From Teenage Sex Pistol to Folk Troubadour: Former bass player and songwriter from the Sex Pistols goes acoustic in Guelph

At the Guelph Youth Music Centre (GYMC), considerable mystery surrounded what Friday evening’s events would entail. Advertising for the show could have been described as minimal (consisting mostly of a few flyers in Guelph’s downtown shop windows), and the GYMC—in all the glory of its theater-like seating—wasn’t exactly the quintessential punk haunt. Smokers shuffled cold feet in the snow outside the entrance, chewing over whether there would be a bar: “There’s gotta be. It’s Glen Matlock. He’s a Sex Pistol for chrissake!”

Glen Matlock has a special place in Sex Pistols history. As the bassist for London’s seminal punk band, Matlock wrote most of the songs on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, but punklore has it that he was excommunicated from the Pistols in 1977 for liking The Beatles too much. The truth, as Matlock tells it in his autobiographical I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol, is that he left because he was “sick of all the bullshit.” Whether or not that “bullshit” had anything to do with guitarist Steve Jones’ frustration over Matlock’s insistence that he learn Beatles chords for Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, will be debated for as long as the Sex Pistols remain relevant.

Making his way up to the same kitchenette counter that’s open to everyone else in the GYMC lobby, no one recognizes Matlock as the mere footnote in punk rock history that he has been reduced to by some storytellers. But many are aware that this is the man who begat a new sound, and the bassist who could actually play it.

With psychedelic country rock band The Sadies opening, there was not an electric bass in the building. Sadies bassist Sean Dean played an upright acoustic, but it did more than keep the beat, it served as a subtle but downright reminder that it was not 1976, and that this would not be the same set from an early Sex Pistols gig. No one is dressed in robes that are straight out of Malcolm McLaren’s clothing boutique ‘Sex.’ There are no ragged fishnet shirts, no bondage belts jingling among the mass, and leather, if present, is brown and well kept, not tattered and black with haphazard stud jobs. Perhaps this was a crowd that grew up and beyond the unforgiving nature of Johnny Rotten, much like the man they had come to see.

When Matlock was done his sound check, a lone bagpiper blasted into the room and erupted into a rendition of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Fusing folk method with a classic rock anthem, this was the perfect harbinger for what was about to come.

Matlock’s acoustic show proves that music doesn’t have to be vicious to be punk. Making a point about punk aesthetic in an interview with Max Chambers, he points out that, “People talk about punk as a musical style, but also there’s a spirit involved in it.” He cranks out covers of Sex Pistols songs like “Pretty Vacant,” “God Save the Queen” and the Monkees’ “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone”— a song that every Sex Pistol can say they’ve spent some time with (even Matlock’s bass incompetent, yet crowd pleasing successor Sid Vicious covered it during his brief solo career).

To the accepting crowd that sings along, Matlock has no problem disciplining the audience for their lack of familiarity with the chorus to Small Faces’ “All or Nothing,” looping the chords ad nauseam and saying “I can do this all night,” sitting back on the Sadies’ bass drum to further his point until he got the response he wanted.

Despite the demanding nature he took on during “All or Nothing,” Matlock is anything but arrogant; he is cheeky, but humble. Matlock proves he’s above his Sex Pistols celebrity even when he’s not playing the traveling troubadour. In response to Haiti’s earthquake in January, he’s teamed up with Nick Cave, Johnny Depp, Bobby Gillespie (Primal Scream), Mick Jones (The Clash), and Shane MacGowan (The Pogues) to cover Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell On You,” which is set for release later this month.

Originally posted @The Ontarion

Still Here

6:30am

Ice on the windows this November morning. I can see the shining horizon of far off corporate and apartment building lighting through thick concentrations of tree branches. The sky is pink and yellow with a few clouds. Soon it will turn blue and those far off notions of night will disappear, kind of like the reverse of that 6th century BCE enlightenment from flat-to-sphere earth. Daytime makes me feel smaller.

Kick Out the Jams

So, I posted this Sunday, but I should have included an update on the current issue of the Undercroft. I attended an editorial meeting, and I can now say with complete confidence that the premiere issue of the fourth volume of The Undercroft, "Kick Out the Jams: The Culture Jamming Issue" is now out. This issue includes feature articles with topics including the tactics of culture jamming, the permaculture movement, that big old spooky recession, as well as the process of societal labeling. There's also a description of Global Aware - an organization found in one of downtown Toronto's coziest communities, Kensington Market - dedicated to facilitating workshops on activism, media, and all kinds of great positive thinking, which the Undercroft staff recently visited for a workshop.

You can find the new issue at several locations, including Sideshow Tattoos in Georgetown, The Altered Native in Georgetown, the drop-in center at St. George's church in Georgetown, the Off the Wall youth centre in Acton, Dermagraphics by Paul in Milton, or off of any POSSE outreach worker outreaching on the streets of Acton, Georgetown and Milton this Summer. I will always stress that anyone seeking to make submissions should do so, and if you wish to make contributions, please email posseproject@aztec-net.com.


Cover art by Tyler Klumpenhower. Layout by Tom Beedham.

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Now playing: Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - Here's To Life

The Cattail Manifesto

Cattails just look like feces speared on blades of long grass.

Like natives displaying the heads of unsuccessful colonizers,

maybe this is nature's way of saying

"back off shitheads!"

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Now playing: CR Avery - Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Bless My Eyes (All Three of Them)

Forgive my procrastination. But not without a product to behold. And thus, I give you my vision. This image came to me in the dark nothingness of an otherwise (exempting this product and the monetary gain my education depends on this job at the warehouse for) unproductive repetition. My job involves an incredible amount of rigid standing, myself allowed only to rest and sit for a total of an hour out of the ten I work there daily from Monday to Thursday, weekly. I am curious as to whether or not this lack of mobility has effects on my blood circulation. I think I receive a lack of blood to my brain, resulting in a state of euphoric creativity. Not entirely fruitless, I am prone to twirling and weaving narratives and - in this case - images into my conscious mental faculties, with hopes of preserving them long after as though part of an infinite scroll that can be added to or referenced for all of my existence. I am not as good with paints as I would hope, so the image is definitely lacking in comparison with the one my mind offered. I hope you can enjoy my toils.





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Now playing: King Crimson - I Talk To The Wind

Cog.

Neglect is terrible. I feel dirty and unpolished.

Work at the wood moulding warehouse has been taxing, but the repetition is meditation. I've been having visions lately, and I promise to get painting and posting soon.

Some old but still relevant news: for those of you who are familiar with my work with The Undercroft, I just finished the new issue (Volume 4, Issue 1), "Kick Out the Jams: The Culture Jamming Issue" a couple of weeks ago and if I'm not mistaken it should be at the printer getting copied for distribution or already hitting the streets of Georgetown, Acton, and Milton as I type these very words. Some newer and more relevant news: the next issue is focusing on community. I'm excited. If you want to make contributions, send here: posseproject@aztec-net.com.

Life updates aren't my bag, but they feel necessary right now. I'll get something real up here soon enough. So if you haven't already switched off, stay tuned.

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Now playing: tool - The Patient

On Scum and Other Social Nuisances

Whipping through the bowels of the city like a great worm on amphetamines, it felt like we were tempting fate in highly obnoxious fashion: covering lots of ground at a time when travel was advised against—and using public transit to do it. The ominous Swine Flu hung over our heads like an evil reaper waiting for someone to slip up, but we weren’t about to start worrying about karma either.



When the subway train squealed to a halt, eyeballs rolled upward from their fixation on the floor to the doors when they slid open and a troll-like man thundered his way in to the carriage.

He wasn’t German, but immediately upon entry he yelled “nein, ich liebe!” and shot a Hitler salute from his chest. Then he motioned with his hands as if he was shooting up the carriage with a fully loaded automatic rifle.

The worm—a creature of routine and schedule—had no objections to this new ride-along. The doors shut and we were on our way again.

He was wearing a tattered Lamb of God tee and a green army jacket not unlike the ones found in heavy abundance at army surplus boutiques. Everything about his character was rough, probably conditioned that way from sleeping on outdoor hot air vents and simple hygiene negligence. I expected he’d known a hard life. His gait was clumsy like his knee had been twisted in some unnatural fashion long ago, but the subway hand rails—things of equal grime and viral danger—helped him find a seat.

I turned to my girlfriend and basically whispered, in a cynical and repulsed “wow.” The single syllable summed up all of the rejection I harbored towards this lonely, angry creep. I figured he got a lot of that, but I had no sympathy for this breed of dung.

He caught it though, and he spat out a sloppy “shuut uup,” likely inflected that way by some hard and scary drugs.

I had irritated the beast. I felt like an unprepared anthropologist in uncharted territory who’d just offended a local. Whether governed by the city’s municipal dictums or no, for this hard man the subway was a liminal safe haven for everything and anything he wanted to throw at me. In the city you can get away with most kinds of foul nature unnoticed, why would its underground caverns of speedy transportation—filled with people tuned in and turned off listening to MP3 players and reading the Saturday news, clenching on to any distraction for dear life’s fear of boredom—be any different circumstance? In the recesses of any metropolis decorated heavily with loud looking bulletin boards and digital marquees, who would expect any less? Besides, everyone has their own things to do, and they’re not about to tailor their busy days around little peculiarities. When you drive by one of those tragic accidents, you turn your head to check out the damage, but how often do you stop? The general reaction is “not today thank you kindly. I’ll be late.” Tragic is right.

Our particular carriage was pretty empty, carrying my girlfriend and I, this freak fascist, and a couple of dreadlocked pot enthusiasts wearing leis of marijuana leaves. Before the man clambered in they were enjoying some chuckle-full conversations about brownies, conspiracies, and hacky sack. But upon his vulgar entrance they all fell silent and kept to themselves. Stoned and silent, they were like statues of absolutel neutrality—grey and eerie: appropriate décor for city transit.

My girlfriend told me, “don’t look at him” as if I could blend into the background and he was some dumb animal with a Crestaceous intellect. I figured her logic wasn’t too far off—his head was so full of blind hate it seemed like a respectable estimation. But I was denied that confirmation when he demanded my attention immediately afterward.

“You see this?” He had the right sleeve of his jacket rolled up to the elbow. His left hand was holding his right arm so that his palm faced me and I saw the inside of his wrist. Where you usually see forked veins and parallel tendons, I saw the infected result of a heavy drug hunger. A red and purple pain hole with the black center hollowed out, likely irritated by nervous scratching and digging with dirty nails. And then he turned his hand around so the back of his hand faced me, and he launched his middle finger to the sky.

He muttered in his impeccable English, “I kill you.” Suddenly he was bigger than Swine Flu or the plague, and I felt the grip of immediate danger.

I wanted to call his bluff and scream scum of the earth; call him infectious human waste and the Nazi muck I wouldn’t soil the treads of my shoes with. I wanted to scrub the grime of every dark alley and cluttered gutter of the city with his face. I blamed every pseudo-liberal politician who promised social reform and only changed taxes so that everyone got equally swindled and every conservative that kept its plan of action secret and went around kissing babies and offering tax cuts to seniors to buy votes. You never see a politician on the streets, doing groceries, or riding public transit. You never see them living with the rest of their country—not without a suited up fleet of security.

I wondered why society ever did away with public humiliation and shaming rituals. I wanted to lock this swine in the stocks and write “Nazi Filth” on his forehead with indelible ink – maybe dress up some politicians in clown costumes and chain them to security camera polls. Let the general public deal with them, I thought. “Here is your viral Swine pandemic! Let loose your rotten vegetables and tell them how you feel,” I’d tell them.

Despite my disgust and rejection, I knew I couldn’t do much as one. I resorted to the only device of protest I had left available to me. I fell into zen silence and blocked him out. With no reactions on my end, he had nothing left to throw my way. He muttered to himself in incomprehensible tongues until the worm screamed to another halt. It was our stop. My girlfriend and I got up to leave, and I was happy this dumb animal stayed put.

The train doors shut behind us and we were safe, but the scum was still out there: a grimy stain was zooming through the city’s underside. It was too big for one person to handle, but at the same time apparently too small to receive appropriate attention.


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Now playing: Gallows - Crucifucks