Sex Pistols “Live Worldwide”
Sex Pistols “Live Worldwide” 1985. A “semi-official” (which means also semi-bootleg) LP on Konexion Records. It’s not listed or clear when or where most of the tracks were recorded, though one source has the truly awful rendition of “Anarchy in the UK” from a John Lydon/PiL performance on Channel 4, “The Tube” on October 28th, 1983 (the backing music includes a saloon-style piano; the YouTube link descriptor calls it “Plinkerty Ponk Piano”). In fact, none of these songs were actually recorded by the Sex Pistols but rather by Lydon and his PiL backing band which at that moment included Arthur Stead on keyboards (I’m guessing he’s the one guilty of the saloon piano), Joseph Guida on guitar, Louis Bernardi on bass and Martin Atkins on drums. Atkins, on the same site that I found the recording information on, states about the band and these performances: “”I called them the ‘Holiday Inn band’, because it was like a Holiday Inn band! We were just supposed to do Japan, then it spiraled out of control a bit, and the next thing you know we’re on ‘The Tube’ on Channel 4 doing a version of ‘Anarchy in the UK’ on the piano like Chas and Dave! It was terrible.“ Besides “Anarchy,” Lydon and the band runs through “Pretty Vacant,” a tolerable version of “Submission,” “Problems,” and “God Save the Queen” among other classic Pistols songs. Semi-official/semi-bootleg or not, yet another piece of evidence in the “swindle.” God Save the Sex Pistols!
Daily (maybe) pulls from the vault: 33-1/3, 45, 78, old, older, classic, new, good, bad. Subjective. Autobiographical. Occasionally putting a record up for sale.