14/12/1976 Top Rank, Cardiff – CANCELLED
It should have been at Cardiff's Top Rank Suite on 14 December 1976, but the month found the UK's most notorious band since the rabble rousing Rolling Stones, with the Sex Pistols British tour rapidly disintegrating around them.
There were councils in uproar following the band, plus hangers on, appeared on Bill Grundy's Tonight Show, a late replacement for Queen, turning the air blue, much of which prompted by a rather less-than-sober Grundy, causing a tabloid meltdown with newspapers calling for the venues to cancel following a tabloid storm unheralded since singer PJ Proby's black hipsters trousers split asunder and derailed his somewhat promising career.
Bizarrely the Pistols had already played three Welsh gigs earlier in the year mainly slipping in and out under the radar without any fuss but with the Anarchy tour almost in tatters and Cardiff a no go, The gig was moved to Caerphilly's Castle Cinema, Itself not without controversy as the local media pitched in to get it banned with angry readers firing off letters of protest. It even prompted a cartoon by great cartoonist Gren in the following morning's South Wales Echo.
But the gig went ahead and the locals prepared for hordes of violent punks to descend on the small valley town to cause mayhem, but nothing could be further from the truth. Band mates and a smallish crowd ran the gauntlet of carol singer protesters, the concert, that also featured The Clash and The Damned went ahead with hardly a word out of place and locals scratching their heads and wondering what all the fuss was about.
The video below goes some way to explaining what happened back in 1976.
