This rhetorical question fomented in San Francisco by Sex Pistols front-man Johnny Rotten at the end of the Sex Pistols American tour in 1978 has always been a mystery to me like Fermat's Enigma was to math geeks.
This question he addressed the audience, then threw the microphone down with a thud, exited the stage, and the band. No band after has come remotely close to capturing such menace in two-minute songs.
The tour itself was an exercise in agitation as the four British punks played the Deep South. When asked why they didn't play New York Johnny Rotten replied it would have been too easy, it would have been like preaching to the converted. Playing behind chicken wire, audiences threatened the band and threw bottles intending harm. At one show a bloodied Sid Vicious cracked his base on someone's head. This was hatred as an emulsifier, clashing British youth culture and the American South for a brief period of time. But why?
Music, since the 1960s and 70s, was seen as a change agent. Along with drugs it would help change society in some incomprehensible way. Punk itself was a reaction to the bloated prog-rock of the 70s that reigned at the time like some crowned prince, itself a child of the 60s. Johnny Rotten just called bullshit on the whole notion of peace & love, and the power of music to change society. Maybe he knew better cause he fucking tried.
No comments:
Post a Comment