Pistols still the Pistols

I found this on - surprisingly - the Drudge Report.

While all bands would practically love to be inducted into the hall of fame, the Sex Pistols basically told the Hall of Fame where to go. Which shows only one thing -

The Pistols were the last, if not the only, punk band.

Thus, they agree with me, too! I said this long before they said "We were punk, the rest were punk rock."

Here is where you can read the announcement - probably the only press release in a hand-written scrawl:

http://www.thefilthandthefury.co.uk

Johnny Rotten was about the only person who really understood what punk was about. It was about nihilism. Unfortunately, his contemporaries and his admirers never did. They instead saw the following: here was a band that played loud, distorted guitar music, and they attempted to make their own loud, distorted music, only with less competence. In addition, since the Pistols were anti-establishmentarians, they must be devout Fabians, right?

Well, no.

The society they were denouncing was fabian - pre-Thatcherite Britain. And, Thatcher was not really able to get rid of much of the Fabianism. In Britain, the establishment is fabian.

So when Pearl Jam or Beastie Boys try to launch into a tirade against society, and advocate national health insurance, and think they are demonstrating the punk ethos by doing so, they really are without a clue. Pearl Jam is really a phony band; they were what happened when Eddie Vedder ruined Mother Love Bone.

And Kurt Cobain understood that Pearl Jam truly had a phony punk attitude, according to his biographer.

In fact, his band was only one of two bands that even came close to the Pistols vision (Nirvana for those of you who forgot). The other was Guns and Roses - when they made their album Appetite for Destruction. The rest of those bands did not have much of a clue about this ethos. It takes a certain person to understand it, and such a person doesn't necessarily march to the beat of a different drummer -if you can forgive the pun - they have their own band (forgive my pun again!). When they came to Seattle in 1996, the alternative paper (the Stranger) called it's fans posers, and correctly so. Poking holes in your nose is not "showing your individually" as many did, in reality it only shows you have a strong sense of conformity but want to hide the fact you probably have no originality. Johnny Rotten might have done it in 1977, but that was in 1977, when no one else had tried it before in the west (excepting Mayakovsky).

I remember going to that show. The first song the opened up with was "Bodies". And the crowd, full of punk kids, went wild. Only they had no clue as to what "Bodies" was about. It was the best anti-abortion anthem ever written. It largely tells that truth behind why so many people are such strong abortion advocates. Forgive my french, but here is the key line:

"Fucking like this and fucking like that
"Fucking like a fuckin', fucking brat
"She don't want a baby that look like that
"She don't want a baby at all."

Many of these kids, who probably adopted left-wing ideology, and potential NARAL recruits, thus accepting abortion as a right. They would have been horrified to find out that that were cheering the most truthful anti-abortion song ever, if they really knew...

Then there was the Sex Pistols tribute - by a bunch of "punk" bands. All of whom did not have an idea of the punk attitude.

So, what is a truly punk attitude? It's not necessarily a - forgive the french, again - a "Fuck you" attitude. It is at it's core a nihilistic vision of society. Someone who wants total freedom. But they also realize that something is wrong. In otherwords, an Iconoclast.

A gangsta rapper talking about doing sexually abusive things to ho's is no longer iconoclastic - because it is so common to do a rap song about. Left wing politics is not this vein, either, because it requires huge bureaucracies, and new establishments, to sustain the left wing fabian ideals.

In fact, horror of horrors, the American right is actually closer to the punk ethos. We are the ones who want to tear down the structures. Well, by-and-large. The pre-Pistols punk band, the Ramones, were Republicans. Many current Republican activists chose that peer group in Jr. high (most Republicans of today were never the preppy type, which is a huge error in the stereotype). The most famous is Ann Coulter - which is why she writes like she does. Her counterpart, Jabba the Hut, can't even come close. Not to say the Pistols were on my side politically - they were probably extreme, extreme leftists (remember, they wanted to be anarchy) - but in a sense, they were almost aideological.

So today, Rock-and-Roll has become yet another institution - it is so institutionalized, in fact, that kids are turning increasingly away from it. But the adults still have to promote it because they still have to be bad. As a result, adults still revere what they liked in high school. It was the rebellion against this bizzare attitude of the current "grownups" that the Pistols told the administrators where to go for their opening ceremony. The Pistols never revered anything, including awards ceremonies. As a result, by doing so, they are perfectly in their element. And by doing so, they still demonstrate that they, and probably only they, truly understand what punk is about.