Sex pistols vs stooges

[Leo]

don't evaluate the stooges based solely on the albums, read "i need more" to understand their real-life insane lifestyle in general. and "funhouse" is one of my favorite albums ever, a bunch of burnouts who couldn't really play their instruments very well somehow signed to a major label and thrust into a studio. of course, because they're true loser fuck ups, they blow the chance to make a "successful" album by taking copious amounts of acid, speed and heroin and come up with something cheap and nasty sounding.

 

[martin]

Is it this one?

<iframe src="https://embed.spotify.com/?uri=spotify:album:2LUZ2NS0cwC5BfzEN6ESSP" width="300" height="380" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>

Hard to judge this cos the sound quality is awful, but does Rotten/Lydon really sound like a typical bland pub rock singer on here? I don't think the band were ever that special or different musically, it was Rotten who made the difference with his weird voice and appearance. The attitude in a performance can't be captured on tape, necessarily.

Also it's the context we can't necessarily empathise with, isn't it? In the same way impressionism paintings which look like tea-towel fodder these days were once considered extremely shocking and even offensive.

Can't listen now, at work - it's been booted a lot but I picked up a CD version years ago, purely because of the gig date - think it was called 'Aggression Through Repression'.

Maybe Rotten doesn't sound like a typical pub singer, but the arrangements are HORRIBLE - Glen Matlock harmonising all over the choruses, uggh...

Sure, if you'd never seen anyone looking like that before, or heard a singer tell people to fuck off, or if the crowd were hostile /unique, the attitude would have been more important than the music. I've just always been surprised that they sounded so stodgy on that recording, like the Kursal Flyers or something.

 

[craner]

I remember Captain Sensible on an Arena punk documentary in the mid-90s describing his disappointment upon hearing Anarchy in the UK: "it was like a slow pub rock durge with Albert Steptoe ranting on top". That made sense, hit home.

Never really liked the Pistols record or punk, but I appreciated their Year Zero trappings and attempted divorce from rock tradition.

When I first heard Raw Power, it sounded even worse than the Pistols, a muddy, undynamic, trad rock splurge.

Once I heard PiL's debut single, I realised that you may not have to care about either, it had so much more power and dynamism, even if it was talking about itself.