You can say what you want about this album, or The Sex Pistols. I don't care if you think it belongs in the Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame, or in a garbage can. It changed the whole damn show for me. It changed my whole outlook on music, and it's a big part of why I listen to what I listen to today.
I got it for my birthday in 1978. Denise and BJ (still dear friends to this day), gave me a present in school at lunch. I opened the package, knowing it was a record, but just wondering what in the hell these two girls would get me. This was it. All pink and green and so foreign looking. No wizard on the cover, no pretty girl, no dude with a guitar and a guitargasm face. Just a statement that I figured meant what it means, but I was 16 and had never heard anyone use the term bollocks before. I had talked about The Sex Pistols, and I had heard Anarchy in the UK on college radio. I knew it would be different, just because of all the looks I got in school carrying it around (I was 16, I had a record that most people had never heard of, and I carried it around in the hall until I cut out and went home and listened to it). I played side 2 first so I could hear the song I knew.
Man, I loved it! It was short and got right to the point. The music was biting and harsh. The lyrics seemed like the kind of political stuff that could get you disappeared (hey, I was 16). I loved every minute of it, and I was sure all my friends would, too. The next day in school I thanked Denise and BJ profusely, probably with a doob out in the smoking lounge (yeah, we could smoke in school), and I told everyone I saw it was the coolest record in years. Most people asked me why WMMS didn't play it, if it was so cool, and I had no answer. So I took it to a party that Friday night.
The party was at a guy's house that I didn't know very well, and whom I think moved shortly thereafter, because we really liked a lot of the same music, except Led Zeppelin. After we were a lot of beers in, I asked if I could play my new record, and he said, "Hell, yeah!" The console stereo in the living room was cranked and out comes the screaming, political without really saying anything, Holidays in the Sun. This guy Mark and I just started stomping around doing some adolescent boogaloo that required lots of yelling and pushing each other around, and three songs into it, we notice the entire fucking party has gone out to the kitchen, and even the patio outside, in the snow. No one stayed in the room, and I was kind of dejected and figured he'd take the record off, put on J. Geils and get his party back inside.
He didn't. He pushed me, we did shots of his dad's booze and stomped around the living room until the whole record played through. I was hot, I was sweaty and I knew that I didn't give a fuck what anyone else thought of The Sex Pistols, I fucking loved them and I knew I was gonna dig this new Punk Rock that was just starting to catch on. When the second side finished I went and puked over the front railing of his porch, ingratiating myself forever to some girl who was a senior and her boyfriend who looked like he wanted to beat me up.
Mark and I talked about music a lot for a few months after that, then I just never saw him again. Maybe summer came, I don't know. Maybe his parents blamed me for a drunken party. Whatever. I quit caring what most other people thought about what I listened to after that. I started to understand that most of my favorite music was going to be a journey I had to take on my own for the most part, and I was excited to be RIGHT THERE when Punk came out. I didn't get to see any shows really, but I found some of the records and met some older people that would turn me on to other bands, all because I loved that Sex Pistols album. It changed everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment