The Sex Pistols: Filthy Lucre Live

I must admit that I still feel guilty for acquiring this record as this tape was bought with money that was supposed to have been used to purchase my high school Citizens' Army Training uniform. I originally bought this out of interest for the punk anthem Anarchy in the UK whose tune was quite elusive to me back then when I was still getting deeper with my fascination to punk rock and the landmark bands that have colored its history, with The Pistols being counted as one of the more famous bands in the genre. The album was recorded live at London's Finsbury Park on June 23, 1996 during the band's Filthy Lucre Tour.

My initial reaction to the music was shock. I was shocked at the buzz-saw guitar sound and the Cockney-accented snarling of Johnny Rotten and the somewhat monotonous song writing structure of the band. My older brother clearly expressed disgust over the sonic-filled noise that was passed off as music. At the time I felt like I wasted money on the record, (I mean even my band mate Laix hated the record). But eventually the record grew into me as I was able to watch a video of track from Lucre at MTV's Alternative Nation which had a special on punk rock where it featured videos from Pennywise, Social Distortion, Wayne Crammer, The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistol's recent live version of Pretty Vacant, which had this cool guitar riff, followed by booming drum toms which eventually breaks down to the song's stanza. After Pretty Vacant, I also found liking with the more obviously outstanding songs like God Save the Queen and Holidays in the Sun, (which was written by the late Sid Vicious).

What was interesting about this record is that at the time it best served as a conceptual soundtrack of my nihilistic tendencies then, it got me to take a closer look into anarchism, and later on introduced me to Marx, Lenin, Mao and the likes. Although its presentation of anarchy was one that typically falls short of the ideological distinctive of anarchism it did got me to go into a deeper study of it, and led me to a life of activism where I later on became a student activist at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and all be it (for better or worse...) impressed on me a conviction to pursue libertarian ideals some of which I still hold fast to until now.