Having a week off from the Bluebags but still needing practice for the semi finals of the Forum 7s, Rex runs onto the field for The Pistols.
Title : The Year My Punk Broke
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Puts on Grandpa Simpson voice....
I remember the Summers of the late 70s. There wasn't much else in a young man's life but footy and music and finding out more about the opposite sex.
The bands around included acts as predictable and stage managed as the WWF.
Sherbet, Ol 55, Dragon, JPY, Marcia Hynes. Even Skyhooks were just a bunch of glam androtops.
Then on Countdown, which had an interest in manufacturing such safe and sterile pap, Molly came on one night and looked as if he'd just been ask to cut his left ball off.
He played 14 seconds of snarling, angry, loud grainy black and white footage of Johnny Rotten. Then he made a pronouncement as monumental as Churchill's We Are At War speech.
Something called Punk had arrived and it made Molly sad
Anarchy In the UK, the first single is easily one of THE best songs ever written. If mothers remember babies first words, the Pistols snarled their arrival. "I am an Anti-Christ, I am an Anarchist". May seem pale today but that one line said everything a disillusioned nuclear threatened generation felt about church and state, men and women, love and war.
Cut to :- 25,000 kms away and a show for the Queens Jubilee. Lots of horses and coaches and old people cooing "Isn't she loverly" and "God Save Your Majesty". Well, there were lots of people who didnt think the old tax bludger and her hundreds of freeloading cronies were worth saving. The Pistols second single opened with "God Save The Queen, the fascist regime". If words were bombs, this line blew the palace apart and Steve Jone's sledge hammer riff was a flame thrower turned on the injured.
Pretty Vacant the third single was arguably the best. Great jangly guitar pop opening, snarling vocal, lyrics about disorientation and a life on the scrap heap. It was no longer enough to get stoned listening to bands such as Tangerine Dream, ELP, Gong and Marillion, it was time to take up arms and revolt.
Then came Holidays In The Sun, a little ditty about East West friction, and two ideologies separated by not just a metaphorical wall, but a physical one.
Everything else, the album, the US tour, the live appearance of Thames TV, Sid and Nancy, were just side shows to the main event. The media not the message. The porridge, not the sheep's eye floating in the middle of it.
The band for me musically is those four three minute blasts of icy fresh, clean, angry pop.
As for their legacy. The Pistols started a whole new world of do it yourself, stripped down, guitar fuelled bands, that went from garage to stage in a few short rehearsals.
In Sydney the coming of punk was the only reason most of our "heritage" pub rock got a start. The Angles went from an Adelaide jug band to a tight, loud three cord attack almost overnight.
Bands like Midnight Oil, Radio Birdman, The Saints, Sunnyboys, Sekret Sekret (Cruel Sea), Nick Cave, The Rifles, Hunters and Collectors, Hoodoo Gurus, INXS would all have had a different career if it wasnt for the Sex Pistols.
In the City there were venues for live music everywhere. The Stagedoor tavern, The Civic Hotel, Manzil Room, Piccadilly Hotel, New York tavern, Sydney Cove, Strawberry Hills, etc etc all had lots of live music, that you could see ANY night of the week. Around St george there was the Bexley Hotel, Forrest Inn, Bexley Hotel, Seabreeze, Millers at Brighton, Caringbah Inn, Cronulla Tradies, St george leagues, Cronulla Leagues, all with pumping sweaty loud fast guitar driven bands.
Punk created the quintessential Australian pub rock sound. Its on your radio and at places like the Big Day Out today. Its who were are and where we are from. And if Oz Rock was created by punk, then punk was created by the Pistols.
http://www.innercitysound.com.au/KillerSounds.html
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