No Rock And Roll Fun

SIX. AGAIN: Just when you're raving about six to your friends, and they're enjoying a live Manics performance, the network sticks on Sting live and friends make excuses and leave. Anyway... another small grip is they don't appear to be archiving Mark Sutherland's pieces, which is a shame, so we've fished today's off the site and bring it you, here, now, forever:
Another Jubilee, and still Johnny Rotten won't let it lie. Yup, the Sex Pistols are reforming and God Save The Queen is being re-released - but is the (ahem) 'fascist regime' of Her Majesty quaking in her boots? Frankly, 'one' doubts it.
Because, while 25 years ago Rotten and company did an excellent job of making the monarchy look like an out-dated anachronism, this time round, the boot would appear to be on the other foot. For a start, an incredible two million people have apparently applied for tickets to Liz's Jubilee concerts.
Will applications for the Pistols' bash be even a tenth of that? Will the charts have to be fixed this time around to keep God Save The Queen off the top spot? Almost certainly not - but that's hardly the point.
At the time, criticising the Royal Family seemed like a genuinely insurrectionary act, and respect to the Pistols for that. As well as for making one of the best albums of all time and spearheading officially the planet's most thrilling rock'n'roll movement.
But, whatever your views on Republicanism, hanging around still banging on about it 25 years later is like flogging a patch of ground where a dead horse used to be and makes the Pistols, rather than the House of Windsor, look like the irrelevant institution desperately in need of moving on.
We've even got a new Sex Pistols - So Solid Crew - at large in the land. They may not be about to make the 2002 equivalent of God Save The Queen, but the sad fact is that Rotten - who, significantly, slagged the Crew off recently - now actually NEEDS the Queen to stay on the throne in order to prolong his pantomime dame routine for a few more years.
If he was honest, he wouldn't re-release God Save The Queen but a remixed version of the Pistols' debut single - retitled Monarchy In The UK.
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
NP on 6: Sheila Na Gig - Polly Harvey