Malcolm McLaren takes a dive.

Punk, it finally broke the barriers in the late seventies with a spurt of white kids from the gutter roaming into every scene in society, from music to fashion, newspapers and TV. Every label wanted to sign a punk band, because it was the new thing, the fashion wave and the flavor of the moment, anti-establishment with lack of respect for the authorities mixed up with what seemed to be their own ideology. What started with the beat generation was overlapped by the hippies and passed on to the Punk scene. Punk bands who had just played a couple of gigs got signed right away, even if they sucked as musicians, but got hyped up and made into a musical institution. The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Ramones and the Buzzcocks, famed bands who got the ball rolling, but the one guy who stands out in the history of punk, are written in stone; Malcolm McLaren.

At the age of 64 he packed up his bags for the last time and passed on to the other side of life, long after Sid took his final breath. He was the man responsible for the biggest hype in music history, The Sex Pistols. A lousy band on the lowest level of music, trashy and complete mental, but was the perfect spawn of the new swing in music. Led by Johnny Rotten on vocals and the worst bass player in history, Sid Vicious, they managed to kick the punk genre into heavy rotation. The band was far from good, and the worst thing is when you listen to the songs and look back in time, is that what was made was a handful of songs that worked perfectly, songs that provided an attitude, provided musicians and crowds from the same level, people that wanted exactly the same thing, that came from exactly the same place and understood just perfectly what it all was about. They was unemployed, dropout-kids and white trash trying to make their way in life. In a way what the punk movement accomplished was a highly beautiful thing; against all odds this terrible shit actually was made legitimate because it was made by the same scrubby people that was hopping around in the crowd. It was not Titans travelling around with a huge stadium rock show, it was shit bands playing at shit holes and trashing about. It was raw, unpolished and sour, but it was their music, their scene and they dived into that pit like it was the garden itself.

You cannot deny punk its place in history and you cannot deny McLaren his place in history either. And you cannot deny, even how crappy they were, The Sex Pistols their place in the history of music. They led the way, the adolescence age of the genre, born with the likes of The New York Dolls and MC5, Iggy Pop and the Queen of the lot; Patti Smith. When punk became the thing, it was more or less a second wave. The Pioneers was either broken up, beat down or rolling on. The pioneers of punk has to watch the Pistols on the throne, but the throne is not what it’s all about. Who cares about the leader of the pack, punk is just a bunch of rats crawling around and got housebroken in the early nineties with bands such as Green Day and The Offspring, Bad Religion and Blink 182. Today punk is a more pop oriented and cleaned up version of what it started out as. In some ways it’s for the best, in other ways it’s a loss of that horrific edge that punk sprung out of. If you love music, and I don’t mean just a general liking, but love music, punk is one of those rare moments in time you have to treasure. Punk provided latitude in the geography and terrain of music. And as they bury Malcolm McLaren his contribution to music will live on.

The ragged flag of punk is waving in the wind and the flag pole has stood its ground. Today we lower that flag and salute the late Malcolm McLaren with the remains of the flag he helped rise.

http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article3597851.ece