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Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
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Give me your music, your art, your huddled masses of words and rhythms, yearning to breathe free.
I remember sitting in study hall one day during my senior year of high school, speaking in hushed tones with a couple of friends about a band that was just starting to rear its spike-haired head on the pages of Circus and Creem magazines: The Sex Pistols. Who were they? Or rather, what were they? In the early months of…
"I am an anti-Christ, I am an anarchist." One of rock’s great original voices, John Lydon – aka Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols – screamed those words to the punks, the privileged, and the politicians of England in 1977. He emerged from some Frankenstein-like laboratory on this date in 1956. From his days as a Pistol through his 35-year stint as frontman for Public Image Ltd, he's enjoyed a long reign as one of rock's most outspoken figures - quick to criticize governments, the wealthy, the record industry, fellow musicians, the rock press, and conformists of all stripes. Unfortunately, his music didn't manage to drown out the mellow monotony of The Eagles, the horrible dreck called disco, or the soulless Kansas/Styx/Boston pablum that was quickly devouring our planet by 1976, but he and his fellow punks gave us a great reprieve from the antics of jet-setting cash cows...and reminded us that rock-and-roll should never take itself too seriously.
It all started because Queen frontman Freddie Mercury had to go to the dentist, and his band was forced to cancel a scheduled TV appearance at the last minute. That bit of serendipity gave the U.K. public its first taste of the menace known as the Sex Pistols. On December 1, 1976, the punk rock band was summoned to the studios of Thames Television's "Today" program, an early evening live talk show hosted by Bill Grundy. The program's producers offered its substitute guests the customary assortment of alcoholic treats as they waited in the green room prior to air time. Big mistake. The drunk punks unleashed a torrent of expletives - infuriating scores of TV viewers. The 3-minute interview from hell ended Grundy’s career and catapulted the band to international notoriety overnight.
Through the years, The Great and Powerful Walmart has banned countless CDs on the basis of album art and song lyrics they deem distasteful or obscene. These include releases by artists like Nirvana, Sheryl Crow, Prince, Marilyn Manson, The Goo Goo Dolls and Green Day. While profit-obsessed record company execs may take offense at Walmart's music policing, the artists themselves probably couldn't care less whether the world's largest, most dehumanizing, morally righteous retail chain carries their wares. But there was one band from the 1960s - the MC5 - that didn't take kindly to a local department store's refusal to stock their record. And they sought revenge.