SONGS THAT SAVED MY LIFE #12 - AND WE DON'T CARE.....

As an 18 year old discovering Punk and all its various offshoots, the band who were the catalyst for the initial movement were the band who it took me the longest to get into. I'm talking of course about the Sex Pistols. Depending on whose account you believe, the band were brought together and masterminded by Malcolm Mclaren, a entrepreneur and clothes designer with a anarchic and provocative streak who owned a boutique on the Kings Road in Chelsea which sold clothes featuring taboo designs often based on fetishwear. For a while they were more famous for their reputation and getting kicked off record labels than their music, and the music often took a back seat - they were beaten to the punch by The Damned, who released the first UK Punk single ("New Rose")  a good month or so before the Pistols debut, "Anarchy In The Uk". It was nearly a year later on 28th October 1977 that their debut - and only - album was unleashed upon a by now suspecting public, long after The Damned, The Jam, The Clash, and The Stranglers had issued theirs. By this time they had booted out bassist Glen Matlock for "liking The Beatles" and recruited the talentless Sid Vicious, a friend of Johnny Rottens' who couldn't play but looked the part, and released four singles, all of which featured on "...Bollocks", leading to some accusations that it was essentially a "greatest hits", but that didn't dull its impact. It entered the album charts at number one, and prompted a court case (here in my home city of Nottingham!) after a poster advertising the album in the local Virgin Megastore caused complaints of obscenity (the trial was thrown out of court in the end).

Aside from modern punk bands like Green Day and Offspring, all the Punk albums in my collection were compilations, best of's and greatest hits, and it was a while before i actually got around to buying any proper studio albums by those bands. When i did, NMTB... was my first port of call, and from the opening stomp of marching jackboots on "Holidays In The Sun", it blew me away. The sneering, snarling vocals, the pounding drums, the powerful storming guitars which were more akin to Metal than the rough and ready sound most Punk bands. Oh, and the lyrics. Nihilistic, anarchic, anti-establishment, full of loathing.  Johnny Rotten takes no prisoners - launching verbal attacks on British society, the Royal Family, the Government, record labels, the press, tackles abortion on the scathing "Bodies", the albums' most fierce track. The album articulates the frustration and boredom of working class youth who were expected to stay in their place, and in giving them a voice changed the musical and social landscape forever. The fact that the anger was still potent two decades on says it all, and it's lost none of its power on the 40th anniversary of its release. Rotten left the band not long after and, reverting to his birth name John Lydon he formed another hugely influential band, the post-punk pioneers Public Image Limited, who ploughed a much more experimental furrow.