Off-topic Sunday from Dave Skooter Farm
I've seen the clip many, many times...but never seen the complete episode (in transmission quality, no less.)
When I see it in context with the rest of the show it really drives home to me that this is the EXACT moment a paradigm shift occurs. The other artists are instantly rendered culturally obsolete (including resident comedian Clive James). The way 'rock' music is perceived is changed forever.
This is Sex Pistols' first ever TV appearance and I urge you not to just skip to their performance at the end of the show. The dramatic effect is amplified by everything that comes before.
[In August 1976] I'd recently turned 12 years old and I can't put across how exciting and dangerous this band seemed to me... They were so other-worldly. As they start, Rotten yells 'Flowers of Romance, baby! Woodstock's coming for me....GET OFF YOUR ARSE!'
The end of their performance had to be edited because they wouldn't stop playing, going over the allotted time and then proceeding to knock their gear about. The performance was actually met with silence from the studio audience. The clapping you hear is dubbed over. The original ending footage is deemed lost forever.
Tony Wilson [at the time a struggling TV presenter, later to be Factory records and Hacienda empresario] campaigned hard to get them on the show and cleverly engineered it to put them on last on the final episode of the first series. When SO IT GOES returned for a second series it had a revitalised policy about the bands it booked!
Further Reading: Dave Skooter Farm is a legend of Sideburn and the UK flat track scene. Read our long overdue profile of him in Sideburn 37
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