Dear fans of celebrity pop quizzes, you might just have seen the similarities between the title of Never Mind The Bollocks and Never Mind The Buzzcocks. So what do they have in common?
Erm? nothing much actually, though both of them did originally start out as something interesting and unique before becoming a parody of themselves.
Once a great panel music panel show, Never Mind The Buzzcocks now relies on guests plugging their own shit to fill the guest quota. More importantly, The Sex Pistols realeased an album that promised all sorts of rebellion and nonconformist attitude. It would have been great if they kept this up, but one of them decided that flogging butter was more important. Or because the royalty cheques had dried up. This week?s HecklerPlay choice is all down to the beauty of advertising and the problem it ironically caused The Sex Pistols.
We love advertising as you know, and go out of our way to make sure we bring the best to your own attention. But print advertising is even better. The zaniest advert for a car costing ?100,000 may look appealing, but sticking it in an area where the yearly annual income for someone is ?22,000 kind of makes no sense. But enough of our rubbish Naomi Klein way of thinking, we're here to look at The Sex Pistols and their album Never Mind The Bollocks.
Our story begins on the 5th November 1977 when a manager of the now defunct Virgin record shop decided to put up a promotional poster featuring the album?s title. Not a problem you'd think, but back in the old times before colour was invented, the word bollocks was considered as taboo as saying the word that rhymes with shunt. But oh no! What happened? Well you see reader; a seventy nine year old law came into force. Known as the 1898 Indecent Advertising Act, it gave police the powers to arrest the shop owner for its disgusting language. We can only assume it was brought in to stop Victorian people from saying vulgar words such as knickers, crikey and golly gosh.
So, a big scary word for its time dominated the initial press for the album. What else could we expect? A LP full of tracks to make us wear our socks as gloves and make us give up our houses to live in tents. No, not really, there wasn?t a proper clear cut message that would entice anyone to copy the actions of another punk band. Though if you bought into the hype then you'd probably try and sew badges onto stone washed denim jackets. It was only the small minority who did so, just like the low percentage of clubbers who dropped acid every week and emo kids who cried blood over My Chemical Romance.
Basically what we're saying is that despite it coming out at a time when it was something that caused a slight stir, the only album by The Sex Pistols really isn't that great. Anarchy In The UK with its lyrics of ?I am an antichrist? has the same comical charm of seeing a man walking up and down the main street in any town or city with a sign strapped to his body which says ?The world will end in 2016; pay me ?5 for more information on how to survive in a giant space craft.?
One album, this is all The Sex Pistols ever released and they seemed to have started the trend of living off former glories forever. Countless represses have been done including demos and other random crap to coax fans into buying the same product a million times over.
Upset we're being rude about this classic album? It could be worse, on the same day Cliff Richard went to number one with his album 40 Golden Greats. We?ll admit that The Sex Pistols have a little more street cred. Well, until the I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here incident and the butter campaign.
Urgh.
Cookie Monster says
I’m sorry to ask, and it has very nearly nothing to do with the substsance of the article, but do “bullocks” mean “balls”, as-in “nuts”, or “testicles”? Or is it more like “bullshit”? I should google it, but perhaps my asking here will lead to an answer to the question for other droolers. I’m afraid that, to paraphrase the Merks, I speak “Canadian” and so your language sometimes confuses me.
X-factor, some dunce name “Peeches”, these “Backstreet Boys” (who frankly, sound like a gang of travsvestive hookers, who’s pimp is David Beckham, right), Demi Levatuhhhm?