Sex Pistols
Jubilee

THE REVIEW

EX PISTOLS IN PUNKLAND.

By now it's a ritual: once a month, this dumbass of my nephew, who’s already this tall, wants me to take him to PunkDonalds and get stuffed with CrispyMacDamned, ChipStooges, MacBuzzocks, and various N.Y.Dolls-shakes.
How sweet, I think to myself: his first addictions, sich!

I park the motorcycle between a rancid-colored Smart Clash and an SH Ramone 250 with pins stuck in the windshield and the rear box with the jelly-frozen crest effect.
The notes of a dirty Punk very fuck-offy tune (Yes... it's actually "Anarchy In The UK" remixed by Linus!) are coming out from the place.
The guy at the counter has a torn t-shirt with bloody writings that I suppose come from the chickens slaughtered back in the kitchen.
My nephew yells at the counter, "Hey dickhead, get me a Happy Meal with Prozac but without ketchup because yours makes me puke?"
The tall guy at the counter shows him the middle finger and goes off to prepare the bountiful meal with a clumsy, pondering step.

I peek around.

In a corner, two elderly proto-punks of the first wave, under the guise of having a classic hamburger, are reading Il Foglio di Ferrara at 5 cm away; one has crutches leaning on the table next to him, and the other is in a life-long plaster cast, the result of too much moshing in '77.

With the Happy Meal this week they give you this amusing CD titled "Jubilee" from these pseudo-Sex Pistols, reunited once again with some another bullshit excuse. Really them: the most famous gang of crap-disturbers who more or less unconsciously launched the "punk movement" worldwide, gathered again for Money, Fame, and Commemorations.
Surprise, surprise, the same things that they were more or less attacking thirty years ago (as someone sang a few years ago, perhaps in San Remo).

A CD with yet another compilation (in fact, it seems the band has published only one "real" album, the famous "Never Mind the Bollocks" from '77) released on the occasion of the Queen's Jubilee (which, said like this, it's unclear if it's an actual provocation or if they're totally cashing in on it, but oh well, deal with it: this confusion will accompany us to the grave!).

A CD virtually useless for those who know the band's work, except for some video contributions with the original clips (?!) of "God Save the Queen," "Anarchy in the USA," "Pretty Vacant," and a live piece from the "Filthy Lucre Tour" of 1996. A CD blatantly "fake" born only to cash in (as Rotten has recently declared with delight, but you know: supporters will defend it as yet another provocation desired by the Pistol boys... oh, blessed idolatry!).
A CD perhaps good for the young generations who get off listening to those three idiots from Green Day or mosh gleefully to Avril Lavigne's crap, confusing punk with the knock-off of some Ferrero snack cake and living a "rebellion" that in fact NO LONGER EXISTS except for the sanitised, tamed, and rehashed version on glossy paper by the likes of "Xelle" from Repubblica or those bullshit MTV broadcasts that are getting more and more ridiculous, cool, and trendy, hosted by idiot VJs who always look "high" by cokeheads with a one-way ticket. Stuff that's domesticated and harmless, which they will eventually sell as an attachment to Sorrisi e Canzoni TV or as a Happy-Meal surprise in Mac Donalds (precisely).

That little bastard of my nephew, in a punkish rapture, starts moshing around the place and spills the Vicious-Coke on a tattooed anorexic 50-year-old, who in response spits half a liter of putrid magma on him.
"Awesome these, huh? Who the hell are these, huh? Hey uncle... these guys really kick ass, huh? Uncle Punny, are you listening to me?"
I turn the CD cover over in my hands and can't tell how much of it is the work of the Pistol gang and how much of it is the marketing department of their record company. The same damn Big Commercial Operation? The "Great Rock'n'roll Swindle"? Yes or no? YEAH!!

I sit down for a moment.
My head spins wildly.
A little kid next to me is staring at me with his big eyes from his stroller, intent on licking a VitaminPLUS ACE marijuana stick.

"So?" says the old punk on the bench.
"Problems?" echoes the other one with rotten teeth from too much crack in his youth.
"And you guys? All good?"
"All good: Never mind ‘these pricks'....eh eh eh!" and as he laughs, a dental cap falls into the leftover mayonnaise in the little 10-cent chrome tray.
 
Fleets of kids arrive with their pants sagging to their knees, underwear showing, mentadent thongs sticking out from tender buttocks with piercings stabbing the puncturable. It seems that the junkie look comes standard even in the base model.
I watch my brother’s son getting into a fight with two pissed women who are mad about being pushed; one holds him down and the other kicks him without holding back. The rest of the group joins in.
Chairs fly, splashes of Velvet-Coke all around, flags burst, balloons wave, people scream, swear, kick.
And the wreck is sweet in this sea.
In fact, I watch and don't bat an eye.
All this tires me.
All this drains me.

I pretend not to see and look again at this CD of these remnants from the last century, then think of the "real" Sex Pistols, the ones seen on DVD in "The Filth and the Fury," the Julien Temple documentary film, and think of all the ruckus they caused for a couple of years, the loads of crap they were given everywhere, the little money they made, and the swindles they got (and gave) around. And then look again at this conceptually old and trite cover using the "usual" punk postcard iconography (torn edges, seemingly random letters, irreverent photo towards the System, in short... a real punk-style cheat sheet: MORE "CONSERVATIVE" THAN THIS YOU DIE!!!).

On one side I watch my nephew getting beaten up and on the other I’m left alone with this fucking CD in my hands as if there were an inexplicable thin red line between these two gravitational poles tearing me inside.

I stand still and immobile, incapable of the slightest reaction.
And I look at the cover.
And I look at the beatings given to the little one.
And it’s like seeing everything go in "slow motion."
The kid calls me, asks for help, reaches a hand toward me, but his voice is distorted, torn, the echo of a ghost and I’m strongly torn between the typical reaction of an injured relative and complete apathy.

"Fuck off, dumbass," a new Joe Strummer tells me, throwing the rest of my nephew at my feet "and get the hell out of here, you trash, nothing but trash."
I pull out the "sexy pistols" CD and flick it through my fingers like an old magician. Just one quicker move than usual and the 15-year-old's jugular is split in two like a perfect surgical incision, spraying the crowd with acidic blood already putrefying at the source. The boy falls to the ground with half a CD stuck in his throat while all around chaos erupts.
I grab the little shit by the neck like a cat and take him out of the place as the dance of ambulances, police, cops, dwarfs, and dancers begins.
The only ones missing are Fellini and Zampanò.

I speed at 160 on the highway with the load of stupidity and innocence lying behind in a state of almost enviable semi-consciousness.
"Oh... my god uncle, what the ... hell happened..."
"They beat you to a pulp and I didn’t do shit to defend you."

Silence.

"Explain this to me?"
"No."

Silence.

"Uncle"
"Yes"
"Everything hurts but... I wanted to tell you..."
"Tell me"
"Well... for a few minutes... but just for a little... well... I felt like I was living something strong, unique and, how to say, mind-blowing... I was scared but I also felt the adrenaline charging me a thousand and taking over me... if I think about it I still get chills... what the hell was it? Eh uncle?"

Silence.

I hold back a slight bitter smile between my teeth.

Some things you either live or explain.

Certainly not commemorate.