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

actually, for whatever reason, commercial zone is the only PIL album i listen to with any regularity

Went back to Album not long ago, and was surprised by how little I liked it, given how much I liked it in high school. So I guess the answer is Flowers of Romance, which still sounds great. Though the technically correct answer to the thread's title question is Happy.

I voted That What is Not because it was the first time I finished listening to a PiL album and knew right then and there that I never wanted to hear it again. Wasn't a huge fan of 9 though some of it was still pretty good.

Really very fond of Seattle, the guitar part especially is totally fantastic.

9 was the first one i bought - 'disappointed' was huge on postmodern mtv/120 minutes that summer. i own nothing past second edition now (though i always mean to get flowers of romance) beyond an mp3 of 'rise' (and very possibly some other tracks i'm forgetting/never listen to in some kroq end of year chart folder). still enjoy 'seattle' when i hear it on 80s radio stations, 'disappointed' still manages to provoke nostalgia.

I have the original Metal Box (with Keith Levenes autograph) that is now blackened with corrosion. It remains my favorite PiL record. Never really got into anything beyond that. I think I hit the wall with Lydons voice after a while.

Happy, Album, and 9 were the three that I listened to most when I was 13-14 and just getting into "Weird" (at least weird by the standards of pop/rock radio at the time...) music. I haven't heard them in years and I have no real desire to. I remember when That What Is Not came out, I tried to like it, but ultimately decided it was a crappy record and I stopped listening to PIL.

Oddly, I had a very similar reaction to Stoned and Dethroned by JAMC a short while later. It's funny how a bad record can make you stop caring about a band. I still love the early JAMC stuff(especially Up Too High, and the 4 track version of On The Wall...best drum sound ever...) but I haven't heard anything the did after that record to this day.

As I got a little older, I got into the first three PIL records. 2nd edition was on endless repeat on my car cassette deck sometime in the last 90's, and PIL and Flowers were records I picked up around the same time. During my last move(a year ago), I decided to sell my copies of 2nd Edition and Flowers. I don't think they are bad records, I just have no desire to listen to the again. I still own the first one, but never play it.

They are one of those groups who had a lot of potential and just didn't realize it and then got dragged down by careerism. It is a shame that the early line up couldn't get it together and make a few more great albums.

As it stands, IMHO early Jah Wobble records shit all over PIL from a great height. I have infinitely more time for the How Much Are They EP and the Snake Charmer EP. I think a lot of it just boils down to the fact that I really don't give a shit about rock music anymore. There is nothing wrong with rock per se, I am just over it.

Honestly I can't listen to FOR despite much effort: it's 'experimental' in a half-assed way.

I returned This Is What You Want to the record store when it came out, traded it right back in for a Swans LP. So that one.

Did anyone ever hear Lydon's Psycho's Path? (contender for worst album title ever)

yes

it is not good

Did anyone ever hear Lydon's Psycho's Path? (contender for worst album title ever)

Yes.

I thought it was pretty damn good.

Albums: after Metal Box. I sort-of meant to get around to buying Flowers Of Romance, but economic circumstances went against it.

Singles: after "Don't Ask Me".

"Disappointed" in the running for best PIL single though.

Didn't we poll them?

This is not a love poll: Best/Favourite Public Image Limited single Poll

oh yeah, *I* did...

Think I would have voted for 'Home' in that.

also, for those who haven't seen this..:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y161/MarkGrout/DSC00335.jpg

Paris au Printemps remains my fave PiL, btw--even tho i never really listen to it these days (i generally wimp out to the more sedate strains of ye olde Metal Box instead, tbt). but, man, the fucking ambiance of the thing is so beyond oppressive that i don't believe i could ever imagine better (or more appropriate) doomsday scenario music. add to that the fact that the live version of "Poptones" contained therein may well be my favorite live rock + artist/audience interaction performance extant (Wanker: "ATTACK! ATTACK!!"; John: "Wanker-shut-up..."; Audience "?"; John: "I'll walk of this fuckin stage if you keep spitting...DOGGG!"). and that its got a great/sick painted cover "portrait" of Lydon-Levene-Wobble as Jackass-Big Bird-looking thing-hirsute swamp beast(?), too. so, yeah, i really dig that one. and the sound of the original vinyl edition is truly brootal. but in a really good way. (sound on the cd sucks, natch. but then whadja expect?)

off, maybe...

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ILM OTM imo

"Disappointed" still their second best single (after "Public Image")

Anyone thinking of getting back on the bus for <i>This is PiL</i>? Heard the new track linked over at <A HREF="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/song-premiere-public-image-ltd-deeper-water-20120517)";>Rolling Stone</A> and it seems okay enough. Got the <i>One Drop</I> EP for RSD this year but still haven't gotten around to listening to it...was a bit scared, tbh.

Whoops, meant to convert my code. New track is at http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/song-premiere-public-image-ltd-deeper-water-20120517

Yeah, almost bought the e.p.

Should, really...

huh that's pretty good!

Actually I really like that new track!

I don't think I ever got off the bus with PiL, but Lydon's collab with Afrika Bambaataa would make me get off any bus or cliff

After two spins, the new album is half-brilliant, half-not-doing-it-for-me. About the same as "That What Is Not" in terms of hit/miss ratio. I'm particularly enmored with "Lollipop Opera", which feels like a Fall song!

I don't think I ever got off the bus with PiL, but Lydon's collab with Afrika Bambaataa would make me get off any bus or cliff

wtf @ this, "World Destruction" is a killer single

One Drop ep is very good.

Aero otfm. "World Destruction" is all-time, and I bet it'd get a helluva reception in any club

Oh, and the track PiL did on the Dennis Miller show is fantastic:
http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=US#/watch?v=vyOJ91KYh7E

Never got off this bus

Not really.

By the way, they were awesome live in 2010 with some interesting reinventions of old songs. There's been a bunch of live shows from that tour released, anyone have a recommendation on which one is the best?

there is a live show or two on spotify, which I guess were released? they are pretty good, and I liked the new single, will check them out again if they tour since I missed that 2010 show. but yeah, happy through that what is not is some serious dregs that they wisely have avoided in recent setlists.

album is a fucking classic though, I love it (along with Swans Burning World, the other 'laswell jazzbo sellout' production from the same era)

"World Destruction" is the sound of two all-time musicians reaching their nadir at the exact same moment.

there remained an awful lot of nadir to go, man

btw I won't hear a thing said against "Disappointed."

finding it hard to believe that anyone hates 'world destruction'

we live in a world that has made Justin Bieber an international superstar, of course there are people who hate "World Destruction"

oh not you too, Dan

Huh! I'm genuinely surprised it has its fans!

GTFO, World Destruction slays.

this recent anti-WD mood on ILX takes me completely by surprise

Want to boldly say something like 'Album is the only thing involving Laswell I ever need to hear again' but ehh I guess there's Ask The Ages.

what, She's The Boss didn't move you?

D^%E&Y*&^(&*#$^*(

World Destruction is classic - took me ages to figure out what that song was when I kept hearing it on KROQ as a teen

oh not you too, Dan

wtf, no not me too, I'm just saying it's kind of crazy to assume everyone loves a song (unless that song is "Wanna Be Starting Something")

oh and I was kind of surprised to see that their #6 Spotify song was Seattle - a song I like a lot, and maybe I can hear some sort of through-line between Levene's amazing playing on Poptones and McGeoch's lovely cascading guitar figure on Seattle

"Discounting Plastic Box for being more of a box set, Greatest Hits So Far was their one high profile compilation... there are two more-cheapo comps (Gold and Rise: The Collection) which both have kind of weird track listings... I dunno, maybe they work upon listening."

I bought Greatest Hits: So Far back in the mid-1990s, and I remember thinking that the title was optimistic. I have a childhood memory of seeing the video for "Rise", but having no idea who sang it, and then many years later when I got on the internet I found out it was PiL. I also found out that "For America" was by Red Box. Two little mysteries solved by Altavista. I vaguely remember that one of the songs was in Wild Orchid. I'm going to google that. No, apparently not. But the soundtrack does have "Promised Land" by the Mark One version of Underworld. Perhaps I was thinking of that.

I remember playing Quake with Greatest Hits in the CDROM drive. "Careering" fits the game surprisingly well. I bought the albums on CD gradually, including a re-release of Metal Box that came on CD in a little tin with some really cheap foam as padding. My recollection is that the first album was John Lydon's version of McCartney, e.g. he wanted something in the shops as quickly as possible so he could declare his independence. The second album was awesome. Flowers of Romance was at the very least interesting. The Paris record was a waste of time. This is What You Want started and ended well. I remember hearing "Order of Death" in Hardware, and it's apparently the end credits music for the remake of System Shock that came out a couple of years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIV_WiU34M

I also bought Album, and I had no desire to go any further. My understanding is that everything that follows sounds like Album but with worse tunes. To this day I have to be reminded that 9 exists. It's odd how some bands have a consistent member who isn't a musician - I'm thinking of The Fall - who nonetheless manage to produce a string of musically interesting albums. And yet Lydon apparently made Psycho's Path by himself on a laptop so perhaps he is musically gifted after all. He must have an enormous musical schwanstucker! That goes without saying.

"Ig maud blip", that's what the monster says in the novelisation of Young Frankenstein when he tries to sing "putting on the ritz". That was one of the few books we had in the house when I was a kid, so I read it a lot. Ig maud blip. It's strange to think of Public Image Ltd being a thing in the United States. Lydon had a militantly British singing voice and the US had its own set of punk icons.

anyway just thinking out loud - after spending some time with Momentary Lapse of Reason recently I think my new vibe is finding pleasure in bands' compromised 80s incarnations

Easily done there - it's the Floyd's Balearic beat/Chris Rea album

I did have a lot of love for Happy/9-era, it's a period that interested me a lot as a teen because it all seemed very unacknowledged, but it's been a good while since I've heard those albums in full so relistens await.

strange as it is Ashley, but Album, Happy?, and 9 were the band’s commercial peak in the US. In summer 1989 there was even a PIL, New Order, and Sugarcubes joint tour of American outdoor amphitheaters, with rotating headliners. wish I’d gone!

schoolboy knowing only / loving TIWYWTIWYG and Rise

oops i mean Order Of Death first there

xxp those albums seem like the perfect encapsulation of the poppy bush interzone

I also bought Album, and I had no desire to go any further. My understanding is that everything that follows sounds like Album but with worse tunes. To this day I have to be reminded that 9 exists

Album doesn't sound like its two immediate follow-ups: it doesn't sound like anything else, not even contemporaneous Laswell productions. The follow-ups sound like INXS.

omigod I'm watching Marty Supreme as I wrote the last post and...."Order of Death" pops up.

Seattle and The Body do not sound like INXS c’mon Fred

The brittle funk? They sure do. And I meant my analogy as a compliment.

inxs were more melodic

That's true, though I can imagine Hutchence wailing through "Disappointed."

closer to Max Q than INXS

musically I hear it, vocally no, which is what I assume Alfred meant

Yup

anyway I had the same experience most of us probably did, which is that I liked Happy and 9 when they came out, then deciced they sucked, and now I appreciate them fine for what they are. And even though the newer PIL albums were pretty cool on first listen, I find myself listening to Happy and 9 more than I ever listen to them (I still listen to Album more than any of them)

Everything up to and including Album, which sounds better to me all the time, even aspects I don't always love (Vai's shredding at points for inst) I can at least appreciate in a "wow you are really going for it huh?" way

I've tried with everything after & on paper that band should be great but...eh Some of the reunion stuff hasn't been too bad, some of it is just awful though

This thread also inspired me to pull out Plastic Box which is such a frustrating thing becuz it never can decide if it wants to be a solid career overview or a collection of alternate mixes/rarities and ends up settling on "the records but the songs are out of sequence"