Pistols At Winterland

This has obviously been knocking around YouTube for some time, but here's a single playlist containing the Sex Pistols' complete, notorious last concert in San Francisco at Winterland (presumably taken from the hard-to-find bootleg DVD), notable not only for the on-stage terminal implosion of the band, but Rotten's palpable sense of disgust and despair throughout. Oh, and the fact that they've actually left Sid's bass plugged in (and far too loudly at first). It's all grim, essential viewing, but Belsen, Problems and No Fun are particularly interesting/appalling. Below, the final moments.

Random YouTube Friday: The Hotrats - EMI (Unlimited Edition)

Supergrass side project/cover band on Craig Ferguson performing the Pistols' EMI with Jonesy himself on guitar. That solo starting at 1'50 is the greatest guitar solo ever performed. Fact.

Hotrats album Turn Ons is out now and includes covers including Roxy Music ("Love Is The Drug"), The Cure ("Lovecats") and Squeeze ("Up The Junction"). Oh, and a surreal take on the Beasties' "Fight For Your Right". Amie Street's got it for just under $7 at the time of posting.

"Sex Pistols" - Silly Thing

Hadn't got a clue the "Pistols" ever made a video for the post Rotten "Silly Thing", but here 'tis. An examination of Jonesy's footballer perm and Cook's truly offensive mullet suggests filming must have been right around the time of Rock'n'Roll Swindle and the film's release in late '78/early '79. This is the arguably superior 7" single version, louder than the album version, with altered lyrics and Jones singing instead of Cook. Originally written as "Silly Cunt", either about Vicious or Rotten, depending on who's telling the story.

Rotten

Watched the new Pistols DVD commemorating their 30th anniversary tour at the weekend. Rotten cuts a somewhat pathetic figure these days, even outside the context of butter adverts and reality TV - a fat, self-satisfied, drunken, gurning Albert Steptoe ranting about Arsenal in place of the sharp-eyed, feral fury and wit of the Richard III '76 version. The band is tight, particularly the shirt stretched across Steve Jones who has clearly eaten the pies, all of the pies, and the whole gig's got a fun, end-of-the-pier feel to it, but the strutting oaf at the front of the stage somehow manages to look less punk than Glen Matlock's floppy fringe. 

You can't stay 18 and pissed off forever, and no-one wants Lydon to pull a fucking Alice Cooper and turn into a golfing Tory, but there's a pitifully self-aware quality to the costume these days, a self-conscious "Johnny Rotten" act that I never noticed in either interviews or performance during PiL's 80s heyday, and a dumbed-down tone to the proceedings - lad culture as the new counter-culture. Lydon's smarter than this, and he used to be more than willing to show it.

Fuck it - here's the Pistols doing Problems live at Dallas's Longhorn Ballroom in '78.