The Sex Pistols with Frank Carter played the Observatory in North Park on Oct 16. Frank Carter was the singer for Gallows, a UK punk band. He got picked up by the Sex Pistols when complications with Johnny Rotten arose and the band wanted to still play. So they’re “Sex Pistols with Frank Carter” now. He’s got a great voice that really works well with their music and fits in very well with the band.
Steve Jones has that amazing guitar tone that is just about perfect. Paul Cook, at age 70, is better than most drummers at any age. He was incredible! Solid, hard hitting, just pounding away non-stop. The Phil Rudd of punk! And I like to call Glen Matlock the “Genius Behind The Sex Pistols”, as he wrote or co-wrote almost all of their songs and I don’t think he gets enough credit for all he’s done.
The band was on fire tonight. Yeah, they only have one album to really go off on (plus some b-sides and other tracks), so they only played an hour set with a few covers that they used to do back in the day (“I’m Not Your Stepping Stone”, an extended version of “No Fun” which had some pretty cool soloing by Steve Jones on it, and two versions of “My Way”, slow, then again but much faster). The crowd was fun. I was in the photo pit for the first 3 songs and there was total chaos in it while Frank hopped the barrier and sang “Pretty Vacant” in the pit with all the moshers. That was bold move! But he’s a fan too and he gets to sing for his favorite band. And he let other people in on the fun. During the fast version of “My Way”, he grabbed a phone from someone in the front row and ran around the stage recording everyone during the song. Pretty cool and I know that person got some great footage, but I still think it was more “punk” when I saw Van Halen in 2008 and David Lee Roth grabbed a phone from someone, shoved it down his pants for a song, then gave it back to the person saying “Now there’s some pictures for ya!”
Fun show, celebrating the great awesomeness of the Sex Pistols. Here’s my pictures. Yeah, I’m going to buy a new lens this week so I can get better photos when using my real camera.
Special thanks to Neal from LiveNation for the photo pass!
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