WORTE


you are what you perceive teutonic robot kultur schlager-decadance	Pop and Terrorism who we are
" Keep Warm This Winter, Make Trouble" Pop and Terrorism Bridging the missing link...the Sex Pistols on Baader-Meinhof

'Holidays' is the sound of a group collapsing in on itself. Written just after they had been thrown off A&M , the lyrics record John Lydon's paranoia and feelings of uselessness, suddenly pitched into the alien enviroment of Baader/Meinhof 'Wanted' posters and turkish ghettoes, and dominated by the concrete Berlin Wall which it was then inconceivable to cross. If 'Holidays' has a location at all outside Lydon's burning skull, it is West Germany. In 1977, the West German state was under its most concerted attack from the urban guerillas that had taken their original inspiration from the same late sixties roots like Punk Rock. This hardcore nihilism had gone, not ibto pop, but into urban warfare. From the early 1970s young urban revolutionaries calling themselves the RAF, Rote Armee Fraktion ( Red Army Faction), had killed dozens of people.

West Germany in those days was full of 'Wanted' posters. The portraits of young, almost Bohemian RAF members - ideal in their black and white blurriness, for an album sleeve - stared down from every public place. the country had the quiet, edgy feeling of a state under siege. Ever since the four core members of Baader/ Meinhof had been imprisoned at Stammheim prison to await trail, they had become a focus for an RAF second wave, which killed judges, kidnapped politicians, and blew up the german embassy in Stockholm. In May 1975, their trial began in a specially constructed 'fortress' at Stammheim. After Meinhof's suicide in May 1976, the trial was conducted with extraordinary security. In April 1977, the Federal Prosecutor was murdered. After the remaining three defendants were sentenced to life, the RAF shot the banker JŸrgen Ponto in his own house. The ringleader was Susanne Albrecht, a friend of Ponto's family. Here was the ultimate poison in your machine . The struggle entered its terminal phase while the Sex Pistols were preparing 'Holiday' for release. Incarcerated in Stammheim for crimes which they had always admitted, the prisoners felt the reality of the 'omnipresence of the state' that had been their rhetoric. Their every twitch was monitored by a vast, burgeoning bureaucracy. they compared themselves and their situation with the 'Auschwitz and Buchenwald' that had been in their heads since birth. On 5th september, Hans Martin -schleyer, the head of the German equivalent of the CBI, was kidnapped by the RAF and held hostage. An intense manhunt began, but all that was seen of Schleyer was his image on a series of videotapes and polaroids, sitting in front of an RAF symbol. The manhunt and the negotiations dragged on for the next month, under conditions of extraordinary polarization: 'There's sadism bursting out erverywhere', noted RAF member Gudrun Ensslin with satisfaction.

On 13th October, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by Palestine sympathizers. It came to rest in Mogadishu, Somalia, where on the 16th and 17th, it was stormed by West German commandos. The next night, Ensslin, Baader and Raspe died in their cells at Stammheim: it was never established whether this was suicide or murder. On the 19th, Schleyer's body was recoverde after fourty-three days. The RAF communiquŽ that announced the location of his corpse spoke of the 'fascist drama'. On the 20th, 'Holidays in the sun' entered the English charts. At the words 'the Berlin Wall', Lydon's voice explodes and, as the break climaxes, he starts to gibber: for the rest of the song he hardly stops. The structure disappears as he fights to keep up with the juggernaut riff (or vice versa) 'Claustrophobia...there's too much paranoia...there's too many closets: when will we fall?' As the song judders to a halt, Lydon keeps hurling himself at the wall of death, screaming: 'I don't understand this bit at all: please don't be waiting for me'. This polite request is one of the most terrifying admissions in all pop, issued by someone who has jumped into the abyss. As the song folds in on itself at the end, it speaks of many things: Lydon's fury and terror at finding that autonomy has turned into another form of bondage, that revolutionary fantasy paled before the reality of Stammheim and that, depite the weaponry of their name, the Sex Pistols were just pop musicians. this was not just failure, but annihilation.

'Holidays' is the sound of a group collapsing in on itself. Written just after they had been thrown off A&M , the lyrics record John Lydon's paranoia and feelings of uselessness, suddenly pitched into the alien enviroment of Baader/Meinhof 'Wanted' posters and turkish ghettoes, and dominated by the concrete Berlin Wall which it was then inconceivable to cross. If 'Holidays' has a location at all outside Lydon's burning skull, it is West Germany. In 1977, the West German state was under its most concerted attack from the urban guerillas that had taken their original inspiration from the same late sixties roots like Punk Rock. This hardcore nihilism had gone, not ibto pop, but into urban warfare. From the early 1970s young urban revolutionaries calling themselves the RAF, Rote Armee Fraktion ( Red Army Faction), had killed dozens of people.
	West Germany in those days was full of 'Wanted' posters. The portraits of young, almost Bohemian RAF members - ideal in their black and white blurriness, for an album sleeve - stared down from every public place. the country had the quiet, edgy feeling of a state under siege. Ever since the four core members of Baader/ Meinhof had been imprisoned at Stammheim prison to await trail, they had become a focus for an RAF second wave, which killed judges, kidnapped politicians, and blew up the german embassy in Stockholm. In May 1975, their trial began in a specially constructed 'fortress' at Stammheim. After Meinhof's suicide in May 1976, the trial was conducted with extraordinary security. In April 1977, the Federal Prosecutor was murdered. After the remaining three defendants were sentenced to life, the RAF shot the banker JŸrgen Ponto in his own house. The ringleader was Susanne Albrecht, a friend of Ponto's family. Here was the ultimate poison in your machine . The struggle entered its terminal phase while the Sex Pistols were preparing 'Holiday' for release. Incarcerated in Stammheim for crimes which they had always admitted, the prisoners felt the reality of the 'omnipresence of the state' that had been their rhetoric. Their every twitch was monitored by a vast, burgeoning bureaucracy. they compared themselves and their situation with the 'Auschwitz and Buchenwald' that had been in their heads since birth. On 5th september, Hans Martin -schleyer, the head of the German equivalent of the CBI, was kidnapped by the RAF and held hostage. An intense manhunt began, but all that was seen of Schleyer was his image on a series of videotapes and polaroids, sitting in front of an RAF symbol. The manhunt and the negotiations dragged on for the next month, under conditions of extraordinary polarization: 'There's sadism bursting out erverywhere', noted RAF member Gudrun Ensslin with satisfaction.
On 13th October, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by Palestine sympathizers. It came to rest in Mogadishu, Somalia, where on the 16th and 17th, it was stormed by West German commandos. The next night, Ensslin, Baader and Raspe died in their cells at Stammheim: it was never established whether this was suicide or murder. On the 19th, Schleyer's body was recoverde after fourty-three days. The RAF communiquŽ that announced the location of his corpse spoke of the 'fascist drama'. On the 20th, 'Holidays in the sun' entered the English charts. At the words 'the Berlin Wall', Lydon's voice explodes and, as the break climaxes, he starts to gibber: for the rest of the song he hardly stops. The structure disappears as he fights to keep up with the juggernaut riff (or vice versa) 'Claustrophobia...there's too much paranoia...there's too many closets: when will we fall?' As the song judders to a halt, Lydon keeps hurling himself at the wall of death, screaming: 'I don't understand this bit at all: please don't be waiting for me'. This polite request is one of the most terrifying admissions in all pop, issued by someone who has jumped into the abyss. As the song folds in on itself at the end, it speaks of many things: Lydon's fury and terror at finding that autonomy has turned into another form of bondage, that revolutionary fantasy paled before the reality of Stammheim and that, depite the weaponry of their name, the Sex Pistols were just pop musicians. this was not just failure, but annihilation.