This is the review of when I saw the Sex Pistols in 1996. its hilarious, a true story, and NOT my review.
and no i didnt win the contest, i just know people
Addicted To Noise Toronto correspondent John Sakamoto reports:
After being showered with beer and pelted with lit cigarette butts for 45 minutes, Johnny Rotten finally re-captured a glimmer of the original spirit of the Sex Pistols when he instructed the crowd at a surprise club show that took place on Tuesday night (Aug. 20) to go fuck themselves, and promptly stomped off stage.
Though they'd played a rapturously received concert in Toronto to 9,800 fans just eight days earlier, the Pistols were lured back by another load of filthy lucre to be the "prize" in a beer promotion called Blind Date. The gimmick: contest-winners from across Canada are flown to a small club -- in this case, The Guvernment, formerly known as RPM -- to see a big-name act whose identity is kept secret 'til the moment the band actually walks on stage.
Given the fact that previous Blind Dates have featured the likes of Soundgarden and Metallica, the initial reaction from the 500 or so winners to the sight of Rotten, Glen Matlock, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook ambling on stage could politely be described as mild disappointment. (It probably didn't help matters that, prior to the show, one mischievous industry type showed up early and broadly hinted to those at the front of the line that they were about to see Hootie & The Blowfish.)
After uneventful (and uninspiring) versions of "Bodies," "Seventeen," and "New York" -- played exactly the same as they were at the previous Toronto show, the tour kick-off in Denver, and on the Filthy Lucre Live CD -- a small but noisy contingent of punters started up a soccer-style chant of "BOR-ing." That was soon accompanied by a steady stream of beer and lit cigarette butts, all hurled in the general vicinity of an increasingly pissed-off Rotten.
"I'm warning you wankers, you can just stop that right now," he growled, glaring at the crowd. "If those responsible would like to come up here, I'll show you just how violence works." At which point the band launched into the best, most convincing version of "No Feelings" I've ever heard. Unlike the well-tooled arena version they've been trotting out on the rest of the tour, this one actually sounded like they meant it, man.
As for Rotten, for once he wasn't in control. Instead, he was seething and, for one brief moment, the fat, forty-ish, 1996 version of the Sex Pistols had re-captured a glimmer of punk's original spirit. The previously indifferent audience, however, was having none of it. Half a dozen numbers later, amid increasingly louder jeering and a steady stream of foreign objects, Rotten finally snapped. After venting his rage at the apparent source of the lit cigarettes he'd been dodging all night, he uttered a few more choice obscenities, delivered a brief, self-righteous lecture, and walked off stage, shortly followed by the rest of the band.
It was perfect.
Unfortunately, Rotten & Co. ruined the moment by slinking back on stage 10 minutes later, and the rest of the proceedings qualified as a distinct anti-climax. The only notable moment came when Rotten surveyed the crowd one last time and dismissively remarked, "Look at you, you can't even handle your Molson," referring to the beverage that was the real reason the Pistols were there. Then, in the closest thing the band, in its current incarnation, has come to a subversive act, he insulted the sponsor's product.
"You know," he sneered, "the British word for Molson is SHANDY."
