It’s the morning after this year’s frankly anemic and depressing Halloween (no trick or treating, no parades, no parties, etc.), and I found myself up at what was going be 8:00 am but turned into 7:00 am due to Daylight Savings. As such, I decided to go for an early-AM walk.
Standing at my front door, I did something of a mental coin-toss and decided to head east, serpentining my way through quiet East Village streets until I reached Avenue C, and then meandering back. While detritus from the last night’s muted festivities were indeed evident, comparatively speaking it might has well have been any other Saturday night. St. Marks Place, meanwhile, is looking its most anarchic in a long time, between hastily assembled al-fresco-dining sheds, shuttered age-old businesses like Gem Spa and Khyber Pass and a robust array of blithely-strewn garbage. I happened to glance up the stoop at the doorway of Search & Destroy as I was heading back west, and noticed a small detail.
I honestly don’t know how often they formally redecorate their exterior, if ever, but only scant weeks ago, in the porthole-like window in the center of their door had been Ray Stevenson’s iconic photograph of Johnny Rotten, glaring with signature punk insouciance under the legend “FUCK YOU, CORONA.”
A little under a month later, however, Johnny’s gone, replaced by the similarly over-rhapsodized mug of his late comrade, Sid Vicious.
I know, I know … big friggin' whoop.
But, I couldn’t help wondering. Might this be in response to John Lydon’s recent espousals of Trump that I’ve been repeatedly wringing my hands about?
I have a couple of regular readers who sounded off mightily on this point, incredulous that, in my last two posts on the subject, I was allegedly treating Lydon/Rotten’s latest stream of half-baked humbug -- especially his quips arguably diminishing the impact of COVID-19 -- with kid gloves and not asserting the same burnt bridge policy I applied to, say, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine after he asserted from a stage somewhere to a baying audience that Obama orchestrated the mass shootings during his administration as an excuse to ramp up gun control. Deal-breaking comments, to be sure.
With Lydon, it’s just more complicated. Beyond the seemingly obvious irony and neck-snapping reversals of the guy who penned “Anarchy In The UK” suddenly chugalugging the Kool-Aid of a “law & order”-fixated administration Hell-bent on lining the pockets of the corporate elite, amplifying racial divide, overturning basic human rights, disenfranchising immigrants, manifesting a draconian overhaul of our Supreme Court and basically dismantling our democracy, I’m just wondering if John’s own once-razor-sharp powers of cognition are in decline. I’m just having a very hard time reconciling his lapses in judgement.
Actually, the real reason for this post is that quite recently, I stumbled upon an outtake from my friend Drew Stone’s excellent film, “Who The Fuck Is That Guy?,” an absolutely amazing documentary about storied A&R exec Michael Alago. It is fucking required viewing. In any case, given Alago’s longtime association with John Lydon, Stone sought him out as a contributor fo the film. Lydon — always with something to say — happily obliged with typical aplomb.
In the clip below, however, Stone got Lydon talking about his tenure living over on the western fringes of Chelsea in New York City in the 80s — a topic near and dear to this blog’s heart. He also takes some enjoyable potshots at NYU and Rudy Giuliani.
Listening to the lucid and reasonable John Lydon here reinforces my stated suspicions above, although that’s ultimately all just projection. Who knows what’s a wind-up anymore?
Anyway, enjoy. To be continued.
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