Sex Pistols
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
(Universal)

So the pistols are back with a new, two-disk version of their seminal album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Disc 1, the original album, opens with “Holidays In the Sun,” chunking along with Johnny Rotten’s pricking, challenge-of-a-voice and some chant-like backing vocals on the chorus and solid Steve Jones guitar rhythm. “Bodies,” again featuring Jones’ electric, is blitzkrieg-paced with a too loud chorus. “No Feelings” is classic slash-and-destroy, but not such a good tune. The infamous “God Save The Queen” is better, one of Rotten’s best rolling deliveries along with this vocal pricking on “Anarchy In the U.K., here as well. The nearly bouncy “Sub-Mission” features an almost Kink-like verse and a driving, spoken-word bridge and some solid drumming by Paul Cook. “Pretty Vacant” has great playing with Cook and Jones together. (Really, Never Mind is as much Jones’ album as Rotten’s, seeing as Jones sings lots of the backing vocals here and plays most of the bass as well as the guitar). “EMI” is a true bite-the-hand-that-feeds classic.

The second disk features a ton of live stuff, mostly from a July 1977 Happy House gig and, as you’d expect, the band ventures from truly tight and sparkling on opener “Anarchy in The U.K.”  and “EMI” to being a mess on “I Wanna Be Me” and “Seventeen.” To be fair though, the sound from these recordings is not the best, so it is sometimes hard to tell how the band really sounded. The last three tunes from a S.P.O.T.S. date, labeled “Tour 1″ include “Problems,” “No Fun,” and “Anarchy,” which again really suffer from a bad recording. However all these live versions are cool to have as a historic document of this very important punk band.