Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, the soundtrack

Richard Metzger
03.15.2011
http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/lipstick_traces_a_secret_history_of_the_20th_century_the_soundtrack/

If I had to sit down and compile a list of my top favorite books—which would be difficult for me to do—there would most assuredly be a spot in the top fifty for Greil Marcus’s sprawling, idiosyncratic and essential, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century.

This book is about a single serpentine fact: late in 1976 a record called Anarchy in the U.K. was issued in London, and this event launched a transformation of pop music all over the world. Made by a four-man rock ‘n’ roll band called the Sex Pistols, and written by singer Johnny Rotten, the song distilled, in crudely poetic form, a critique of modern society once set out by a small group of Paris-based intellectuals.

Lipstick Traces, well, traces the critique of capitalism from the Dada art movement through the Situationist International and the May 1968 uprisings in Paris, through to the Sex Pistols and the punk rock explosion. In other words, it is the hidden history of the artistic opposition to capitalist society. It was heavily influenced by the revolutionary avant-garde punk zine “Vague” (a parody of Vogue, if that’s not obvious). I was reading “Vague” from my late teens—I still have most issues—and it had a great deal to do with shaping how I see the world. Marcus cribbed a lot from Tom Vague for Lipstick Traces, which is not to take anything away from Greil Marcus at all, but to simply give credit where its due.

Although I can recall a lot of criticism that was leveled at Lipstick Traces by reviewers when it first came out, the book’s thesis was, in my opinion, on pretty firm ground. It has certainly stood the test of time and has remained in print to this day. I’m told that it’s often used in college courses, which is unsurprising. A twentieth anniversary edition of Lipstick Traces was published by Harvard Press in 2009

But what many ardent admirers of the book don’t know, it that Rough Trade released a companion “soundtrack” CD to Lipstick Traces that came out in 1993. Like the book, it’s always had pride of place in my vast collection of “stuff.” The CD was rarely encountered in a world prior to Amazon.com (there’s not even a listing for it on Amazon today, either) but now, thanks to the fine folks at Ubuweb, these rare audio documents, lovingly assembled by Marcus, can be heard again. The selection runs the gamut of weird old hillbilly folk, doo-wop, to punk rock from the Slits, Buzzcocks. Gang of Four, The Adverts, Kleenex/Liliput, The Raincoats, The Mekons, a recording of the audience at a Clash gig, and best of all, the blistering mutant be-bop of Essential Logic’s “Wake Up.” Interspersed between the music is spoken word material from French philosopher Guy Debord, Triatan Tzara, Richard Huelsenbeck and even Marie Osmond reciting a brain-damaged version of Hugo Ball’s nonsense poem “Karawane” that must be heard to be believed.

Watch the entire final Sex Pistols concert, 1978

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/watch_the_entire_final_sex_pistols_concert_1978/

Watch the entire final Sex Pistols concert, 1978
11.06.2010
Richard Metzger

For your weekend viewing pleasure: The complete final Sex Pistols show at Bill Graham’s Winterland, in San Francisco, 1978. For years all I’d ever seen was the B&W Target Video-shot version of this show, then this improved color version popped up on a quasi-legit Chinese DVD about ten or so years ago. Everyone always rags on their supposed shitty last performance… au contraire, folks, they’re incendiary here.

After this show, the supernova that was the Pistols was no more. Say what you will about John Lydon’s later career, in his youth, the man changed the face of music twice, first with the Sex Pistols and later with Public Image, Ltd. Who else can something like that be said about? Miles Davis is the only person who comes to mind.

Eccentric McLaren 'a maverick national treasure'

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/09/uk.mclaren.press.review/
Eccentric McLaren 'a maverick national treasure'
Simon Hooper, CNN
April 9, 2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren died of cancer on Thursday
Telegraph calls anti-establishment iconoclast a "great English eccentric"
Guardian says Sex Pistols could not have had same impact without McLaren
Pop music "needs entrepreneurs with McLaren's intelligence, wit, non-conformism"

London, England (CNN) -- As the anti-establishment provocateur behind the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren once reveled in fueling outrage on the front pages of the British press.

Yet British newspapers were united Thursday in recognition of a man who had, according to the Times, "metamorphosed into something close to a maverick national treasure."

The Daily Telegraph called him a "great English eccentric" while even the Daily Mail, a newspaper which perhaps best represents the suburban conservatism which McLaren spent his life trying to antagonize, admitted that in his later years "it was easy to forget that McLaren was pop's ultimate iconoclast."

Unlike other infamous music business impresarios, McLaren was motivated less by money than "by mischief, philosophy and style, by the egotistic belief that he could imprint his personal (and highly idiosyncratic) vision on the world through the agency of other people's talent," wrote Neil McCormick in the Daily Telegraph.

Without McLaren, most agreed, neither the Sex Pistols -- a band described by the Independent's Andy Gill as "a deliberately incompetent group wearing deliberately ugly clothes and singing deliberately offensive songs" -- nor the punk movement which they spawned would have become the "great folk devil of their era."

"Without McLaren's ideas, his art-school grounding in Situationism, without the clothes he and Vivienne Westwood designed for them, the Sex Pistols wouldn't have been the same band, nor would they have had the same impact. Neither party would ever admit it, but they needed each other," wrote pop critic Alexis Petridis in the Guardian.

But, Petridis conceded, McLaren's ability to stir up controversy for controversy's sake was not without his victims, calling the death of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious from a heroin overdose while on bail for the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen the "greatest disaster of McLaren's career."

"McLaren knew exactly what buttons to press, but seemed to have no idea what to do once he'd pressed them: fatally so in the case of Sid Vicious, who was only too willing to play the monster role that McLaren wrote for him right up to a suitably grim conclusion."

McLaren's artistic career post-Sex Pistols saw him branch out as both a performer and a producer, although, wrote Gill in the Independent, in his final decade he had damaged his reputation by "falling prey to the blight of reality television."

"It seemed a rather inglorious conclusion to an otherwise colorful career," wrote Gill, "and his passing throws into even starker relief the drab, corporate nature of a pop industry in dire need of entrepreneurs with a little of McLaren's intelligence, wit and non-conformist spirit."