Damage Case #2: Never Mind the Bollucks, Here's The Sex Pistols

Let's talk about the Sex Pistols for a moment, shall we?

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols is, in my opinion, the single best example of punk rock ever recorded.   Sure, there are plenty of faults with the band, their formation, talent, originality, convictions and image.   They were a punk-themed boy band manufactured by a guy who had previously managed the New York Dolls and failed to coax Cock Sparrer into the role he wanted.  I don't think any of that is up for debate at this point.

The thing is, once you get past all the hype and Sid & Nancy bullshit, you have this timeless, genuinely awesome album.   It's abrasive, brash, offensive, ballsy and angry.  It delves into subject matter like abortion and the holocaust that are still taboo nearly 40 years later.  In fact, it's such a solid album that it's kind of the punk equivalent of Dick & Jane.  It's often the first punk album people explore and, frequently, that leads to people who have been fans of the genre for a while to start taking it for granted.   I was totally guilty of that.

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My first encounter with the Sex Pistols came one summer night when I was ten years old.   My older sister, Kate, and her pen pal from Bangor were watching Sid & Nancy in the living room, and invited me to watch it with them.  I was still very sheltered and the drug use in the movie made me really uncomfortable.   I eventually walked out, not quite sure why anyone would want to watch people shoot up.

A few months later, however, I saw Return of the Living Dead at a Halloween party at my family's very liberal church, and decided that I wanted to be a punk after all.   I asked Kate if she had any of the music from the ROTLD soundtrack.  She didn't, but she gave me a tape with the Great Rock N Roll Swindle on one side and Ministry's "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste" on the other.

I never made it past the weird Malcolm McLaren opening on Swindle, and just skipped over to the Ministry side because it was the loudest, hardest and fastest thing I had ever heard.   Dumb decision, maybe.  Whatever.  I later played the Ministry side during my 6th Grade Christmas party after my teacher proclaimed her hatred for the New Kids on the Block Christmas album and asked if anyone else had music.  I think that makes my misstep forgivable.

Over the next few years, I'd hear the "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen" pretty frequently on mix tapes, WRBC's Hardcore Happy Hour or while hanging out with my sister and her friends, but they weren't really that interesting to me.

Then I turned fifteen.

Fifteen was an ugly year for me.  The summer of my fifteenth birthday opened with me finding my mother convulsing in a pool of blood after she had a seizure and split her head open.   Meanwhile, my father's PTSD stemming from Vietnam had gotten to the point that he had to spend most of the Summer at the Togus VA hospital.    No one really happened to notice that I was pretty severely traumatized by the whole experience because my family was just struggling to get by. 

On top of all that wonderfulness, my parents had enrolled me at a private school that had claimed to be better equipped to handle my attention deficit disorder than Lewiston High School.   So on top of suffering from severe insomnia, depression and a complete lack of self-worth, I was suddenly having to adjust to a new school that, among other things, was full of wealthy, waspy pricks.

Suddenly, the Sex Pistols music made a lot of sense to me.   Beyond everything else, they were a symbol that I could hide behind when I wanted the entire world to just fuck off and leave me alone.  But they also had some pretty great songs.   I could relate to "No Feelings" and "Pretty Vacant", that desire to kick people in the head, mocking people's joy, ridiculing how hollow the beautiful, happy people around me seemed.

One of the worst parts about the school was that the bus ride in and out took nearly an hour.  I'd have to get up at five and wouldn't get home until nearly six thirty most days.  I spent the bulk of those rides slumped up against a window near the back of the bus, drowning out the world with my walkman.  "Never Mind the Bollucks" was one of my albums of choice for those rides.

...

Eventually, I stopped listening to them.   Maybe I burned out on them, or maybe I just scratched the CD too much for it to play in my stereo.   Whatever the reason, I don't remember listening to them very often between the ages of seventeen and thirty-two. 

One day, while cleaning out my apartment during my move from 77 to 48 Congress Street, I was listening to the Casualties station on Pandora, when "No Feelings" came on.   Suddenly I was hearing the song with an adult set of years that had been actively listening to and learning about music for a good fifteen years, dissecting and interpreting its meaning and appreciating how influential it had been for so many bands I'd fallen in love with since.  It was like a revelation.  I dug out my damaged copy of "Never Mind the Bollucks" and attempted to burn it onto my computer.  I managed to copy most of the songs, and downloaded the remainder.   It held up.  Hell, I liked it better.  It's been on a pretty steady rotation ever since.