The Great Rock & Roll Swindle Thoughts for the Evening

[Owen J Byrne]

> Some people forget that the original M&M (Eminem) was actually the
> art project that was the "The Great Rock & Roll Swindle" by Malcom McClaren.
> The goal was to essentially destroy everything about established society
> through mockery.  The project turned out to be a living concept (for
> a while at least) called the Sex Pistols.
> 
> Napster had a chance to be the great rock & roll swindle except for the
> fact that they couldn't program their way out of a foxhole if their
> life depended on it.
> 
> 

Found at http://perso.club-internet.fr/fakirpro/music/spdisc.htm (more
Napster parallels):

In their short-lived career, the Sex Pistols created less than fifteen
original songs, and most of them were included in their first LP. 24
years later, you have to swim to a river of snot to buy one
worthwile Pistol record. With more than 200 different albums of the
band in circulation, things are totally out of hand.

Due to legal loopholes, all the bands recordings that were made
outside the Virgin contract, as well as all live recorded gigs, are in
the hands of individuals who are selling them to the highest bidder
and exploiting them to the hilt. Althought we are not going to
complain about the wide availability of the recordings, browsing
through the Sex Pistols CDs catalogue today is a fascinating vision of
disaster and horror, akin to passing through a major crash wreck on
the highway.

Most of the albums presents the same gigs and recording sessions,
again and again and again and again. Some presents forged Pistols
recordings, made by anonymous bands of Sex Pistols soundalike. (yes,
Schools are prison is NOT a Sex Pistols song). Others CDs are
repackaged re-issues. The same gig might be available on different
discs of different quality, depending on the tape source or who
engineered it. Because to complicate it all, publishers spend hours
playing god at the engineering stage, trying to improve the sound with
mastering tricks that actually makes the whole thing even worse. 76
Club collector CD anyone ? The people putting out these things are
absolutely out of their depth.

But the worst is how uninformed the public is. Most of you probably
don't know that Never mind the bollocks, the band seminal first (and
only) album has not been released on CD so far in a form that even
remotely sound like the original LP (althought most of the songs
included in The Filth and the fury soundtrack come close). The fact
that you may have a copy of the LP doesn't make it reference material
however, as it's probably a repress sounding like shit when compared
to the original Virgin issue. And any cursory audition of the original
Spunk lp clearly shows that the Sex Pistols demos on vinyl sounds way
better and thighter than any version issued on CD so far...

When it comes to the Sex Pistols, CD is revisionism. CD is evil. CD is
bad. But I'm not saying it is period. The SP back catalogue is just
desperatly in need of a major overhaul, just like the one engineer
Bill Price (who worked on Never mind the Bollocks) did in 1999 with
The Clash remasters. 

...
Owen