Poster design for Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave
(Not exactly Jamie Reid, is it?)
I.
Shortly before he died in April 2010, Malcolm McLaren bemoaned the fact that artistic creativity (which is a chaotic phenomenon that often ends in failure) was increasingly becoming impossible within what he described as a karaoke world - i.e., an ersatz society, that only provides us with an opportunity to safely revel in the past achievements of others; a life lived by proxy [1].
And, whilst I'm a little uneasy with his use of words like authenticity, McLaren was making an important (though hardly original) point: Britain's got talent; but it's lost its soul.
And so it is, fifteen years on, the Dominion Theatre in London's West End and numerous other venues around the UK and Ireland are planning to stage Ged Graham's Pretty Vacant - The Story of Punk & New Wave ...
II.
Ged Graham is a 62-year-old Irish writer, musician, actor,
podcaster and producer; what my mother would call a jack of all trades, but, let's be generous, and say he's a multi-talented and versatile individual with a great many passions and ideas. The sort of person who, when you speak with them, always has another project in the pipeline.
The sort of person also who claims to have lived through punk as a teenager and now, à la Danny Boyle, wants to turn this event into a musical stage show; a combination of pantomime, karaoke, and nostalgia for those who want to sit down and enjoy an evening's entertainment. As Graham says in an interview:
"At sixty-two you don't want to be in a nightclub, watching a band on stage. You want to be sat down with a glass of wine or an £8 bottle of beer in a theatre. The old knees just don’t want to do the standing up gigs anymore ..." [2]
That may be true: but not all of us have come to the conclusion that punk is now simply a family-friendly narrative that provides an opportunity to reminisce and have a good singalong; some of us don't wish to be taken on a rollercoaster ride by an incredibly talented cast of musicians, singers and dancers; some of us seriously doubt that the punk attitude can be recreated on stage (even if it can be mimicked, just as punk fashions can be knocked up by costume designers).
Graham may insist in a promotional statement that Pretty Vacant is "not just a show - it's a rebellion against the ordinary!" [3] - but that, as Steve Jones would say, is a load of old bollocks.
I don't know if Malcolm will be spinning in his grave at this latest development, or looking on with Sid and laughing. But I do know that members of the following bands who - along with many, many more - presumably gave permission for their music to be used should hang their heads in shame:
Sex Pistols
The Clash
Blondie
The Damned
Ramones
Buzzcocks
Sham 69
The Undertones
Tom Robinson Band
Ian Dury and the Blockheads
The Police
The Jam
Generation X
Siouxsie and the Banshees
The Pretenders
Joy Division
The Stranglers
The Rezillos [4]
Notes
[1] Readers who are interested can click here to watch McLaren deliver his
final public talk at the Handheld Learning Conference (2009). Originally
entitled 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Txt Pistols', the talk is
now better known by the title it appears under on ted.com - 'Authentic
creativity vs. karaoke culture'.
[2] Interview with Ged Graham by Kevin Cooper on UK Music Reviews (5 March 2024): click here.
[3] Click here to read this statement in full on the Pretty Vacant website. You can also buy tickets, visit a picture gallery, sign up to a mailing list, or watch a trailer for the show on the website. The latter can also be found on YouTube: click here.
[4] Obviously, I am disappointed with some of these bands far more than others.
