Sex Pistols: Filthy Lucre Live

Ever since the surviving members of the Sex Pistols announced they would reunite for a reunion tour, it's been fun watching the indignant responses of everyone from old-school punks to upper-class kids who were in Garanimals when Never Mind the Bollocks came out. You have to sort of admire the band for selling out with such irony-laden audacity that it's almost confusing: Yes, it's a sell-out, but is it a statement on selling out Since the band gleefully announced that it was reuniting for the money, does that make it a statement—keeping in mind that the band members know full well that making a statement by selling out is still selling out Sigh. Filthy Lucre Live is but one by-product of the comeback tour, an instantaneous snapshot recorded and mass-produced only five weeks before its release. Its contents aren't particularly surprising: There are 15 note-for-note live versions of Sex Pistols classics, with some (deliberately) trite stage patter thrown in between songs. If anything, the biggest revelation on Filthy Lucre Live is the high quality of the mixing and sound, and that the band sounds almost exactly the same as it did in 1977. Ultimately, it just leaves you cold and 12 dollars poorer, which was probably the band's intention all along.