Sham Pistols - Natural Born Killer (1979)

I vaguely remember following the story in Sounds music paper as Steve Jones and Paul Cook, at a loose end following the implosion of the Sex Pistols, began hanging around at Sham 69's house. Sham 69 seemed to have got into the habit of splitting and then reforming on a more or less daily basis, but had reputedly definitely called it a day following the release of The Game, their disappointing fourth album which Pursey hated. Being a fan of both groups, obviously I was excited by the prospect of the Sham Pistols - a name I presume to have come from some journalist rather than any of those involved - whilst being at least a little sceptical, even at the age of fourteen, of what was essentially a supergroup, an entity forged through celebrity rather than the usual social channels. Peculiarly it turned out that I was right when Sounds reported how it had all fallen apart with everyone going their separate ways. Those involved had shared roughly comparable degrees of fame through production of noisy guitar-based rock records, beyond which they had nothing in common apart from the fact that I thought they were great. The two former Pistols declared that it had been worse than working with Rotten, and Pursey observed that he had known all along that it would never work, such were the differences between them.

Sham 69 seem to be remembered as the band responsible for Oi! in so much as that of all those punk bands of the time, they were the most conspicuously lacking any sort of art school heritage, and they appealed to football hooligans and your actual working class types who couldn't give a shit about bondage trousers or hair gel. Nevertheless they made some fucking great albums which probably don't sound anything like you would expect, combining monosyllabic terrace appeal with surprisingly refined musical or artistic touches presumably sprung from Pursey's slow transformation into Marcel Marseau. This transformation may possibly be why Sham Pistols were doomed from the start. Pursey was already moving towards whatever the hell Imagination Camouflage was supposed to be, and the belching Cockney steamroller of Steve Jones' guitar was pulling too much in the other direction, at least from where Jimmy was stood.

I hadn't realised they ever really got beyond hanging out and trying to understand each other's jokes, let alone studio recording or sharing a stage, so my ears extended out on stalks when I first encountered this, just like in a Tom & Jerry cartoon; and weirdly, given how much I expected of this union at the age of fourteen, it doesn't disappoint. Side one is four entirely new and substantially beefy studio tracks - only one of which was to be recycled by Cook and Jones' Professionals. Sham Pistols actually sound exactly like Sham 69 with Steve Jones playing guitar, and significantly better than anything Sham had done at least since That's Life - which I state as a fan, in case that isn't obvious. Side two comprises four songs recorded live in Glasgow, Pretty Vacant, the Clash's White Riot, and a couple of Sham 69 numbers. They're nothing earth shattering, but just for the raw energy and the sheer peculiar novelty of this record, everything works pretty well. Natural Born Killer should by all rights be an oddity, a collectors' item rather than something you listen to, but against expectation it adds up to something much fatter and meatier than the sum of its parts, with everyone bringing the best out of each other, even if they all secretly regarded each other as tossers.

It was never going to last, which is a shame, but it's nice to have something to show that it happened, and that it was very briefly as great as my fourteen year-old self once hoped.

The Professionals - I Didn't See It Coming (1981)

As a kid, the Sex Pistols were roughly the first group I discovered that weren't the Beatles, Abba, or the Wombles. I recall my dad talking about some pop stars who stuck safety pins through their noses, and I remember one sunny day when he came in from the afternoon's milking chuckling about a song he'd heard on the radio called We're So Pretty Vacant.

Arf arf, my mum conceded and we all laughed.

Then my friend Sean showed me his Sex Pistols record, the one with the cartoon of Sid Vicious on the cover and Friggin' in the Riggin' on the other side. I was thirteen and that was more rude words than I'd ever heard in my life, plus I was intrigued because I couldn't quite work out if the band were real or not - which is probably thanks more to Sean and myself giving his Wombles album such a hammering than the cartoon on the cover. In any case, all I knew for sure was that I had encountered magic of some description. Clearly the music industry held the same view, milking the Sex Pistols cow for every last drop, every last variation or loose association; and I was fascinated by the Adrians Records mail order catalogue with its own special Sex Pistols section featuring rare discs by people who had once made some sandwiches for the band, or who simply had a picture of Sid Vicious on the cover of their single - not such a worthless exercise as you might think given that 99% is Shit by the Cash Pussies turned out to be pretty damn great, and just the sort of thing that the idiotic McClaren probably thought he was doing.

The Professionals were of course what Steve and Paul did next, so naturally I awaited the fruits of their labours with punky anticipation; although it's sobering to listen to this stuff now and realise that it's probably how the two of them hoped the Sex Pistols would sound, had McClaren not tried to turn them into the New York Dolls - basic power pop roughly in the tradition of the Kinks, Small Faces and so on. This shouldn't be taken as an indictment, reducing the pair to Lydon's backing band as some might have it. Steve Jones' guitar sound remains pretty much unique even thirty years later - a great big burping Cockney steamroller of noise somehow aspiring to the sort of music that works best in fast cars. It actually sounds nourishing, good for the soul in some way.

I Didn't See It Coming is a weird album, and one that admittedly should have been better: great, punchy, anthemic songs produced as though someone was hoping for a spot on one of those John Hughes film soundtracks, the sort of thing with a scene in which Michael J. Fox rolls up the sleeves of his suit jacket and leads American teenagers in eighties dancing upon the hoods of cars stalled in a gridlock, cars driven by squares who don't understand young people. Steve Jones was ever a bit of a singing bricklayer when it came to vocals, but the production here makes a futile effort to smooth out his rough edges leaving the poor sod sounding like a backing singer on his own record. This CD reissue also includes the earlier Professionals singles - on which he sounds much better - and which are pretty hard to fault. He was never the greatest vocalist, but on the other hand, there's not many that could get away with:

We all know how it ends,

For the rock 'n' roll Hollywood God,

Found by one of your friends,

With your head flushed down the bog.

So, it's smoother than it probably should have been, but even given all of the above, I Didn't See It Coming is still a thumping good collection; another one to add to the list of things that need remixing by Steve Albini.