i personally would not say the sex pistols are horrible....i love Pretty Vacant and Bodies was a great song....but for the most part i agree with you

actually Throbbing Gristle never really had stage antics.....it was Coum Transmissions that had "disgusting" performance art....given that 3/4 of Throbbing Gristle were Coum....its understandable to confuse the two....basically TG started off as an experiment to create soundtrack to Coum performances and then morphed into a "band"....i've seen TG twice andf have watched every old performance i could get my hands on....and for the most part they are just 4 people "playing" instruments...SPK on the other hand would show videos of autopsies and abortions while performing....and Skinny Puppy would have "toys" and blood and vomit in their live shows

i have to agree with hip hop on this one....although i'm not a huge fan of GG....some of songs are just damn good

sex pistols worst? wtf?

It's a sad day when Bad Religion opens for Rise Against. So I'm going to have to go with Rise Against.

Oops, sorry. But the stuff I read about involving Coum was on a level that surpassed GG Allin. Really made him look tame by comparison.

I'm saddened by the inclusion of The Ramones as they pretty much invented punk. My vote goes to The Sex Pistols, ironically for their stature, they didn't embody punk what so ever and were more about fashion over substance.

the Ramones had only two songs - the Joey written midtempo 60s-style ballad and the Dee Dee written fast dissonant angry rant

and they made over ten albums with those two songs

i still love 'em, though

I`ve been listening to a lot of 1970s punk and post-punk recently and I can`t believe that people are even considering the Sex Pistols and even the Ramones as the worst punk bands ever, those two more or less invented the genre in 1976 and 1977!

i have to agree with you on that....having enjoyed both at some point in my life....interesting that in many ways the two were reaching the same goal...the idea of destroying self and creating "self" as art....but one is regarded as important era of performance art.....the other junkie shock.....go figure

Gosh, it's so hard to say...sometimes the appeal of certain punk bands is that they are crap. Or I mean, it's fun because of the bad production and somewhat ineptitude of the musicianship gives it a certain quality that's cool when you're young. I don't know!

My knowledge of both is limited to what I've read, although I've a few punk friends who will share apocryphal stories about GG Allin.

So, there are musicians who've taken performance art to the self-destructive route; what about those who've gone the abusive route? Aside from random acts (chucking chairs or feces are the audience), have any gone the route of systematically abusing the audience?

The only one I can think of is Boyd Rice, who apparently took an exceptionally powerful spotlight to a concert in Italy, wherein he would slowly move it around the crowd, giving people momentary, painful blindness.