Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols

Submitted by Glyn Lewis on 24 October 2013 - 12:19pm

Cover:

Artist:

Sex Pistols

album-ID:

a_139

Nationality:

Year:

1 977

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Holidays In The Sun*Bodies*No Feelings*Liar*God Save The Queen*Problems*Seventeen*Anarchy In The UK*Submission*Pretty Vacant*New York*EMI

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Glyn

meeting-ID:

m_54

Now-num:

2 013

Spotify-URL:

6ggO3YVhyonYuFWUPBRyIv

Grooveshark-URL:

Never+Mind+The+Bollocks+Here+s/519469

Short-title:

NeverMind

nominator-ID:

u_1

Meeting-date:

Thursday, 19 December 2013

MusicBrainz-URL:

e959a4b3-6306-3c45-9df6-e7241dae9ea3

Wikipedia-URL:

Never_Mind_the_Bollocks,_Here's_the_Sex_Pistols

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Sex-Pistols-Never-Mind-The-Bollocks-Heres-The-Sex-Pistols/master/30445

Allmusic-URL:

never-mind-the-bollocks-heres-the-sex-pistols-mw0000199637

BBC-URL:

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rdio-URL:

Sex_Pistols/album/Never_Mind_The_Bollocks,_Here’s_The_Sex_Pistols_1

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reviewers-IDs data

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85

reviewed by

Lesley

Anarchy in its time

5-8-10

Although I knew songs like ‘God Save the Queen’, ‘Anarchy’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’, I had never really listened to the whole album before. I think you have to listen to the album with its historical context in mind, the singing (which is more like shouting in places) and the speed of the music would have been very different from the music of the Beetles and other mainstream bands of the time. The lyrics were also designed to outrage and shock. ‘Bodies’ is a very graphic song about abortion, with frequent uses of the F word. I’m sure it would have shocked the majority of the population as these were topics and words that didn’t even appear in print that often, let alone in music. From a contemporary perspective, although we know this was such an influential album on punk rock it doesn’t actually sound as radical and experimental as you think it will be. Some of the guitar riffs are quite rock ‘n’ roll, and in places it sounds quite musical and jaunty, you expect it to be more ‘anti-music’ perhaps than it is.
85

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Destroy

1-2-3-5-8-9-10-12

There is a certain cartoon caricature quality to the Sex Pistols, I can’t help but smirk a bit at their scary offensive, but only as they are not near enough to kick me in the brains.

This is classic stuff – a relentless, pounding, aggressive, in your face proclamation of the new order. They turned the music world upside down, my goodness think of the other bands around at this sort of time and what a shock this must have been to poor Diddy David Hamilton and everyone.

There’s loads of background noise associated with this album, which wasn’t always easy to ignore – the punk rock, art-school clever cleverness, the anti-socialness and aggression, the pretense of being non-musicians, the publicity stunts, the wrangles with record companies. As per the title, never mind all that here is the Six Pistols. It’s fantastic stuff, with the same sort of approach right through but full of hooks, magnificent vocals and loads of memorable lyrics that really caught the spirit of the times and said stuff that hadn't hardly been said before in verse form and certainly not with such sneery conviction. We’re so pretty / oh so pretty / oh!
82

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Listening to this album properly for the first time, my initial thoughts were that it was musically basic and that I'd heard it all before. But that's because I'd grown up listening to bands who had pretty much ripped this off in their own more modern style. Putting he album into context really demonstrates its originality and the influence it must have had at the time.

After listening to the album loud and proud through decent headphones, I was blown away by the sheer relentnessness and intensity of it, it's one hit after another, each track driving me forward. Even though I've since heard that perhaps not all the band members were particularly talented, on this album they work well together; the guitar work has some wonderful moments, the rhythm section drives each song along powerfully, and the vocals are simply wonderful; I love the peculiarities of his voice. A great album that's staying firmly in place on my Walkman.
72

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
70

reviewed by

Matthew Baker

NO FUTURE

5-8-10

Unusally rock-sounding production, but the aggression and attitude still comes through. I found the songs to be dull though beyond the obvious hits, and didn't really enjoy listening to the album.

Gets extra poInts for being punk progenitors though.