The 100 Club

This is my 100th post, and by coincidence - the 100 Club will always be linked in my mind with the Pistols - I found all of The Filth and the Fury on You Tube the other night, in 12 parts, starting at the link.

The Sex Pistols were important to me when I first heard them, although, like the rest of my formative influences, a pretty good case could be made for both sides, that they either ruined or saved me. But like Pangloss I'll take the fact that I'm sitting here with all four limbs, solvent, in Asia, and due to pick up my permanent residency card, as signs that all the meandering, false starts and idiocy served a purpose, or at least didn't kill me / push me to kill myself.

This is just another temporary story to make it seem like things hang together. At any point it could unravel or spin off in a wholly different narrative, because the past is never finally written, but a series of improvisations from the few things that come to mind at any given moment. Cognitive bias rules the day.

Still, I think I was lost until I head the Sex Pistols in about 1982, aged 12. All my life I'd been waiting for something I couldn't name, and the music gave me that, as did books, sex, alcohol and the rest when they came along later. An honesty day's never work never filled the same kind of needs.

Side point. There's a thin line between leading the pack, riding the crest of the wave, being lifted by the surge, and being dragged along in the rush. Why shouldn't they all feel the same - after all, it's exciting and new to you at each point, and that's as exciting and new as it gets. Many times I've thought I was on the verge of things, but in retrospect I was just part of the crowd before it went overground.

"What we offered England was a pivotal point. We were the maypole that they danced around."

John Lydon on 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee.