Baton Rouge: The Kingfish Ballroom
DOA/Sex Pistols Tour Chapter 13: January 9, 1978
Looking back on the Sex Pistols 1978 US Tour, I remember having the most fun at the show in Baton Rouge. This time there wasn’t a riot over the tickets before the show, and the audience wasn’t there to murder the band during the show. It was a good performance in front of an appreciative audience.
It seemed that a lot of Sex Pistols and punk rock fans showed up along with a lot of curiosity seekers. People had fun! The Kingfish Ballroom was a good place to watch the band: There was a dance floor on one half of the club, down a few steps from the large bar area, so the sight lines were excellent. The club, although it wasn’t large, was spacious enough to accommodate everyone. This was a show I decided to stop being a journalist and enjoyed being a punk rock fan watching a great band.
This was their fourth show of the U.S. tour, and the third I attended. The band, Warner Brothers security detail and other people on the tour all were getting used to seeing us, but it seemed like a lot of them wondered “How the fuck are these kids from a small fanzine traveling on the entire tour?” (Once they found out? Uh-oh!)
This was Roberta Bayley’s second Sex Pistols performance, and the first time she was able to get close to the stage. (Randy’s Rodeo was, well… You know.)
The Kingfish Ballroom had one of the smallest stages of the tour, and the lighting (as you can see) was a bit weird at times. Roberta took some amazing photos. The image of Sid Vicious below is one of my favorites.
A lot of people put down Sid Vicious because he wasn’t a great bass player, but who goes to a punk rock show to listen to the bass guitarist? The thing about Sid was that he had amazing charisma. He was a true star and a great stage performer. He was fun to watch! He really put his heart into every performance. He was truly the “Punk Elvis.”
This is one of the best recordings from the tour:
What’s a bit weird about the Kingfish Ballroom is that Huey Long (governor of Louisiana from 1928-32, US Senator from 1932 until his assassination in 1935), was known as “The Kingfish,” and the Kingfish Ballroom logo resembled him more than a just a little bit.
Huey Long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long
I decided to watch the Sex Pistols premiere on national television before the show. This was the first time most people in this country got to see them perform, since their much-hyped appearance on Saturday Night Live was cancelled.
Before the show aired, the local TV news show promoted the upcoming Variety ‘77: The Year in Entertainment program. This was a typical example of the coverage the band was getting from the mainstream media:
NEWSMAN:
One man was so angry after watching the Sex Pistols on TV that he kicked in the set! What do you think of that?
WEATHERMAN:
I think I’d kick in my TV set too, if I had to watch those jerks!
It was weird to see the Sex Pistols lumped in with Groucho Marx, Bing Crosby and Farrah Fawcett and being hyped as if they were the biggest stars on Planet Earth. They appeared in the very last segment, so they were hyped throughout the entire show. I can still remember Telly “Kojak” Savalas smiling at the camera and saying “Coming up: The Sex Pistols!” Finally he introduced a video clip of a Sex Pistols performance (which featured Glen Matlock instead of Sid Vicious):
TELLY SAVALAS:
Now, here’s that most controversial new group that you’ve all heard about: They’re the leaders of the punk-rock pack! Banned from English radio for singing “God Saves The Queen, she’s not a human being.”
(Laughter)
And here they are, singing the song that got them banned: The Sex Pistols!
At this point, it was so exciting for me to be on the tour: History was being made and punk rock was hitting a new peak of unpopularity, bad news and excitement. The tour was wildly successful from a media/hype viewpoint.
NEXT: After the show in Baton Rouge…
