I got you in my camera: the ghost of Sid Vicious visits Coventry

Can you guess where this was taken? Er, yes, that would be Coventry's lovely train station. Plus, to the right an ugly red and grey thing with a raw "Coventry Station" sign attached to it. Because the real station is the low-slung white modernist building on the left. The one on the right is a recent addition, part car park, part pointless appendage. So yes, it's welcome to low-key modernist Coventry, but also take this punch in the face from garish postmodernist, lost-the-plot Coventry. 

Anyway, the real reason for this rather crowded photo is - of course - to step back in time to this ...

 ... aha, yes, same place, different times, man. It's the famous (semi-famous) Dennis Morris shot of the Sex Pistols in Coventry for their 17 December 1977 gig, what was to be a tired show from a band already on borrowed time. So yes, I'm doing (in reverse) what I did with Morris's box men photo in Club Row in Shoreditch. Returning to the scene (I happened to be getting a train from Coventry yesterday). Apart from the pretty obvious fact that I ain't no award-winning photographer like Morris - and so my quick cameraphone snap is much less good than his Rotten/Vicious/other bloke photo - it's quite striking how recent "improvements" to the station just make it look cluttered and uninteresting. The squat concrete car park to the right of the '77 photo at least had an understated low-rise solidity which its over-large glass-and-steel-panels replacement totally lacks. Instead, this now rather pretentiously dominates the scene, its shouty white-on-red block caps "COVENTRY STATION" completely out of synch with the calm chic of the original station. This calm chic:

A design for ... leaving: Platform 1 still looks good

Hmm, maybe Coventry train station's problem was that it was always too modest. With its white tiles, its varnished wood ceilings and quietly confident double-height glass booking hall, it never really shouted at you. More, gently murmured. Meanwhile, for years now the city authorities have been allowing the vandalisation-by-development of the restrained modernist civic beauty of Coventry (see Owen Hatherley's splenetic diatribe against some of this architectural carnage in his A New Kind Of Bleak), and as time passes the Morris Sex Pistols photo looks ever more like an image from a lost Coventry of the future. There's (obviously) no future in England's dreaming, but is there a future for places like Coventry? Architecturally, maybe not so much. The redesigned pedestrian "gateway" from the station to the city centre is good - winding paths, trees, landscaped grassed areas, some sown with wild flowers. But the bland this-could-be-anywhere non-vision of the incoming City Centre South is just more anti-modernist vandalism with a retail-friendly face. Back in 1977, the Sex Pistols were playing at Mr George, a nightclub in the once-characterful, well-designed Lower Precinct. Now housed in a pointless - and ugly - glass atrium thing, this - like most of the modernist city centre - has suffered years of neglect. Music-wise, you could almost say the same thing, with Coventry marooned as a not-very-successful non-boom town, for decades unable to shake off its Two Tone heyday. But hey, I've said all this before, and no, I've got to stop talking the place down. Some venues are now trying to inject a bit of musical life into the city (principally LTB Showrooms/PVC and Just Dropped In), and even the abomination which was Coventry City of Culture hasn't entirely killed off its creativity. If John Lydon (and even the ghost of Sid Vicious?) returned to Coventry these days they'd just about recognise the modernist heart of the city amongst all the add-on dross. And then - no doubt - they'd want to check out some live music. If they needed some advice on where to go tell them to get in touch with me. I'll probably have a few suggestions ... 

PS: I reckon the stare of the bearded guy in this photo from the Mr George gig is a lost vision of the future. This extremely non-punk-looking person is right there in the maelstrom of the overcrowded sweatbox Sex Pistols show (the bootleg features Lydon repeatedly asking the audience "can you please fucking move back"), but he's also momentarily looking at the camera (I got you in my camera), staring into the future. Call me deluded, but I think his beard gives him away as a civil engineering student from the old Coventry Polytechnic (a bit like like that other Sex Pistols fan, David Parker). He's on a punk rock night out but his main interest is designing a Coventry fit for the 21st century. What ever happened to him?

All cowboys together: no future for you or him (pic: Dennis Morris, I think)