Subversive Punk Icon Malcolm McLaren Dead At 64.
He was known as the British Andy Warhol, the P.T. Barnum of punk and Dick Clark from hell. Malcolm McLaren died Thursday in a Swiss sanitarium after a long struggle with cancer. He was 64.
The Sex Pistols.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeP220xx7Bs[/youtube]
From Greatest Rock and Roll Swindler to Buffalo Gals…he was an interesting guy for sure. Some of these posts are starting to make me feel old…
“Let’s just say that if Malcolm breathes, it’s too much for me to stomach.”
— Johnny Rotten
…i’m sure they saved a special place in hell for ya malcolm but this world would a’ been a poorer place without ya stopping by…
…the pistols came along & sparked a shot in the arm of the music biz that still lives to this day…’god save the queen’…that ol’ queen mclaren just passed away !!!…
look how fucking young sid looks in that video. i mean, shit. we AREEEEE old!!! jesus fuck.
Sid was a bozo. Glen Matlock was the talented one. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Matlock.
sid was a junkie! who stabbed his girlfriend and then went to jail, got out on an or and then od’ed. i was obsessed with their story when i was a kid.
if you dig Sex Pistols, you must become familiar with X-Ray Spex. Similar style, London 1977, but they do it better and Polly Styrene had an AMAZING voice. I have their _Germ_Free_Adolescents_ on an unlabeled, colored vinyl split 7″ 33 rpm, how sick is that??
“Identity” live: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGcWtPOL6aQ
Official version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue5jyj_nosc&NR=1
My favorite, “Let’s Submerge:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzWiEfBgoyw
I should mention “Never Mind The Bullocks” is one of my all time favorite albums.
… felt so sad today …
“Like boats in a row
The one after the other
Our years are going
Today like yesterday
Among the treacherous shoals
We need to tack
On the line of the abyss
Shall we follow the ebb
Pushed by the wind
Towards a future
Moving like the horizon
And dead as soon as born …”
(Loeiz HERRIEU – Britain poet – 1879-1953)
I remember somewhat of a sense of loss, futility, and finality when Wendy O Williams committed suicide in 1998. Not that I was obsessed with the plasmatics or wendy herself, but hell, the poster of her semi-nude with a shotgun was an icon of my puberty. I saw the band twice live.
I never saw the sex pistols, but I have 4 sex pistol CDs – one live, the only real release ‘nevermind…..’, and two reissues that have bizarre studio tracks and covers. One CD ‘The Great Rock And Roll Swindle’ has a late-night jams session of Johnny B. Goode/Road Runner (during which sid stops singing to first complain that he forgot the words to johhny b goode, then suggest they play road runner, forgets _those_ words, then exclaims “oh this songs fucking awful”.) It also has a disco medley of anarchy in the UK/pretty vacant/god save the queen by some schmaltzy group called Black Arabs, an accordion version of Anarchy sung in french, and Sids fantastic rendition of sinatras My Way.
The simpsons have been on the air for over 20 years, and every member of every band I listened to in high school is either dead or qualifies for AARP. They’re all going to die, it’s not a matter of if, but when. I’m getting old, and I’m gonna die some day, but so are you. So is everyone else. I’ve chosen to celebrate those that have passed and the promise of those yet to come. I’ll drink to that tonight.
@mikey – that chick reminds me of the lead singer of bikini kill. but that was mid-90’s.
@zen – your taste in music never surprises me.