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Mitch Stansbury reviews the recent Sex Pistols Tribute gig at the Starlite Rooms:
The last gig I attended in my home town was The Pretenders at the Technical College, more than thirty years ago, but punk-rock in Hereford was once again calling. And calling not only from my spiritual home of Edgar Street, but on a Friday night, with the Bulls at home to Wrexham the following day. This simply had to be done, a no-brainer, but when rush-hour on the M25 and M4 are involved, not done according to plan. So apologies Mr. Tudor-Pole, but your entertaining acoustic set, all bar the last five minutes, were missed. We just had to hope that perhaps later, with guitars plugged-in, you would be back.
Visually, the Sex Pistols Experience were eerily on the money. Johnny could be a younger Lydon, but with better teeth, Paul and Steve leered and snarled, and Sid really was a ringer for the original. In the same way that Vegas Elvis reminds you of the kid who once sang Hound-Dog, in black and white. If Sid had decided to swap heroin for donuts, this is what he would have looked like. But tribute acts, hey, anyone can look the part, it has to be about the sound, surely? Tell that to the sound-desk, as Johnny did, suggesting that they turned his mike on. The boys on the desk might have been new to the job, and Johnny might have slipped an expletive before the word mike. But two songs in and all was well. The sound techs/A-level art students arrived at the party just a little late, and many, mostly bald or grey heads were nodding appreciatively. These faux punks, they look like the originals, and they sound like them too. Strike that, because of course, they sounded better than the originals. Not that I ever saw the Pistols, but we’ve all been on You-Tube, and they were rarely note perfect.
So on it rolled, the great rock’n’roll swindle, where insults were traded, beer was spilt, and a lot of old men forgot, for an hour or so, that they had mortgages, dodgy knees, and a child to get to football coaching at stupid-o-clock the next morning. Yes, it may have been 80% male, 90% over forty, and 100% heading for a hangover, but as Sid sang when Johnny retired, ‘Who cares, Come on everybody.’
And when Sid finished, Ed returned, asking if the band knew any Ten-Pole Tudor songs. They did. Not everyone will agree, but Swords of a Thousand Men is, in my humble opinion, the greatest medieval/post-punk call to arms up and at ‘em battle anthem of 1981, if not of all time. Everyone knew the words, or something close, and those three minutes alone were worth five hours on a rain-sodden motorway.
I will confess to being a fan of the tribute act, or at least of the right tribute act. It’s not that today’s music is utter rubbish, some of it is more than listenable, but nothing, and this is a scientific fact, will ever beat the stuff we loved when we were sixteen. And if the people who were our heroes back then are no longer around or willing, this is what we get. The Sex Pistols experience look great, sound fabulous, and while not holding back on the cocktail of boredom and bile that drove the originals, even posed for photographs after the show. Nostalgiatastic.
Footnote: It’s ten to three the next afternoon, I’m back at Edgar Street with a swift hair of the dog, and who should stroll by, but Johnny Rotter. He’s from Wrexham apparently, and by ten to five I’m guessing, in a much better mood than me. You can’t win them all I suppose.