought of Belsen, to the Berlin Wall itself. And this is where the song grows fangs and bleeds you dry.

Lydon suddenly starts stuttering out "I wanna go ... under the Berlin wall! I wanna go ... under the Berlin wall! I wanna go under the Berlin wall. I don't understand this bit at all. I wanna go..." until the entire song is based on these few fumbled words. What do they mean? Why under and not over? Lydon never lets us know. He again offers "I don't understand this ... bit at all." Before infusing the song with a scorched throat -- "I WANNA GO UNDER THE BERLIN WAAAAAAAAAALLL!" And then, as the guitar chords and rhythm section are coming to a close, you hear, very small and timid, "Please don't be waiting for me." I shudder every time.

There are other songs of note on this album. The lecherous, anti-human shambles of "Bodies." The semi-tuneful calldown "Liar." The sardonic smirks of "Problems" and "No Feelings." Even the strange little "Sub-mission," about submarines and S&M, has its charms. But the four singles on this album are what makes it a masterpiece.

You said you want a revolution? Here it is.

NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS ... HERE's the SeX PisTOls
1977 release

Holidays in the Sun x Bodies x No Feelings x Liar x Problems x God Save the Queen x Seventeen x Anarchy in the U.K. x Sub-mission x Pretty Vacant x New York x E.M.I.



Recommended: Yes