Carry On Sex Pistols!

In one respect then, the intro tape of “There'll Always Be An England” is completely apposite : a desire, a search for a spiritual home and rest, a place to belong. And this patriotism is, to the partisan observer, a little disturbing. Their work always seem rooted in the flag, the nation state, and wether this was some meaningless loyalty to the rock we were born on, or a desperate search for a belonging, a home, is something they kept wonderfully ambigious. “God Save The Queen”, the wonderful anthem, was always a double edged sword ; a love letter to the nation, and yet also an effective demolition of the authoritarian control structure.

Opening with an absolute masterstroke of the arrogant, furious “Pretty Vacant” The Pistols pin 5,000 people into a state of simultaneous stunned revelrie and frenzied moshpit hell. Before the band take the stage the front section of the crowd is already awash with security guards disrupting fights. Throughout the 75 minutes that follows the room is one sweaty, jumping mass of frenzied release, as generally balding forty somethings, and mohawked 'individuals' fight it out for some kind of cathartic pogo dominance. The band are tighter than than they've been in a decade : a fine-tuned, aggressive machine that executes the songs with a ruthless efficency : a far cry, and a 10,000 % improvement upon 2002's drunk, sloppy Crystal Palace debacle.

I was reminded of what the Sex Pistols are and always were : in one way they were just another piece of entertainment designed to keep us slaves for another 1,000 years. In a different way, the Pistols are forever frozen in punk formaldehyde, a perfect singular statement of intent. The cliché is that everyone has one book in them : The Pistols had just one record, and they imploded before they could spoil that legacy.

The Pistols were always nothing but some product, flogging a dead horse. And this, their fourth reformation, is another example of the Pistols capitalism. If, after all, we are all trapped inside the whale, none of us can ever escape this world, then the Pistols – aware that they, like everyone else – are merely employees selling their time for money, then the Pistols, quite rightly, surmise that if they are to be exploited then they should at least be exploited competently and rewarded for the profits they generate. The Punk ethos is if Anyone Can Do It, then they may as well rip themselves off for profit rather than anyone else. Cash from chaos. If you have to work, work for yourselves and not for 'the man'.

Sure, it's about money. It's also about nostalgia. It's about sentiment. And it's about the fact that these songs, which are ancient, are absolutely and utterly relevant to the right here and the right now. Because some things never change. When you can't change the world – the world changes you. And here we are : still trapped in a world not of our making and fiercely resist yet cannot escape, still trying in our way to be free. The Pistols were the drunks in the midnight choir, always questioning and challenging the status quo. And Status Quo.

In thirty years time, who will remember the useless pap of Girls Aloud? No one. They mean nothing. Nor Westlife, or Boyzone, or whatever tribble is polluting our charts. Their songs are meaningless nothings, existing only to shift units next to the baked beans on the supermarket shelves. The Pistols though, always peeled back the foreskin of this deception.

We're Product. We're in it for the money and the music. We're in this to kick against the pricks. To expose the lie of modern life.

Despite themselves, the Pistols were always fiercely traditional. This singalonga-Johnny reformation, replete with Rotten's wonderful chorus line of “I do like to be beside the seaside” as the intro to the ever-brilliant “Holidays In The Sun”, is pure vaudeville, end-of-the-pier corprate entertainment, delivered with a fierce afterbite. For some people – many of whom I suspect simply want to relive a 1977 they never knew (when I was 4) – may miss the point that isn't just some karaoke stadium punk piece of worthless nostalgia, but is about setting ancient and tyimeless songs in the modern context. These songs are a meaningful and as relevant in 2007 as they were a third of a century ago. They will probably be just as important in 2037, and 2077, as they are today.

Watching the slick, honed beast that is the modern Sex Pistols ; Rottens dyspraxic presence akin to a man who somehow still isn't quite comfortable within his own skin, Glens secret stadium rock ambitions, Steve Jones growing old disgracefully, I am forced to ask myself the question that maybe some people don't want to ask. Good as this is, doesn't Rotten get bored? Wouldn't he consider reforming PiL and taking their frankly more interesting art-rock on the road? Is the end for the Pistols story this tale of them as travelling t-shirt salesmen? It's not far from here to playing the Folkestone Leas Cliff Hall on a never ending tour out of a habit, where they tour because they don't know what else they can do?

But aside from all these things, the thing we're all here for, as always is The Music. At the end of the day, thats the only thing that will survive. Everything else is ultimately, extraenous bullshit. And what of the music? The Pistols were, as ever, brilliant. Sure, they've played the odd ropey gig and far too many compilations, but at the end of all things, all you need is “Never Mind The Bollocks”. The Sex Pistols are a British institution, always true to themselves, always fiercely holding their own beliefs, and holding more integrity in one of their songs than most people have in their entire lives. As a result, the Sex Pistols are and always will be, one of the few things Britain has to be proud of. If everyone else had as much integrity and honesty as them, the world would be a better place.

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