Public Image Limited : When did you get off the bus?

"The parts on 'Memories' where the track completely changes sonically as a result of two different mixes of the same track being edited together is such a genius production decision."

Lester Bangs mentioned that in his review of the album:
https://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES/REVIEWS/MBox_Bangs.html

"I read in NME that (Memories) was directed at the "Mod Revival" in England but then I don't believe anything I read in NME anymore. Whether or not it applies to "Happy Days", Grease, all the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call "the fifties" or "the sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix I for one will still be listening to Lydon: "You make me feel ashamed / Enacting attitudes / Remember ridicule? / It should be clear by now / Your words are useless, full of excuses, false confidence / Someone has used you well / Used you well."

Then, on the album version, the whole sound shifts, into a new and hotter realm. It's something I have never in my life heard anyone do in the middle of a track, and as the grooves begin to burn themselves away he resumes: "I could be wrong / It could be hate / As far as I can see clinging desperately / No personality dragging on and on and on and on / I think you're slightly late / Slightly late...""

It's striking - the whole mix goes through a phaser, or something like that. I remember hearing "Careering" somewhere, so I picked up The Greatest Hits, So Far, which is in chronological order, with "Don't Ask Me" at the end. And then gradually the first few albums. The debut is a throwaway with one classic single, Metal Box is excellent, Flowers of Romance sounds like an ancestor of some of the stuff on Peter Gabriel's Real World Records, and then the discography gets very bitty. About the only thing I remember of "Warrior" is that it was in Wild Orchid.

I remember "Order of Death" from Hardware. The rest of This is What You Want isn't very good. I haven't heard anything from 1990 onwards, apart from "Acid Drops", which didn't enthuse me. Given Lydon's willingness to work with top studio talent on Album it's fascinating to imagine him collaborating with Peter Gabriel. It might have worked! There's a muezzin-esque aspect to his vocal delivery at times, as if he was delivering a call to prayer. I can imagine the soundtrack of Last Temptation of Christ with John Lydon warbling all over it.

I can't tell if he decided at some point in the 1990s that PiL was a joke novelty band, or not. Or if he was ever serious about making it a going concern. He had no trouble generating publicity but it never seemed to benefit the band. And yet Rise was obviously intended to sell a lot of records.

this thread revive has sent me down a pil 1983-1990 rabbit hole

some stray observations

the 1983/4 “cabaret” band were probably better than their reputation - and maybe the neutered sound of Live In Tokyo isn’t a fair indication of their sound - like, there is a bit of rockin’ overplaying but they generally do a decent take on the material - this footage is pretty great and i would totally have loved to see this show, Pistols cover and all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr5SBwMfmZA

the interviews here are very good reading if (as i do) you enjoy philosophical reflections and/or score settling by musicians who had a minor part in a major band

i had no idea Robert Poss was almost in PiL!

i knew Alan Dias wrote Don’t Ask Me but that doesn’t make it a good single?! i was a very unlikely rabid teenage PiL fan in 1989 who was totally into the current line-up - when it came out I couldn’t understand how it was the same band. Dias says he hates how soft it sounded in the interviews linked, would be keen to hear his demo.

John McGeoch absolutely lifts all the material he contributed to in PiL but he also got up to some slightly surprising stuff in the late 1980s, lots of little whammy bar semi-metal peacocking - i guess he was kinda replacing Steve Vai so it kinda makes sense that he’d go a bit in that direction - still love him heaps

(the interview - via link in post above - with Nick Launay about Flowers of Romance is fantastic)

had no idea that Malachi Favors played on album!

I remember when "Disappointed" was on 120 Minutes a lot, and that may have been the first I knew of the band, tbh. I would have been ... 14 or so? Never bought that record, though. Weirdly, I do remember the New Order/PiL/Sugarcubes tour that summer (didn't go), and def. got into New Order and Sugarcubes, but again, not PiL. A couple of years later I finally got Second Edition and liked that a lot, but found myself gravitating more toward whatever Wobble and Atkins were doing elsewhere. Invaders of the Heart, Ministry, Killing Joke, etc. Not sure I ever bought a PiL album besides Second Edition, come to think of it, though I did like the odd song or two. I also saw the band on its reunion tour in 2010 but was not feeling it at all.

Funny enough, I did see the documentary, which has some incredible footage and good interviews but is still pretty boilerplate. The thing about Lydon is that he by his very nature sucks all the focus onto himself, always, which can be a bit exhausting. The end credits feature, for some reason, him hanging out with John Waters and meeting Ian MacKaye, and those fleeting moments made me wish for a movie that wasn't just another long episode of the Johnny Lydon show. He's always going on about how difficult this or that situation was, or this or that person was, but as if it wasn't totally obvious decades ago, *he's* clearly the difficult one. Again, by design. He might mock Malcolm McLaren's love of situationism, but Lydon embodies that more than almost anyone else, on an epic scale, all by himself.

What a strange recurrence - a song for Nora, who's on a journey into Alzheimer's, offered as a potential Eurovision entry for Ireland.
A beautiful sentiment but I find almost nothing in the song to enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc5v7FHx5Do

it doesn’t really feel like it belongs under the PiL banner, but given that my answer to the poll question is “1989”, i wish him all the best with wherever he wants to drive the bus

Love Hawaii, have been coming back to it every week or so.

this new album is better than I was expecting.

I keep meaning to give it a listen