'Punk Goes Acoustic' Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) Sylvain Sylvain(New York Dolls)
Bell’s Eccentric Café, Kalamazoo
March 21, 8 p.m.
$15 advance, $17 day of show
bellsbeer.com, (269) 382-2338
Genre-defining changes don’t happen very often. You don’t wake up every day to find something new that’s going to change the world in a hugely significant way. That’s why, when these things do happen, it’s a pretty big deal, and so are the people who bring them about. One of these movements was punk rock. Two of these men involved in the movement are Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols, and Sylain Sylvain from the New York Dolls.
Now, these two legends of breaking the rules are bringing that energy to Kalamazoo, in a show that brings these two together to play punk hits in int an intimate nature: acoustic.
“When you play an acoustic show, there’s a more immediate feeling to it,” Matlock said. “You don’t have to set anything up. You (just) get your guitar out of the case and off you go. … There’s no barrier.
These men, who’ve known each other for 30-ish years, are pioneers in the punk scene. They wrote the book on being yourself and telling the authority to piss off. Now they’re touring together and bringing that same enthusiasm for anarchism to the masses, only this time with the power shut off.
“I got asked to play for my mate’s 40th birthday,” Matlock said about when he first started doing these types of shows. “I kind of dug it. … In the last few years, people kept asking me to do it and I’ve been doing it quite a lot. And then last year I heard Sylvain Sylvain had been doing it.”
When asked whether or not they would be recording any of the shows for sale later, Matlock was more or less pretty sure that wouldn’t be happening.
“We’re just doing it for fun,” Matlock said. “If you want to hear it, you’ve got to come to the show.”
