The traffic to the blog slows up over the Festive period, and it’s therefore something of an opportunity to take a bit of a breather.
Over a period of 26 days, I’ll be posting a single never previously featured on its own before – it might have sneaked in as part of an ICA or within a piece looking at various tracks – with the idea of an edited cut’n’paste from somewhere (most likely wiki) and then all the songs from either the vinyl or CD.
P is for Pretty Vacant released by Sex Pistols as a single in July 1977.
I did think long and hard about featuring this. I do despise everything that John Lydon has become in recent years, and the blog really should be giving him as much oxygen as it does Morrissey. But I never invested anything near as much, emotionally and all the rest of it, in Lydon/Sex Pistols/PIL as I did with The Smiths/Morrissey, and as such, I can, in my head, make some differences. Besides, homing in on Pretty Vacant, and extending it to the b-side, does allow some sort of link to how yesterday’s post finished off.
It was released on 2 July 1977 as the band’s third single, reaching #6 in the UK singles chart. And yes, I’m still amazed all these years later that the BBC and all other radio stations accepted that the singer was pronouncing it as ‘vacant’………….
mp3: Sex Pistols – Pretty Vacant
Here’s the b-side, seemingly a one-take in the studio, featuring a cover of a Stooges song:-
mp3 : Sex Pistols – No Fun
Talking of covers, The Ukrainians, the band fronted by Peter Solowka, formerly of The Wedding Present, did this in 2002:-
mp3: The Ukrainians – Цiлкoм Baкaнтнi
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
What a song. What an intro. And nice to see Grapper getting
a mention too.
I honestly still can’t figure out if Lydon actually is a horrible fucker or if he just likes to say the most outrageous thing possible in a given situation. But I do love Pretty Vacant and probably always will.
I think its the former Johnny. Case for the prosecution….anchor butter adverts, reality TV appearance, that film he made with Harvey Keitel. Case for the defence. Erm…’pretty vacant” and ‘metal box’.
And speaking of cover versions, here’s Pretty Vacant rendered by Paul Jones (backed with an equally unlikely version of Sheena Is A Punk Rocker)