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Posts Tagged ‘Johnny Rotten’

Sat Eye Candy: Guns NÂ’ Roses

January 22nd, 2011 | No Comments

GOOD LORD, THEY WERE ONCE TITANS!

Rock is full of tantalizing Â“what ifsÂ” but perhaps no single band has inspired more of them than Guns N’ Roses. What if Axl Rose hadn’t become a money squandering, megalomaniac control freak? What if Izzy Stradlin had stayed involved? What if the band that made Appetite For Destruction had gotten to evolve longer before the gold toilets and limos arrived? Ask anyone who was ground zero when the band roared out of Los Angeles in 1987 and the general consensus was one of the greatest rock Â‘n’ roll outfits ever was being born. But unlike the Stones, Zeppelin, et al. it quickly descended into madness, acrimony, self-indulgence and Olympian scale ego. It’s not to say that Use Your Illusion isn’t brilliant in parts, but in a single album’s time the over-tinkering fussiness that marks almost all of their subsequent work was already evident. The rawness and possessed invention of Appetite never surfaced again, devoured by the fame machine, lawyers, overblown, under-thought concepts and their own big, dumb mouths. And still, there’s more than a few who wonder what might have been for G n’ R if they’d been strong or smart to follow a different path. Would that band have brought us their own Sticky Fingers or Houses of the Holy? Might they still be making rock that reconnects one to the lascivious juju of Chuck Berry, Johnny Rotten and Elvis? It’s a mighty wistful Â“what if.Â”

Today is original Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler’s 46th birthday. It’s a bit of a surprise that he’s still with us at all given the life he’s lived, but one thing he’ll always have is being part of one of THE great moments in rock history, brief as it was. Truly a band that internalized the whole Â“better to burn out than fade awayÂ” mentalityÂ…and then lost control of the monster, which limps along still, powered by the residual love and excitement that remains from their late 80s heyday. Still, there’s some real moments and we’re gonna celebrate a few in honor of Steven’s bday. (Dennis Cook)

Where better to begin our stroll down seedy memory lane than Â“Paradise City,Â” a tune with all the sack swinging perfection of Â“Won’t Get Fooled AgainÂ” or Â“Black Dog.Â”

The creepy tingle that went up our collective spine the first time we heard this one is impossible to shake, the whole enterprise ringing with menace and bad intent, the sound of dreams crashing down into harsh reality.

An ugly little gem that evokes both 70s Stones and the New York Dolls.

Oh, Big Hair Axl, you were fun and wrote great, gritty love songs!

A cautionary tale about heroin that’s still so catchy it makes you understand on a non-verbal level why people dance with ol’ Mister.

Like most really great songs, the tunes off Appetite have a lot of malleability. The bands early dip into acoustic territory was one of the best things they ever did.

The ladies were right at the core of early Guns N’ Roses, represented by some of the rankest misogyny ever and an almost school boy sincerity and sweetness. We conclude our lil’ salute to the G n’ R that might have been with two about women, one sour and one as sweet as its title.

Sex Pistols Fragrance

August 19th, 2010 | No Comments

Groundbreaking English punk rock band The Sex Pistols have launched their very first fragrance.With their controversial lifestyle and attitude, The Sex Pistols revolutionized British culture in the 1970s. These days, the group — fronted by Johnny Rotten — are collaborating with French beauty brand Etat Libre Dâ€™Orange to create a fragrance they describe as “The [...]

Sun Eye Candy: John Lydon

January 31st, 2010 | No Comments

HEY, JOHNNY ROTTEN, YOU’RE MIDDLE AGED!

A hearty, happy 54th birthday to John Lydon! As the frontman/shit instigator for the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd. (PiL) he’s shaken up the musical establishment, left bruises on his contemporaries, hawked up more spit on stages than almost anyone but Joan Jett, and coincidentally made some of the most memorable (and forgettable) rock of the past 40 years. Love him or hate him (or perhaps most appropriately, a swirled mixture of the two), but there’s really no way to NOT react to Lydon, who excels at getting a rise out of even the most jaded amongst us. For example, JamBase’s Associate Editor – a Lydon vet since the early ’80s – once saw the man perform two songs before revealing that he had a banana lodged in his bum, which he then gave to a fan in the front row. Such antics are commonplace and intrinsic to Lydon’s, uh, charm. He’s one of those beasts put here to scatter the herd and incite riots, big and small. So, we say screw the Queen, God save Johnny Rotten!

We begin our natal day salute with some sandpaper PiL fun captured in the early ’80s in Tokyo.

Still a dead sexy spot of rebellion despite being covered by some god awful establishment acts in the ensuing decades, “Anarchy In The UK” will be a musical middle finger held aloft around the globe for as long as young men and women have a need to tell off those in charge.

There’s a great many Public Image Ltd. echoes in the current crop of Brooklyn indie acts rising in fame and popularity. Lydon just got to this sound about three decades before y’all!

Here’s Johnny and PiL’s Keith Levene chatting about their high minded notions for the band. It’s hard to know how much of what Lydon says is pure cheek and how much pure inspiration.

Today’s highly lucrative pop-punk acts have done little to improve on this one.

The sessions for 1986′s Album, where these two cuts are plucked from, featured Bill Laswell, Ginger Baker, Nicky Skopelitis, Tony Williams, Bernie Worrell, Jonas Hellborg, Steve Vai and other revered jam/jazz scene luminaries. It remains one of the great distillations of ’80s Cold War fear and apprehension.

And one for the Queen, and we think they really mean it, man.

Gogol Bordello | 12.19.09 | Tel Aviv

January 12th, 2010 | No Comments

Words by: Kevin Schwartzbach | Images by: Goni Riskin

Gogol Bordello :: 12.19.09 :: Hangar 11 :: Tel Aviv, Israel

Eugene Hutz :: 12.19 :: Tel Aviv

In many ways, Israel is the perfect place for Gogol Bordello. A mix of punk rock and Eastern European gypsy music with a tinge of other multi-ethnic flavors, their music mirrors the diverse heritage woven into the fabric of Israeli society, heavy with immigrants from Eastern Europe and North America, but indeed also from all over the world. Made up of a Ukrainian, two Russians, a Scot of Chinese descent, an American, an Ethiopian, an Ecuadorian, and well, an Israeli, the members of Gogol Bordello might as well have been pulled off any random public bus recklessly surging through downtown Tel Aviv. The manic theatricality with which flamboyant frontman Eugene Hutz conducts their shows is reminiscent of an army drill, something to which all Israelis can relate (given their requisite army service). The stage performance these guys put on certainly requires the strength and endurance of a solider, constantly running around the stage and engaging in circus-like tomfoolery.

Outside Hangar 11 on a balmy December night in Tel Aviv, the Israeli versions of punks and miscellaneous hip youths gathered – a curious phenomenon one might think given that Israel is thousands of miles away from punk rock’s birthplace, situated in a part of the world that often tends to harbor a less than amicable attitude towards Western culture. A country built upon immigration, Israel actually represents what is likely the strongest enclave of Western culture in the Middle East. Despite a plain influence from regional Arab/Middle Eastern cultures, virtually any contemporary cultural movement found across Europe or North America, from punk rockers to hippies, has its Israeli analogue. Tragically, geographical inconvenience essentially isolates Israel from the iconic figures that comprise the culture that much of the country has so readily absorbed. So, when a band the likes of Gogol Bordello made its way to Israel for only the second time in six years, the punk rockers came out in droves.

Gogol Bordello :: 12.19 :: Tel Aviv

Inside Hangar 11′s cavernous hall the floor was already packed for opening act Boom Pam, a hometown favorite. This Israeli trio really reflects Israeli culture, synthesizing Western influences and local spiciness, combining punk and surf music with Middle Eastern and Mediterranean music. I caught the tail end just in time to see Uri Brauner Kinrot wailing away on his guitar, crooning raspy Hebrew words while Yuval Zolotov held down a steady bass line on his tuba.

Gogol’s Oren Kaplan (guitar, backing vocals) emerged to applause from his countrymen, leading the rhythm section out onto the stage. Sergey Ryabtsev riled up the crowd with violent slashes on his electric violin, rapidly traversing the stage with fellow Ruski comrade Yuri Lemeshev, who conjured up images of the old country with squeezes of his bellowing accordion. Dressed like an outlaw rebel commander, complete with idiosyncratic mustache, Hutz ran onto the stage, acoustic guitar in hand.

Few musicians possess the stage presence Eugene Hutz (born Evgeny Aleksandrovitch Nikolaev Simonov) does. Onstage, this guy just oozes personality. The mastermind behind most of the band’s music, he really brings it to life in a live setting, accompanying their energetic music with an in-your-face punk attitude topped off with frantic gypsy ravings and dance moves – like Johnny Rotten meets Michael Jackson on borscht.

Eugene Hutz :: 12.19 :: Tel Aviv

“If we are here not to do/ What you and I wanna do/ And forever go crazy/ Why the hell are we even here?” yelled Hutz in his thick Ukrainian accent – a point from their latest release Super Taranta‘s opening song “Ultimate” that the crowd took to heart, immediately going crazy in the mosh-pit. The band meanwhile wasn’t wasting anytime getting down to business, ending each song with the beginning of the next. “Drop the charges, man,” yelled out Thomas Gobena (bass, backing vocals) in the last seconds of “Sally” as the rest of the band crash-landed into “Not a Crime,” their not so subtle anti-drug-law anthem, inciting a cheer from the audience (JamBase readers will be pleased to hear of the relatively “420″-friendly attitude of most Israeli youths). In between choruses, Hutz and his crew haplessly rushed about the stage in all directions playing a game of musical microphones, each barely reaching a different mic just in time to yell out, “Not a crime!” Watching Lemeshev lug around his squeezebox in transit with a rapturous grin pointed at the crowd had a Yakov Smirnoff-like comedic aspect to it (in Soviet Russia, accordion lugs you!).

Pedro Erazo (percussion, MC) and Elizabeth Sun (dancer, backing vocals, general randomness) only added to Gogol Bordello’s already spectacular showmanship. From time to time Erazo relinquished his collection of toys at the back of the stage to rap for us while Sun pranced around banging cymbals together, changing outfits throughout the night.

A trio of “Through The Roof N’ Underground”, “Start Wearing Purple” and “Think Locally, Fuck Globally” came out, consecutively and seamlessly, each more energetic than the last, to end the show on a high note. The more hectic the music got the more the mosh-pit reciprocated, its boisterousness rippling throughout the whole crowd. One last trick up his sleeve, Hutz brought out the fire bucket, beating out fairly impressive drum fills on its tinny bottom.

A solitary Hutz returned to the stage to start the encore, dazzling us with a gypsy guitar solo, while providing his own percussion. Switching gears, he sang the lamenting “Alcohol” while Ryabtsev, plucking soulfully, and Lemeshev jauntily strolled back out. Slowly but surely the rest of the band returned. “Indestructible” gave us one final taste of what this band is truly made of.

There is a core and it’s hardcore
All is hardcore when made with love
Love is a voice of a savage soul
This savage love is
Undestructable

“Undestructable!” repeated the band and audience in unison at the top of their lungs while Erazo surfed the crowd on his bass drum until he dove headfirst into awaiting hands. Gogol Bordello may hail from all over the world but what irrevocably links the members is an indestructible bond – at heart they are all punk rockers. And like true punk rockers, these guys put absolutely everything on the table, leaving us with a sense of savage love. Dripping sweat, ears bleeding, I took that feeling home with me and bottled it. Israel, this little cultural island, won’t be seeing the likes of Gogol Bordello again for quite some time.

Continue reading for more pics of Gogol Bordello in Israel…