Pocket Pistols 2015

For a band that rescued rock & roll from the Uriah Heeps of the world in the late '70s, and made a mark on everything that followed, the Sex Pistols left behind precious little in terms of their recorded legacy. Their only official release being the earth-shattering NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, enthusiasts have to turn to collections of outtakes and live material to further satisfy their Pistols jones. This brings us to the mysterious NO FUTURE U.K. With virtually nothing to go on in terms of liner notes or credits, it's hard to determine exactly where these alternate version of well-known Pistols songs like "Pretty Vacant" and "Liar" are from. Are they rehearsal recordings? Demos? Outtakes? We may never know for sure, but one thing is for certain, they are relatively well-recorded, full of patented Pistols energy, and among the band's finer performances, all of which puts NO FUTURE towards the front of the posthumous Pistols pack.

In the fall of 1977, the Sex Pistols were the most infamous rock band in the U.K., beloved by rock & roll upstarts for their stripped-down, angry sound and outlaw attitude, while they were also hated by people who disliked their open disrespect for authority, hygiene, the Royal Family, and the accepted rules of British show business. The Sex Pistols were soon to release their wildly anticipated first album, Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols, when a mysterious bootleg, Spunk, appeared in hipper record shops. As it happened, Spunk collected the original demo recordings of the Sex Pistols' best-known songs, as recorded by their soundman Dave Goodman and featuring original bassist Glen Matlock before he was sacked in favor of Sid Vicious…

When first approaching The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, it's best not to think of it as a Sex Pistols album; rather, keep in mind that it's the soundtrack to a movie that was mostly about Malcolm McLaren and only tangentially concerned the great band he managed. Only eight of the twenty-four songs on The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle feature the same band as on Never Mind the Bollocks, and most of those capture them stomping through covers in the studio, sometimes to impressive effect (Johnny Rotten sounds positively feral on the Who's "Substitute" and the whole band tears into "(I'm Not Your) Stepping Stone" with malicious glee) and sometimes not (Rotten reveals he doesn't know the words to either Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" or Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner," and the band's familiarity isn't much greater).

This is the definitive collection of the Pretenders' recordings issued under the Warners banner from 1979 to 1999 in unique outer slipcase. This 22-disc box set (14 x CD, 8 x DVD) brings together all eight deluxe digipak reissues (six 2 CD + DVD sets and two CD + DVD sets) of Pretenders (1980), Pretenders II (1981), Learning To Crawl (1984), Get Close (1986), Packed! (1990), Last Of The Independents (1994), The Isle Of View (1995), and Viva El Amor! (1999).

C'est l'un des très rares livres écrits au moment même où les Sex Pistols expirent. Sobrement baptisé Les Sex Pistols (aux précieuses éditions Speed 17, menées par Manoeuvre sous la houlette de Dionnet et Druillet entre autres), il sort en France en avril 1978, quand le mouvement punk anglais est en pleine émergence, Clash, Buzzcoks, Stranglers, tandis que le groupe de Johnny Rotten a donné son dernier concert le 14 janvier de cette année-là. …