Word: viciousness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...want a slice of pizza." --Last public words of Sid Vicious...
...they gave a shock to the world of rock and roll that made such bands as the Talking Heads, the Clash and Elvis Costello and the Attractions possible, and jolted Mick Jagger and his Old Masters into renewal. The Pistols have left rock and roll to the others; Sid Vicious is dead, and Johnny Lydon (nee Rotten), in light of his recent efforts with Public Image, Ltd., might as well be. All that remains is a movie, The Great Rock and Roll Swindle, due for release this summer, which promises, if nothing else, the usual bathukolpian prodigies of director Russ...
...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 to be fun and these tracks succeed in being just that. As Johnny Rotten once said, "Rock and roll is supposed to be fun. You remember...
...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...
...album closes with Sid Vicious's "My Way," already a punk classic. Sid hams it up in a thickened, quavering voice until Steve Jones's guitar breaks the song into the desperately vital punk mode. The poignancy of the lyrics, in light of Vicious's early death, need not be belabored here. Just let "My Way" stand as a testament to his visceral understanding of the punk aesthetic...