Word: rottener
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...JOHNNY ROTTEN brought a new faith along with his vaseline-and-tale pomaded hair, a faith in rock and roll and its ability to survive its own history, a cocksure answer to the "Now what?" he mutters once between tracks on this wonderful new album. The answer consisted of a return to three-chord rock and roll and a reworking of old standards in an energetic new style. Their originality relied on performance, not form; rock and roll has always been wrapped up in personality and attitude, and the contumacious stance and demonic vigor the Sex Pistols brought to rock...
Seven tracks on Swindle exemplify this refurbishing of old hits. Rotten is in prime sneering form, fairly spitting out the three syllables of old Who warhorse "Substitute," bringing a feral edge to Boyce and Hart's familiar "Stepping Stone" and Faces standard "Whatcha Gonna Do About It." These old songs, worn by rehearing and rote performance, take on a new quality, derived from Rotten's conviction that they really matter, at least to him. Sid Vicious contributes two sock-hop numbers--"Something Else" and "C'mon Everybody"--and a rollicking remake of "Rock Around the Clock." Punk rock wants...
...soon becomes apparent that Rotten knows maybe five words to the song--but who the hell knows the words to "Tumbling Dice," or could ever understand Bo Diddley? Rotten fills in with a banshee wail, like an infant tossed in boiling water. He begins a dialogue with the band: "It's fuckin' awful. Stop it. It's fuckin' awful. Oy oy Steve, Road Runner...
...band finally slips into "Road Runner"; Rotten doesn't remember that one either. With some help from drummer Paul Cook, he latches onto some random lyrics--the Stop and Shop, the modern world, and the refrain about the radio. He closes it off with "Do we know any other fuckin' songs?" ending one of the priceless moments in recording history...
...coincidental that Johnny Rotten sings these tracks. Rotten was the guiding genius of the band, Vicious the epitome of its ethos, a relationship similar to the Jagger-Richards symbiosis. Upon Rotten's departure, the remaining Sex Pistols ran into the problem of taste: Is this any good? How far do we go? It was a problem they were unequipped to handle. A song like "Friggin" in the Riggin'," a nautical round of masturbation and sodomy on a British man o'war which is sure to replace "Barnacle Bill the Sailor" on top of the fifth grade charts, has no business...