(SPOTS) Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter
21st March 2025
100 Club, London Reviewed
This one will live in history. Announced barely a week before and billed as The SPOTS (homage to the 1977 pseudonym Sex Pistols On Tour Secretly), the return to the 100 Club seemed barely conceivable. Until now. With tickets rarer than the proverbial hens' teeth, if you were there, you were exceedingly lucky and privileged. The lucky ones included Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Hugh Cornwell, Gary Kemp, and Bobby Gillespie.
You have to go back 49 years to the last time the Pistols played the 100 Club, on 20th September 1976, to be precise, the last of 10 appearances the band made at the Oxford Street venue. They'd also chosen the club for the press conference to launch the Filthy Lucre Tour of 1996. The Sex Pistols and the 100 Club are forever entwined.
Here they were again, reconditioned, rejuvenated, and simply extraordinary. With Frank Carter now accepted and embraced by the overwhelming majority of fans, there was no doubt we were in for a bone shaker. That's what we got from the opening Holidays In The Sun. The place erupted, and chaos ensued. There may have been a slight breather during the band's "ballad", Submission, but that was pretty much the only one. As anticipated, we got Never Mind The Bollocks in its entirety, Stepping Stone, B-sides Satellite and No Fun, plus Silly Thing. With limited space for Frank's customary self-generated mosh pit, he took to walking on the crowd with the aid of the ceiling pipework. He was still at it during the closing Anarchy In The UK. Is this guy indestructible?
Paul, Glen, and Steve have been revelling in these recent gigs, and that is evident throughout. The energy they generate remains phenomenal. All the positivity and praise that's been coming their way since the Bush Hall reformation gigs belongs to them. Now they get to take Never Mind The Bollocks - the album that shook the world - around the globe. Who could have anticipated that in 2025? The best things in life often take you by surprise.
And finally, there were 100 special SPOTS T-shirts available at the event. Did you get one? 
Review by Phil Singleton 22nd March 2025
All photographs © Phil Singleton 21st March 2025
Manchester 2024 Review >
© Phil
Singleton / www.sex-pistols.org 2025
Photographs & text
all rights reserved. Not
to be
reproduced without permission.
|
