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Sid Vicious could play the bass

#281
Son of Wobble said:
Pistols guitarist Steve Jones actually stole mics off Bowie's stage by pretending to be with the road crew. He said the mics had been zip-locked to the stands, but it was just a quick snip and he was out of there.

Some of the other Pistols gear wads stolen from another big band's rehearsal studio while they were doing a gig on the other side of London.

They didn't call Steve "The Cat Burglar" for nothin'.
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#282
Fat Freddy said:
He seemed to be very much in the shadow of Micky Most on that occasion.....A few ideas for promoting but mostly played yes man to Micky....

Anyway.....
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This is a intro to Mickey Most in under five minutes, built around an interview with his daughter, who recounts the time she and her sister kept winning a sandcastle building contest at a resort in Barbados, only to later learn dad Mickey was paying off the judge! :laugh:

 
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#283
Kid!

steve-jones.jpg
 
#285
Panek said:
Please note: This thread isn't about whether or not you like the Pistols, Sid Vicious or punk music in general. I'm just trying to clear up a common misconception.

Today marks the 41st anniversary of Sid's death. Because of this, a lot of people are remembering him on Facebook and in other places with the mandatory mention heard a million times - that he couldn't play the bass at all.

Quite the contrary: he actually could, and there are a few pieces of evidence attesting to that.

Here's 20 minutes of Sid Vicious in Stockholm in 1977 - plugged in, playing the bass, audible and doing exactly what he's supposed to.



Of course he ain't Jaco or Wooten, or even his more melodic and capable predecessor Glen Matlock. He's playing root notes, having fun and I'd say he's doing a good job.

I'll post three more clips at the end of this post. The first two are of the Pistols live where you can hear Sid playing. The third is the sound check for the infamous final show in San Francisco. You can hear Sid playing some simple Ramones lines and Johnny Rotten at one point asks the sound guys to turn Sid down.

I'd say it's about time to start clearing up the misconception about his inability to play and other things like Sid being unplugged on purpose. Whether you like him or not, he was after all a fellow bass player with a very tragic story. Things would have certainly been different for him if heroin hadn't set in, and there are many people who consider the Pistols among their influences for picking up an instrument and starting to play. I know I'm one of them - there was a time when my teenage self wouldn't stop playing "Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols" and "Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables" by the Dead Kennedys back to back on a continuous loop for days on end.

RIP Sid. No future!



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I have actually been hearing that for years also so I went on a Youtube search one day to find out if it was really BS or what. He could play bass, I just don't think he practiced enough. I found a concert where he played the whole night and did pretty good, on fast tunes with a lot of downstrokes he tired quickly though and began missing notes which is why I say he didn't seem to be in very good practice but to say he couldn't play is not true. He played all the right notes and seemed like he knew what he was doing, knew all the changes etc.
 
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#286
bobyoung53 said:
I have actually been hearing that for years also so I went on a Youtube search one day to find out if it was really BS or what. He could play bass, I just don't think he practiced enough. I found a concert where he played the whole night and did pretty good, on fast tunes with a lot of downstrokes he tired quickly though and began missing notes which is why I say he didn't seem to be in very good practice but to say he couldn't play is not true. He played all the right notes and seemed like he knew what he was doing, knew all the changes etc.
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Thanks for your input! :thumbsup: That's exactly what I've tried to get through.
 
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#288
Cringe_Intensifies.jpg


This thread is the same as how I feel about Joan Jett.
Love here, Love her music. Always have, always will.
But the Runaways were a novelty and Cherry Bomb was the most awful song I've ever heard.
Much like if it wasn't for the Pistols antics, we never would have heard of them.
That music -----ugh!-----
 
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#289
Lizooki said:
View attachment 4153518

This thread is the same as how I feel about Joan Jett.
Love here, Love her music. Always have, always will.
But the Runaways were a novelty and Cherry Bomb was the most awful song I've ever heard.
Much like if it wasn't for the Pistols antics, we never would have heard of them.
That music -----ugh!-----
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So you love Sid and his music (like the track "Belsen Was A Gas"), but you hate the Sex Pistols, right?
 
#296
I don't get the Sid love. Never did. The Pistols were a really good band despite the different lyrical content but M.M. had his own ideas and they became a cartoon act after Sid showed up. IMO of course.
Nobody and I mean NOBODY would have remembered him if he hadn't flamed out so spectacularly on the front pages of the New York tabloids.
 
#297
Roland GR 88 said:
I don't get the Sid love. Never did. The Pistols were a really good band despite the different lyrical content but M.M. had his own ideas and they became a cartoon act after Sid showed up. IMO of course.
Nobody and I mean NOBODY would have remembered him if he hadn't flamed out so spectacularly on the front pages of the New York tabloids.
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Certainly more of a celebrity than a musician. I don't think he or the Pistols would argue that. The Pistols are a complicated thing. It is hard to deny that what they recorded was great, the rest of the goings on is just dreck.
 
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#300
Michedelic said:
The most generous thing that could be said about Sid, and his being pressed into service in the Pistols—and only that—is that he was the Stuart Sutcliffe of the band. I always wondered why Jah Wobble wasn’t asked, as he was a friend of Lydon’s as well, but I don’t know the timeline on his picking up of the bass.
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Sid was picked for the Pistols for his look. Malcolm McLaren, having seen the first real punk bands in New York the year before, decided that he could make a lot of money by manufacturing his own punk boy band (his formula: Ramones plus anarchist posing). McLaren knew Sid and Johnny because they hung around in his and Vivienne Westwood's fashion store, Sex (the "Sex" in "Sex Pistols").
 

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