Ian, I'm sorry but I really struggle with some of your comments and Tony's supporting the SPs. I accept fully that they caught that whole innovation/change thing and shook up the popular scene as it was known until then, just as Bill Haley, Presley at all did, just as Hendrix and others did. I accept fully that they blew the flares and platforms off some pretty painful rock w**king as well and so, yes they were influential.
However, any respect for them ends there. For the past 30 years my view has remained the same. Scum, animals, filth, in fact all the things they seemed to portray. They were violent, threatening, they looked appalling, they spat, they set out to shock. So, I found and still find nothing enriching about them, nothing cultural, nothing that has progressed society. I cannot escape my long-held view that in our country give Joe Public shit food, shit clothing and shit music and he will lap it up. Their legacy was a continuation of chav and lout Britain, public damage, appalling behaviour and basically anarchy. That is what they preached, isn't it?
I don't care if the SPs could play, I don't care if Lydon was a university professor although I doubt it, by all means start a thread on SP lyrics and demonstrate how genial and profound they were.
We all learn in life and so I welcome being proven wrong in my views - by all means pull them apart. Don't expect to do this though by calling someone ignorant, wanting to punch them or dismiss them as having no taste. It is simply offensive and does your intellect no favours. A challenge - show maturely why it is wrong to hold a view that to like the SPs is to succumb to a moral and social level that is simply in the gutter. We are what we eat...
Paul
Postscript: I disagree with Paul R about comparisons with Beethoven. Sure LVB would have the intellect ot make a conscious decision on whether to be a serious composer or exploit the gullible and laugh all the way to the bank. Sure, LVB would have easily been able to utilise the instruments of the day and take entirely different paths to those we know. However, I can't help feeling that he would have found the SP-style of life abhorrent and that he would have managed to introduce one or two notes into the mix that bore some relationship and thought.