ARTIST: SEX PISTOLS FEATURING FRANK CARTER
DATE: 10 October 2026
VENUE: The Union Events Center
CITY: Salt Lake City, UT
SUPPORTING ACT: STARCRAWLER
Everyone remembers the first time they heard “Anarchy in the UK” or “God Save the Queen.” I had already been deep in punk by then — Generation X, The Clash, Ramones, Dead Kennedys, The Damned, even TSOL — all between twelve and fourteen. I knew the names Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious from older kids who treated the history like scripture. I loved the sound. It was dry, raw, deep, and dark in a way metal never quite touched. Metal hit hard, but punk hit different. Those massed voices in the choruses, the political spit, the refusal to polish anything. It all came to a head one afternoon in eighth-grade math class when my friend Brian handed me a cassette of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. I slipped it into my cheap three-button knock-off Walkman right there at my desk.
That first blast of “Problems” rewired something. Harder and more basic than Generation X, more feral than early U2. I suddenly understood where Joy Division came from, and why every English band that mattered eventually pointed back to these four assholes. For England it was the Sex Pistols. For America it was the Ramones. That tape cemented my place. There were metalheads, Tiffany pop kids, country boys, and whatever the hell “rap & crap” was supposed to mean. Punk and New Wave claimed my soul. Years later I was pressed against the barricade at Park West for Erasure’s first show when the sound tech checked the mics and asked if the front could hear him. I screamed “GOD SAVE THE QUEEN” in my best Lydon snarl. He shot back over the PA: “HEY MAN, FUCK THE QUEEN!” Some ideas stick for life.
I’ve seen Public Image Ltd more times than I can count — festivals, clubs, the whole run. I’ve watched John Lydon from every angle except the one I wanted most: the Filthy Lucre reunion in 2003 never came close enough to where I was living. I made peace with the idea that I might never see the Pistols proper. I read the books, watched Sid & Nancy (everyone involved called it garbage, though Lydon still praised Gary Oldman’s performance), and soaked up every legend about Sid. John Simon Ritchie, the friend who stepped in when Glen Matlock got pushed out, learned the bass lines on a speed binge, lasted six chaotic months, did one short American tour, then died of an overdose hours after walking out of jail on the Nancy Spungen murder charge. The myth grew bigger than any of the actual people. The Great Rock ’n’ Roll Swindle, Buried Alive, even the half-forgotten We’ve Cum for Your Children — all of it just young people thrashing around trying to figure out who they were. Same as the rest of us, only their mistakes got filmed.
I walked into the venue already high on anticipation. My fourteen-year-old self was climbing the walls. I told myself the mosh-pit days were over.
They weren’t.
STARCRAWLER
I knew almost nothing about the openers. Most support acts these days are just names taped onto a bigger bill. What little I’d heard made them sound like a collision of Wendy O. Williams, the Pretenders, and the Ramones. That comparison died in the first two minutes. They hit the stage looking like they had walked straight out of a 1977 basement and played like they meant every second of it.
The singer carried a Joan Jett slash of attitude while the band locked into that exact dry, urgent punk sound that made us fall in love with the genre in the first place. By the fourth song they tore into the Ramones’ “Pet Sematary” and the floor opened up into a proper mosh. If they come through on their own headline, I’m there. Starcrawler feel like the real thing — the kind of band that could still open a plywood stage in a dive bar and own the room.
SEX PISTOLS
We all know the original four are never coming back. Glen Matlock, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook are three-quarters of the real thing, and they found a kid named Frank Carter who somehow carries the same 1976 voltage. The skeptic in me stayed wary until the first phone clips from earlier dates started circulating. Then I started believing.
I had met Glen Matlock years earlier through a mutual friend, when he was working with Slinky Vagabond, and pre Blondie reunion tour, so when the band walked on I held up a small sign: “Glen — I’m XXXXXX’s friend.” He looked, smiled, and gave me the thumbs-up. That was enough to send the fourteen-year-old in me into full celebration mode.
They crashed straight into “Holidays in the Sun.” Frank’s voice fit the songs like it had always belonged there. The floor detonated. I only had until halfway through the third song to shoot from the pit, so I went rapid-fire. Punk songs don’t give you much time. “Seventeen” was razor-tight. The whole band sounded like they had been playing these songs every night for decades instead of decades apart.
This venue had a different crew of bouncers than usual — local bodybuilders with arms like tree trunks. Word came down that Frank was coming into the crowd during “New York.” I got cleared up a stairwell just in time to watch him climb the barricade with mic and stand, bouncers steadying him. He planted himself in the middle of what had been the mosh pit and barked, “I’m only five-foot-seven, so don’t knock me down.” Then he called the next one: “This song is perfect for the pit. You know it. We’re all Pretty Vacant.”
The circle closed around him. He sang and moshed at the same time, still locked in with the band through nothing but in-ear monitors. I dropped into the pit with the camera and grabbed whatever candid frames I could. After the song I pushed up to him and said, “Got some great shots, thanks man.” Fist bump. “Thanks, mate.”
Back up in the balcony I just watched. “Bodies.” “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone.” Frank still wearing that zipped nylon jacket under the lights, sweating like a man possessed and somehow never missing a cue. “God Save the Queen” kept the original lyrics even though the queen is gone. “No future, no future for you” roared out of three thousand throats and felt as necessary as it did in 1977.
A few songs later Frank stopped everything. “Alright. Ladies only mosh pit. Bouncers, clear the circle. Any men still in there when we start, throw them out of the venue.” The cheer was immediate. The space filled with women only. They played “No Feelings” and the women went absolutely feral. My friend Amy told me later they hit harder than most of the mixed pits she’d ever been in. “Fun,” she said, “but it hurt.” Good. That’s the point.
“Problems” came next — the exact song that first rewired me in math class — and then the band introductions. Glen got called “the Grey Fox.” Frank walked the stage thanking people, then slipped into “My Way.” Soft and almost sincere for the first verse before the whole thing detonated into pure Pistols chaos.
They closed with “Anarchy in the UK.” Frank made us sing the final chorus ourselves — “’Cause I wanna be anarchy” — coaching us until the volume satisfied him. Voices raw, throats shredded, the song ended the only way it could.
House lights up. Glen Matlock walked to the edge of the barricade, handed his setlist to a kid in the front, then came over, shook my hand, and pulled me into a quick hug. “Not a good time to talk right now,” he said. I didn’t need more. I’ve shaken hands with Jah Wobble, Peter Hook, Tony Levin, Adam Clayton, and a dozen other bass legends. This one landed different.
Fourteen songs that felt like thirty. Nothing missing. Nothing left on the table. I would do the whole night again tomorrow if they asked. Frank, Glen, Steve, Paul — we waited a long time. You delivered.
Cheers.
