Here We Go！
Sex Pistols collection — this one’s a bit of an oddity.
Today’s item: Pirates Of Destiny (DOJO CD 222).
A compilation pulling together studio demos, live recordings, interviews, TV spots, and radio material. No clear thread running through it — which is rather the point.
🧷 Basic Specs
- Title: Pirates Of Destiny
- Artist: Sex Pistols
- Format: CD
- Released: 1996
- Label / Cat. No.: Dojo Limited / DOJO CD 222
- Packaging: Standard jewel case
🧷 Track Listing
- Lydon Speaks . . .
- No Feelings (From The Spedding Sessions – April ’76)
- Lazy Sod (Live In Sweden With Sid!)
- The GLC Counselor Comments On Punk – Bernard Brook Partridge
- Problems (From The Spedding Sessions April ’76)
- Medley: Anarchy/Pretty Vacant/God Save The Queen
- Australian T.V. Ad
- Pretty Vacant (Backing Track Only – May ’76)
- I Wanna Be Me (Live In Sweden With Sid!)
- McLaren Talks . . .
- Schools Are Prisons
- McLaren Gabs . . .
- Lydon Chats . . .
- A Brief Excerpt Of “Woodstock Baby”
- Substitute
- No Lip
- Stepping Stone
- Johnny B. Goode
- Roadrunner
- Watcha Gonna Do About It?
- A Brief “Through My Eyes”
- Lazy Sod (Live In England On A “Secret” Tour With Sid!)
Worth noting: not everything here is actually a Sex Pistols track.
🧷 Pressing / Variant Notes
✔️ Disc
Picture disc, matching the jacket design.
✔️ Sleeve / Packaging
Photographs taken from a 1976 promotional session. Everyone looks rather pleased with themselves — Glen in particular.
✔️ Booklet / Insert
Early-period photographs throughout.
🧷 Collector’s Notes
✔️ On the recordings
① Tracks that aren’t Sex Pistols
Track 11, “Schools Are Prisons,” is a The Ex Pistols track, plain and simple. Slipped in without fanfare.
② Wessex Studio material
Tracks 15–20 relate to The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. These are original recordings made at Wessex Studio in 1976 — before Paul Cook and Steve Jones added overdubs for the soundtrack. Pre-overdub versions, in other words.
③ Pretty Vacant backing track
Track 8, “Pretty Vacant (Backing Track Only – May ’76),” is the instrumental take — no Lydon vocal. Karaoke, essentially.
④ Through My Eyes
sometimes described as a second The Who. For a long time, this compilation was the only place you could hear it.
It was later included in the official SEX BOX release.
A beat music track from the 1960s. A useful pointer towards where the Pistols’ roots actually sat.
⑤ The medley
Track 6 runs Anarchy, Pretty Vacant, and God Save The Queen together in sequence. At a guess — and it is only a guess — this is edited from existing released recordings rather than a previously unreleased performance. Whether it appears elsewhere is something I haven’t been able to confirm.
⑥ Interviews and TV material
Scattered throughout: comments from Lydon and McLaren, a TV commercial, and various other bits. Combined with the Spedding demos and live recordings — including, for reasons unclear, two separate versions of “Lazy Sod” — there’s no particular logic to the sequencing. Which does give it a bootleg feel.
✔️ Bootleg or official?
Dojo releases are generally treated as bootlegs, but the situation is a little more nuanced than that.
These weren’t underground pressings passed hand to hand. They were distributed through ordinary record shops overseas. At the same time, they weren’t authorised by the band or rights holders in any formal sense.
The more accurate description is semi-legal or semi-official — a category that existed in some numbers during the 1990s. Not quite a bootleg, not quite an official release.
Japan had its own equivalent during the late 1980s and 1990s — semi-legal CDs making use of overseas recordings, covering a range of artists. Not uncommon at the time, for anyone buying music back then.
🧷 Next time
Just arrived: that yellow LP again — Never Mind the Bollocks / 勝手にしやがれ!! 【限定盤】 (UIJY-75385).
More on that soon.
byebye 👋
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