Earlier, I had watched the 60 Minutes news segment on the emergence of punk (and the Sex Pistols were prominently featured), and the segment horrified me, as a young teen, on where music was heading. Then, the first Rolling Stone Record Guide (with the Red Cover) was published. In this book, the reviewer gave the Sex Pistols album four stars.
The attitude of the establishment media towards this new musical movement conflicted with those charged with critiquing music as their profession. In order to resolve this conflict, I impulsively purchased the record from a long, lost record store names Harpo's that existed in Bloomington, Minnesota (and who's demise will likely form another blog posting in the near future).
And what I found is that the Sex Pistols music was not simply noise. In fact the music contain memorable hooks, melodies and chord progressions. In other words, it was a more abrasive form of pop music. I also found that while not every lyric was one that I could agree with (the anti-abortion, anti-woman "Bodies" was a particular problem), I empathized with the anger seething from virtually every song.
In other words, the Sex Pistols changed my worldview, for which I am eternally grateful. I became open to music that was not only from the mainstream, but music that pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable. Never Mind the Bollocks was to me what Highway 61 Revisited must have been to a teenager in the mid-1960s.
As a side-note, the Sex Pistols was such an influence that it lead to the end of my high school deejaying career when I played it during "punk day" in 1981. I had exactly one show, when fundamentalist Christian students in my high school complained that the music I played (including "Anarchy in the U.K.") sounded like (the decidedly non-punk) AC/DC. Yeah, I know, go figure.
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