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The Coming & Going of the Sex Pistols

Album cover of Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols

It has been forty years since the release of Never Mind the Bollocks: Here Come the Sex Pistols and we still find ourselves dropping the needle on the catchy scrawl that is, "Anarchy in the UK."

Listening to the prophetic ravings of Johnny Rotten, we are moved to ask ourselves: Were the Sex Pistols a latter day Beach Boys? Replace beach with King's Road, London. Keep drugs intact, replacing psychedelics with heroin. Substitute musical genius, Brian Wilson, with genius of cool, Malcolm McLaren. Retain angst, add violence on stage, off stage, in front of the stage, and in the street. Instead of the astounding album (Pet Sounds) that still sounds as fresh as tomorrow insert Never Mind the Bollocks: Here Comes the Sex Pistols. Exchange slow self-destruction via suicide, drug abuse, and being embraced as America's Rock Band for rapid self destruction by suicide, murder, and heroin--though the order is not quite clear.

Perhaps the Sex Pistols are the Beach Boys--kinda. Or perhaps the Sex Pistols are The Monkees in a very very bad mood? And now that I think of it, Justin Bieber looks, and acts, more like Johnny Rotten every day.

I wish I could claim these insights for myself---actually I will claim Justin Bieber--but they come from the brainy punk mind of Rebekah Buchanan, who knows her way around a mosh pit and the Pop Cult Con. She will be coming to Malpass Library's Room 180 at Noon on September 30 to talk about Never Mind the Bollocks, the coming and going of the Sex Pistols, of boy bands, girl bands, and an ongoing project, "The Decline of the West," which Dr. Buchanan has been avidly participating in since before her first pair of Doc Martens.

For more information, contact Rebekah Buchanan at (309) 298-1216 or RJ-Buchanan@wiu.edu.