john lydon

In one way, every box here rates five bottles. They’re essential; if not for the music, then the history and their place in it. In another … every box rates between four and five bottles.  Why?

Well, all but two of the PiL albums represented here were patchy. One of those unpleasant truths we must all know (another is the knowledge that some our (many) rock ’n’ roll heroes have been anything but loveable rascals, but thugs of considerable degree who richly deserve four walls and a small barred door with the occasional beating…)

Pistol 
Directed by Danny Boyle (DisneyPlus)

Okay, I’ll be first to admit that the trailer looked like a cold turd in a lunch box.  I did, however, persevere and found that I enjoyed this six-episode series enormously. 

Not that everyone will.  Fans of a perfectly delivered chronology are going to be nit picking every scene and episode like bickering zealots at a secular conflict.  Anyone who watched the CBGB movie and complained about how such and such wasn’t in the audience the night so and so did this or that is going to be in for a particularly unpleasant viewing experience.  You know who you are. 

Here are two books from people whose names you may know that are essential purchases.  

This is from “Lonely Boy”:

… all bands are basically the fucking same. The reason I still - to this day - love watching documentaries about bands like the Eagles … is that I can totally relate to them. The personalities involved and the reasons for the tensions between them never seem to change.

The singer - because the job requires the kind of person who wants to be in the front going ‘look at me, look at me’ - will almost always be very insecure, and usually a bit of a cunt. Then there’s the guitarist, who wants to get all the pussy, and there’s always at least one weird introvert…

Lead Guitarist Syndrome and Lead Singer Syndrome are terms you don’t see in the Macquarie, or the OED. But they exist, in fact if not in print.