The Young Punk Rockers The Linda Lindas Play a Tiny Desk Concert Gig (at the Public Library)

The last we checked in with teenage girl pow­er-punk band The Lin­da Lin­das, they were tear­ing up the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library (Cypress Park branch) with their lock­down-hit “Racist, Sex­ist Boy.” After eleven-year-old drum­mer Mila de Garza recount­ed the xeno­pho­bic encounter that led to the song, the band unleashed some true noisy angst befit­ting a group twice their age. It was the song of rage we need­ed at the time, the clip went viral, and they soon got a record deal. Along the way, they’ve appeared in Amy Poehler’s doc­u­men­tary, con­tributed to a track by Best Coast, opened for Biki­ni Kill, played Jim­my Kim­mel Live, and received acco­lades from Thurston Moore and Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine.

Just over a year lat­er, and The Lin­da Lin­das are back in the library as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk con­cert series. Usu­al­ly Tiny Desk gigs fea­tures an artist play­ing in the very cramped offices of the radio sta­tion, but as things are still not 100% safe, The Lin­da Lin­das opt­ed for the place they know well, this time play­ing at the Los Ange­les Cen­tral Library branch.

This band is no one-off. The de Garza sis­ters, along with their cousin Eloise Wong and friend Bela Salazar, formed in 2018 and have been play­ing ever since. Com­pare the step up in con­fi­dence and band inter­play on this new­er ver­sion of “Racist, Sex­ist Boy,” with which they close the set.

Before that The Lin­da Lin­das per­form songs from their new album Grow­ing Up, includ­ing the pop­py Span­ish bal­lad “Cuán­tas Veces”, the pop-punk “Talk­ing to Myself,” and the title track. The band’s lyrics are hon­est, absent pre­ten­sion, and while many of the con­cerns are uni­ver­sal, the album is def­i­nite­ly born out of COVID-era anx­i­ety. If you’re won­der­ing how these years are affect­ing those com­ing of age at this time, the album is essen­tial.

And, hey kids, there’s still avail­able (not on the live playlist but as a sin­gle on band­camp) “Nino,” a har­mo­ny-filled ode to their pet cat.

By the way, there aren’t many oth­er rock bands play­ing in libraries, but we did find one while search­ing the inter­tubes: it’s The Clash’s Mick Jones play­ing a solo elec­tric set of his hits. It’s just one more reminder to sup­port your local library—you nev­er know who might turn up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Riot Grrrl Move­ment Cre­at­ed a Rev­o­lu­tion in Rock & Punk

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Lou Reed Album With Demos of Velvet Underground Classics Getting Released: Hear an Early Version of “I’m Waiting for the Man”

In 1965, Lou Reed was a 23-year-old grad­u­ate stalled in a music and art career he wasn’t sure would take off. A few years ear­li­er a doo-wop sin­gle record­ed with high school friends had been released to no avail. More recent­ly, a par­o­dy of dance-craze sin­gles “Do the Ostrich”, cre­at­ed by Reed and per­formed by a pick-up band of musi­cians, had also made its way onto wax and then right out of people’s mem­o­ries. How­ev­er, John Cale was in that pick-up band, and soon the two were fast friends. It was Cale who helped record Reed’s demo tape of songs that year. And it was Reed who took the tape and mailed it back to him­self as a “poor man’s copy­right.”

That demo tape has now been unsealed and these nev­er-before heard record­ings are head­ing to LP and CD and stream­ing. Above you can hear a very ear­ly ver­sion of “I’m Wait­ing for the Man,” that would get rad­i­cal­ly reworked for the Vel­vet Underground’s debut album.

Over rudi­men­ta­ry gui­tar pluck­ing, Reed’s demo is slow­er, has har­monies, and a more decid­ed folk bent. Reed acts out the var­i­ous parts, includ­ing the “Par­don me sir, it’s the fur­thest from my mind” line in a faux-Brit accent. There’s even a Dylan-esque har­mon­i­ca solo.

The demo tape con­tains oth­er future Vel­vet Under­ground clas­sics like “Hero­in” and “Pale Blue Eyes,” but also songs that would turn up on Berlin (“Men of Good For­tune”) and a favorite cov­er “Wrap Your Trou­bles in Dreams” that would pop up in Vel­vets sets. But there’s also songs that were nev­er released in any for­mat: “Stock­pile,” “Buzz Buzz Buzz,” and “But­ter­cup Song.”

Reed had been influ­enced by poet Del­more Schwartz, who he’d stud­ied under at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty. Schwartz had instilled in Reed the idea that the sim­plest words could have the max­i­mum effect in the right hands. Reed’s style of street doc­u­men­tary and rep­e­ti­tion came out of his rela­tion­ship with Schwartz, whom Reed paid trib­ute to on the first Vel­vets album with “Euro­pean Son.”

The album, all nice­ly remas­tered, will be avail­able in the usu­al for­mats on August 26, includ­ing a bonus ep of ear­li­er demos, includ­ing 1963 home record­ings and a 1958 rehearsal. For now enjoy this glimpse into the mind of an artist about to find his place in the world, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

Watch The Vel­vet Under­ground Per­form in Rare Col­or Footage: Scenes from a Viet­nam War Protest Con­cert (1969)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

How Drum­mer Moe Tuck­er Defined the Sound of the Vel­vet Under­ground

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Rapper Post Malone Performs a 15-Song Set of Nirvana Songs, Paying Tribute to Kurt Cobain

Nir­vana’s cul­tur­al stay­ing pow­er is a tes­ta­ment to the cross-gen­er­a­tional mag­ic that hap­pened when Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselić, and Dave Grohl played togeth­er for only a hand­ful of years in the 90s. Their influ­ence goes far deep­er than 90s nos­tal­gia for a grunge trend or the celebri­ty sta­tus of the late Cobain. Now almost 30 years after the front­man’s 1994 sui­cide, we see that influ­ence on a gen­er­a­tion born too late to see him live — one influ­enced more by hip hop than gui­tar rock and far less inter­est­ed in chal­leng­ing the cap­i­tal­ist sta­tus quo.

For artists like rap­per Post Mal­one, born July 4, 1995, Cobain is a major song­writ­ing influ­ence, even if Post Mal­one’s music sounds lit­tle like Nir­vana. “I loved Kurt so much,” says Mal­one, “and he’s been such an inspi­ra­tion to me, musi­cal­ly.” To prove his love, he’s tat­tooed Cobain on “two dif­fer­ent parts of his body,”  Shel­don Pearce writes at The New York­er, though Cobain might not have “rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed the love — the rapper’s stint shilling for Bud Light prob­a­bly wouldn’t fly, and Cobain once said white artists should leave rap to Black artists because ‘the white man ripped off the Black man long enough.’ ”

But that’s the thing about idols: once they’re gone, they no longer get a say in who wor­ships them and how. Last year, Post deliv­ered a Nir­vana trib­ute to ben­e­fit the UN’s COVID-19 Sol­i­dar­i­ty Response Fund for the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. He did so respect­ful­ly. Backed by Travis Bark­er on drums, Bri­an Lee on bass, and Nic Mack on gui­tar, he hon­ored Cobain by don­ning a flower print dress, and by ask­ing his daugh­ter, Fran­cis Bean Cobain, for per­mis­sion to do the 15-song set. “I could nev­er want to offend any­body,” he told Howard Stern, “by try­ing to show sup­port, so I just want­ed to make sure that every­thing was okay — and it was okay, and we raised mon­ey for a good cause, and we got to play some of the most f*cking epic songs ever.”

Court­ney Love expressed sup­port, writ­ing, “Goose­bumps… Go have a mar­gari­ta Post Mal­one. Noth­ing but love from here.” Grohl and Novoselić also gave Mal­one their full approval. The for­mer Nir­vana bassist wrote that he was “hold­ing emo­tions back the whole show.” In a lat­er inter­view, Grohl com­ment­ed, “Even the die-hard Nir­vana peo­ple that I know were like, ‘dude, he’s kind of killing it right now.’ ” And they were right. Above, see the one-off band play “Fran­cis Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seat­tle,” “Come As You Are,” “About a Girl,” “Heart-Shaped Box,” and more clas­sic Nir­vana songs. The livestream raised $500,000 (includ­ing match­ing funds from Google) to help fight COVID-19 around the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Nir­vana Per­form as an Open­ing Band, Two Years Before Their Break­out Album Nev­er­mind (1989)

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Record­ing Secrets of Nirvana’s Nev­er­mind Revealed by Pro­duc­er Butch Vig

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

What Is the House of the Rising Sun?: An Introduction to the Origins of the Classic Song

Every­one knows the song, a warn­ing from a man or woman return­ing to the place that will destroy them. Yet they can­not turn back. The tragedy of “House of the Ris­ing Sun” lies in its inevitabil­i­ty. “The nar­ra­tor seems to have lost his free will,” writes Jim Beviglia, caught, per­haps, in the grip of an unbeat­able addic­tion. As soon as we hear those first few notes, we know the sto­ry will end in ruin. But what kind of ruin takes place there? Is the House of the Ris­ing Sun a broth­el or a gam­bling den, or both? Was it a real place in New Orleans? Maybe a pub in Eng­land? Or a place in the anony­mous songwriter’s imag­i­na­tion?

Eric Bur­don and the Ani­mals, who pop­u­lar­ized the song world­wide when they record­ed and released it in 1964, did­n’t know. Even Alan Lomax could­n’t suss out the song’s ori­gin, though he tried, and sus­pect­ed it may have orig­i­nat­ed with an Eng­lish farm work­er named Har­ry Cox who sang a song called “She Was a Rum One” with a sim­i­lar open­ing line.

Dave Van Ronk and Bob Dylan played “House of the Ris­ing Sun” in cof­fee­hous­es. Bur­don him­self picked the song up from the Eng­lish folk scene, and the Ani­mals first cov­ered the slow, sin­is­ter tune when they opened for Chuck Berry because they knew they “could­n’t out­rock” the gui­tar great.

“House of the Ris­ing Sun” has been record­ed by Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie, Nina Simone, Dol­ly Par­ton, and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er artist con­cerned with Amer­i­can roots music. “It’s so deep in the heart of this cul­ture,” says New Orleans gui­tarist Reid Net­ter­ville, who finds that peo­ple from all over the world know the lyrics when he plays the song on street cor­ners. Since the Ani­mals’ record­ing, it has become “one of the sin­gle most per­formed songs in music his­to­ry,” notes Poly­phon­ic in the video at the top, “with ren­di­tions in every genre you can think of, from met­al to reg­gae to dis­co.”

Maybe audi­ences around the world con­nect with this tale of ruin and despair because its set­ting is so mys­te­ri­ous and yet so per­fect­ly placed. Bur­don him­self, who vis­its New Orleans often, gets invit­ed to all sorts of strange places in the city, he says, pur­port­ing to be the tit­u­lar “House”: “I’d go to wom­en’s pris­ons, coke deal­ers’ hous­es, insane asy­lums, mens’ pris­ons, pri­vate par­ties. They just want­ed to get me there.” The ambi­gu­i­ty between the real and the sym­bol­ic makes the song adapt­able to any num­ber of dif­fer­ent kinds of voic­es. “It’s been described as an abstract metaphor but also a ref­er­ence to real his­tor­i­cal places,” notes Poly­phon­ic, and it’s gone from the lament of a “ruined” female nar­ra­tor to a dis­solute male voice with only a change in pro­nouns.

While there may be a hand­ful of spu­ri­ous claimants to the title of real House of the Ris­ing Sun, the ori­gin of the song remains unknown. But its allure is not a mys­tery. The house is “a place of vice, a place of dark­ness and fore­bod­ing” — a place that we both can’t seem to resist and that we’d do best to stay clear of. We’ll always have curios­i­ty about the dark cor­ners of the world; the warn­ing of “House of the Ris­ing Sun” will always be per­ti­nent, and moth­ers, often trag­i­cal­ly to no avail, will always tell their chil­dren about it, wher­ev­er and what­ev­er that den of sin may be.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

Stream 35 Hours of Clas­sic Blues, Folk, & Blue­grass Record­ings from Smith­son­ian Folk­ways: 837 Tracks Fea­tur­ing Lead Bel­ly, Woody Guthrie & More

Aretha Franklin’s Pitch-Per­fect Per­for­mance in The Blues Broth­ers, the Film That Rein­vig­o­rat­ed Her Career (1980)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear a Neuroscientist-Curated 712-Track Playlist of Music that Causes Frisson, or Musical Chills

Image by Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

This Spo­ti­fy playlist (play below) con­tains music by Prince and the Grate­ful Dead, Weez­er and Bil­lie Hol­l­i­day, Kanye West and Johannes Brahms, Hans Zim­mer and David Bowie, Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart and Radio­head. Per­haps you’d expect such a range from a 712-track playlist that runs near­ly 66 hours. Yet what you’ll hear if you lis­ten to it isn’t just the col­lec­tion of a mod­ern-day “eclec­tic” music-lover, but a neu­ro­sci­en­tist-curat­ed arrange­ment of pieces that all cause us to expe­ri­ence the same sen­sa­tion: fris­son.

As usu­al, it takes a French word to evoke a con­di­tion or expe­ri­ence that oth­er terms sim­ply don’t encom­pass. Quot­ing one def­i­n­i­tion that calls fris­son “a sud­den feel­ing or sen­sa­tion of excite­ment, emo­tion or thrill,” Big Think’s Sam Gilbert also cites a recent study sug­gest­ing that “one can expe­ri­ence fris­son when star­ing at a bril­liant sun­set or a beau­ti­ful paint­ing; when real­iz­ing a deep insight or truth; when read­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant line of poet­ry; or when watch­ing the cli­max of a film.”

Gilbert notes that fris­son has also been described as a “pilo­erec­tion” or “skin orgasm,” about which researchers have not­ed sim­i­lar “bio­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal com­po­nents to sex­u­al orgasm.” As for what trig­gers it, he points to an argu­ment made by musi­col­o­gist David Huron: “If we ini­tial­ly feel bad, and then we feel good, the good feel­ing tends to be stronger than if the good expe­ri­ence occurred with­out the pre­ced­ing bad feel­ing.” When music induces two suf­fi­cient­ly dif­fer­ent kinds of emo­tions, each is height­ened by the con­trast between them.

Con­trast plays a part in artis­tic pow­er across media: not just music but film, lit­er­a­ture, dra­ma, paint­ing, and much else besides. But to achieve max­i­mum effect, the artist must make use of it in a way that, as Gilbert finds argued in a Fron­tiers in Psy­chol­o­gy arti­cle, caus­es “vio­lat­ed expec­ta­tion.” A fris­son-rich song primes us to expect one thing and then deliv­ers anoth­er, ide­al­ly in a way that pro­duces a strong emo­tion­al con­trast. No mat­ter your degree of musi­cophil­ia, some of the 712 tracks on this playlist will be new to you, allow­ing you to expe­ri­ence their ver­sion of this phe­nom­e­non for the first time. Oth­ers will be deeply famil­iar — yet some­how, after all these years or even decades of lis­ten­ing, still able to bring the fris­son.

via Big Think

Relat­ed con­tent:

Music That Helps You Write: A Free Spo­ti­fy Playlist of Your Selec­tions

How Good Are Your Head­phones? This 150-Song Playlist, Fea­tur­ing Steely Dan, Pink Floyd & More, Will Test Them Out

Eve­lyn Glen­nie (a Musi­cian Who Hap­pens to Be Deaf) Shows How We Can Lis­ten to Music with Our Entire Bod­ies

Why Do Sad Peo­ple Like to Lis­ten to Sad Music? Psy­chol­o­gists Answer the Ques­tion in Two Stud­ies

The Dis­tor­tion of Sound: A Short Film on How We’ve Cre­at­ed “a McDonald’s Gen­er­a­tion of Music Con­sumers”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

George Harrison Breaks Down Abbey Road Track-By-Track on the Day of Its Release (September 26, 1969)

By the time the Bea­t­les fin­ished The White Album, it seemed they might not ever make anoth­er record togeth­er. “The group was dis­in­te­grat­ing before my eyes,” record­ing engi­neer Geoff Emer­ick remem­bers. “It was ugly, like watch­ing a divorce between four peo­ple. After a while, I had to get out.” Emer­ick left, but thank­ful­ly the band hung in a while longer and man­aged to patch things up in the stu­dio to make their final record.

When they called Emer­ick to work on Abbey Road, they promised to get along for what would turn out to be their last album. (Emer­ick points out that on the cov­er they’re walk­ing away from Abbey Road stu­dios.) Not only did they man­age to avoid per­son­al con­flict, but more impor­tant­ly “the musi­cal telepa­thy between them was mind-bog­gling.” As if to seal the moment of accord for­ev­er, they end­ed the album, and the Bea­t­les, with a med­ley.

Abbey Road shows every mem­ber of the band ris­ing to their full song­writ­ing poten­tial, espe­cial­ly George Har­ri­son, who ful­ly came into his own with “Some­thing,” a song every­one knew would be “an instant clas­sic.” Har­ri­son became more con­fi­dent and talk­a­tive in inter­views, sit­ting down on the day of Abbey Road’s release with Aus­tralian music writer and John Lennon friend Ritchie York to offer his impres­sions of each track.

In the enhanced audio inter­view above, Har­ri­son briefly com­ments, track-by-track, on what he thinks of each song and the album as a whole. What is per­haps most inter­est­ing, giv­en Emer­ick­’s com­ment about “musi­cal telepa­thy,” is how the music seems to come from some­where else, a kind of intu­ition or chan­nel­ing that tran­scends the indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties of each Bea­t­le.

Take Ringo’s “Octopus’s Gar­den,” a song Har­ri­son loves. “On the sur­face,” he says, “it’s just — it’s like a daft kids’ song. But the lyrics are great, real­ly. For me, y’know, I find very deep mean­ing in the lyrics, which Ringo prob­a­bly does­n’t see, but all the things like… ‘We’ll be warm beneath the storm.’… Which is real­ly great, y’know, because it’s like this lev­el is a storm, and it’s always — y’know, if you get sort of deep in your con­scious­ness, it’s very peace­ful. So Ringo’s writ­ing his cos­mic songs with­out notic­ing!”

The genius of Lennon, says Har­ri­son, comes through par­tic­u­lar­ly in his tim­ing, “but when you ques­tion him as to what it is, he doesn’t know. He just does it nat­u­ral­ly.” As for the album as a whole, Har­ri­son says, “it all gels, it fits togeth­er and that, but… it’s a bit like it’s some­body else, y’know?.… It does­n’t feel as though it’s us.… It’s more like just some­body else.”

Har­ri­son does­n’t say much about the record­ing process, but he does talk about the song­writ­ing and influ­ences on the album. When he wrote “Some­thing,” he says, he imag­ined “some­body like Ray Charles doing it.” He calls Paul’s “Maxwell’s Sil­ver Ham­mer,” which Lennon hat­ed, an “instant sort of whis­tle-along tune” that peo­ple will either love or hate.

The con­ver­sa­tion even­tu­al­ly moves to Har­rison’s feel­ings about The White Album and oth­er top­ics. Where he real­ly opens up is near the end when the sub­ject of India comes up. We see him walk­ing away from Abbey Road on his own path. When York asks him about “the Indi­an scene,” Har­ri­son replies, “I dun­no, it’s like it’s kar­ma, my kar­ma.… I’m just pre­tend­ing to be, y’know, a Bea­t­le. Where­as there’s a greater job to be done.”

Hear the inter­view in full above and read a tran­script here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Har­ri­son “My Sweet Lord” Gets an Offi­cial Music Video, Fea­tur­ing Ringo Starr, Al Yankovic, Pat­ton Oswalt & Many Oth­ers

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

Watch Pre­cious­ly Rare Footage of Paul McCart­ney Record­ing “Black­bird” at Abbey Road Stu­dios (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ziggy Stardust Turns 50: Celebrate David Bowie’s Signature Character with a Newly Released Version of “Starman”

David Bowie’s fans have now been enjoy­ing the char­ac­ter of Zig­gy Star­dust for a full five decades. That’s hard­ly a bad run, giv­en that the open­ing track of The Rise and Fall of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars announces that the end of the world will come in just five years. Released on June 16th, 1972, that album gave the pub­lic its intro­duc­tion to the title char­ac­ter, an androg­y­nous rock star from a dis­tant star who one day arrives, mes­si­ah-like, on the dying Earth. But as the musi­cal sto­ry goes, the result­ing fame proves too much for him: the hap­less Zig­gy ends up in sham­bles, vic­tim­ized by Earth­ly desires in all their man­i­fes­ta­tions.

One could read into all this cer­tain aspi­ra­tions and fears on the part of Zig­gy Star­dust’s cre­ator-per­former, the young David Bowie. Broad crit­i­cal con­sen­sus holds that it was on the pre­vi­ous year’s Hunky Dory that Bowie first showed his true artis­tic poten­tial.

Though that album, his fourth, boast­ed sig­na­ture-songs-to-be like “Changes” and “Life on Mars?”, Bowie declared (no doubt to the label’s frus­tra­tion) that he would­n’t both­er pro­mot­ing it, since he was just about to change his image. This turned out to be a shrewd move, since his sub­se­quent trans­for­ma­tion into Zig­gy Star­dust launched him out of the realm of the respect­ed niche singer-song­writer and into the stratos­phere of the bona fide rock star.

Why did Zig­gy Star­dust dri­ve so many lis­ten­ers to near-mani­ac appre­ci­a­tion half a cen­tu­ry ago? In Bowie’s native Eng­land, many cite his July 1972 per­for­mance of “Star­man” the BBC’s Top of the Pops as the turn­ing point. Though only mild­ly psy­che­del­ic, the seg­ment cel­e­brat­ed the col­or­ful­ly askew glam­our of Bowie-as-Zig­gy and his band the Spi­ders from Mars just when it was des­per­ate­ly need­ed. As music crit­ic Simon Reynolds writes, “It is hard to recon­struct the drab­ness, the visu­al deple­tion of Britain in 1972, which fil­tered into the music papers to form the grey and grub­by back­drop to Bowie’s phys­i­cal and sar­to­r­i­al splen­dor.” Today you can hear a new­ly released 2022 mix of “Star­man” con­struct­ed from the tracks record­ed for Top of the Pops those 50 years ago.

Imag­ine the impact on a young Eng­lish pop-music fan in 1972 who hap­pened to be watch­ing on col­or (or rather, colour) tele­vi­sion, itself intro­duced only a few years ear­li­er. Though Bowie may have cho­sen just the right his­tor­i­cal moment to debut the first of his musi­cal per­son­ae, he did­n’t cre­ate Zig­gy Star­dust ex nihi­lo. Ele­ments of the char­ac­ter have clear prece­dents ear­li­er in Bowie’s career, not least in the pro­mo­tion­al film for 1968’s “Space Odd­i­ty,” the 2001-inspired sin­gle that first asso­ci­at­ed him with the realms beyond our plan­et. But Zig­gy was Bowie’s first gen­uine alter ego, a char­ac­ter per­fect­ly suit­ed to the era of “glam rock” who could con­ve­nient­ly be retired when that era passed. Glam rock may be long gone, but Zig­gy Star­dust still looks and sounds as if he’d only just land­ed on Earth.

Relat­ed con­tent:

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Became Zig­gy Star­dust 48 Years Ago This Week: Watch Orig­i­nal Footage

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

David Bowie Remem­bers His Zig­gy Star­dust Days in Ani­mat­ed Video

How David Bowie Deliv­ered His Two Most Famous Farewells: As Zig­gy Star­dust in 1973, and at the End of His Life in 2016

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Danny Boyle’s New Sex Pistols Series Tells the Story of Punk Rock in the UK

“I am cre­at­ing a rev­o­lu­tion here! I don’t want musi­cians, I want sabo­teurs, I want assas­sins, I want shock troops!” — Mal­colm McLaren in FX’s Pis­tol

“Peo­ple are try­ing to make it out as a bit of a joke, but it’s not a joke. It’s not polit­i­cal anar­chy either; it’s musi­cal anar­chy, which is a dif­fer­ent thing.” — John Lydon (John­ny Rot­ten), Inter­view with Mary Har­ron, 1976

“What do you think of Steve [Jones]?” says Mal­colm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sang­ster) to his part­ner Vivi­enne West­wood (Talu­lah Riley) before telling her his plans to man­age the future Sex Pis­tols in Oscar-win­ning direc­tor Dan­ny Boyle’s FX mini-series Pis­tol. “Very dam­aged,” says West­wood, “but that’s quite good.” This sits well with bud­ding impre­sario McLaren, who sees then-lead singer Jones as exact­ly the bomb he needs to throw at the estab­lish­ment. “He’s got noth­ing else to live for,” says McLaren cold­ly.

The kids in the UK punk scene McLaren and West­wood stage-man­aged may have been out­casts, but many also came from staid sub­ur­ban back­grounds, as did many of the punks in the down­town New York scene. When McLaren calls Jones (Toby Wal­lace) “the real deal,” he means the angry, drunk­en teenage face of a work­ing class with lit­tle left to lose. Boyle’s series sets Jones up as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what made British punk so angry and “edgy” (to use one of Jones’ favorite words). The very first scene recre­ates his famous theft of David Bowie’s instru­ments to start the band. Genius steal­ing from genius.

Jones not only steals famous musi­cians’ gear, but he joyrides in stolen cars, and tries to steal leather pants from SEX, McLaren and West­wood’s S&M‑themed bou­tique. There, future Pre­tenders front­woman Chrissie Hyn­de (Syd­ney Chan­dler) works the counter, and threat­ens to beat him with a crick­et bat. The focus on Jones almost exclu­sive­ly in the first episode sug­gests that he is the sin­gu­lar “Pis­tol” of the title.

Oth­er char­ac­ters show up even­tu­al­ly — front­man John­ny Rot­ten (Anson Boon) makes his appear­ance in the sec­ond episode (or “Track”) to bump Jones from vocals to gui­tar. The penul­ti­mate episode is titled “Nan­cy and Sid” in homage to Alex Cox’s cult biopic Sid and Nan­cy. But in the begin­ning, when the band was called “The Swankers,” it was all Steve Jones’ show, Boyle’s series sug­gests, from procur­ing the gear, to writ­ing the first songs, to land­ing McLaren as man­ag­er.

Why release a bio­graph­i­cal series on the Sex Pis­tols in 2022? The sto­ry has been told, in inter­views, mem­oirs, and films, by the band, their entourage, hang­ers-on, and fans, and their man­ag­er, styl­ists, road­ies, jour­nal­ists, and pho­tog­ra­phers. It has been told so many times, so many ways, it makes the mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives of Kuro­sawa’s Rashomon seem easy to rec­on­cile. (See com­par­isons between Boyle’s show and oth­er doc­u­ments above.) What could one more telling, stream­ing on a net­work once owned by Rupert Mur­doch and now owned by the Dis­ney Cor­po­ra­tion, add to the liv­ing mem­o­ry of 1970’s British Punk™?

We can hear some answers from series co-cre­ator Boyle in the inter­view clip just above with the BBC. He describes what the band meant to him when he was a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent read­ing the news of the under­ground Lon­don in NME. “It’s only when you cre­ate true chaos,” he says, “that some­thing new can emerge.” Does Pis­tol bring some­thing new? The series is enter­tain­ing, recre­at­ing events famil­iar to us from any of the mul­ti­ple his­to­ries of the Sex Pis­tols and doing so in a stream­lined, hard­ly chaot­ic, nar­ra­tive style.

Keep­ing the focus square­ly on the hand­some, charis­mat­ic Jones in the first episode (and to a less­er extent dap­per orig­i­nal bassist Glen Mat­lock and boy­ish drum­mer Paul Cook) soft­ens the band’s usu­al por­trait. Maybe they seem more palat­able at first to the very estab­lish­ment McLaren tried to det­o­nate in his rev­o­lu­tion. But as Lydon, who hap­pi­ly took over as their spokesman, told Mary Har­ron in a 1976 inter­view, the idea that the Sex Pis­tols should be thought of as “social­ly sig­nif­i­cant” nev­er appealed to him. “We want to be AMATEURS,” he sneered.

They wrote scathing nihilist protest songs like “EMI” and “God Save the Queen” (which they played on the Thames on the Queen’s Sil­ver Jubilee in 1977, above). But the Pis­tols were not actu­al­ly anti-cor­po­rate anar­chists. They were anti­so­cial shock-rock the­ater. It is bewil­der­ing, nonethe­less — because of the weight of their influ­ence on polit­i­cal­ly-charged punk rock — to see them turned into fic­tion­al­ized heroes in cor­po­rate media. And it is jar­ring to hear Lydon praise Trump, Nigel Farage, and the far right, with­out a trace of irony, as the real inher­i­tors of punk. Nev­er one to with­hold an opin­ion, he’s made his views on the show clear (below): “It’s dead against every­thing we stood for.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, Mat­lock, who is cred­it­ed with writ­ing ten of the twelve tracks on Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s the Sex Pis­tols, once said exact­ly the same thing about John­ny Rot­ten. So, what did the Sex Pis­tols stand for? Piss­ing peo­ple off, becom­ing absolute­ly hat­ed, and get­ting rich? Only the last part of McLaren’s plot failed when he lost con­trol of his mon­ster. For all his rev­o­lu­tion­ary fer­vor, even McLaren was ini­tial­ly shocked (then delight­ed, then hor­ri­fied and dis­gust­ed) by the band’s bad man­ners. Maybe writer and under­ground punk car­toon­ist John Holm­strom said it best: “It’s unbe­liev­able that a rock group that played no more than one hun­dred live per­for­mances… and exist­ed for only twen­ty-sev­en months, could become as inter­na­tion­al­ly dis­liked as the Sex Pis­tols.” It’s even more unbe­liev­able that they’ve become so inter­na­tion­al­ly beloved.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The Sex Pis­tols Riotous 1978 Tour Through the U.S. South: Watch/Hear Con­certs in Dal­las, Mem­phis, Tul­sa & More

Watch the Sex Pis­tols’ Very Last Con­cert (San Fran­cis­co, 1978)

The Sex Pis­tols’ Sid Vicious Sings Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”: Is Noth­ing Sacred?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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