public image limited - OPO

"POPTONES"

Alternates would include "Careering," "Death Disco," or (for purely romanticized teenhood reasons) "Disappointed."

yep. I would.

A friend of mine just saw them up in Boston (I think), said they were really good live. And I just saw them on Fallon, playing I think a new song? It wasn't terrible.

Nah, it's from Album. All the fucking good songs to pick from and they picked "Bags"?! *barf*

Ahh, I don't have Album. Now I feel dumb.

I can kind of figure why they chose it, though. It really gives the band a workout and makes them sound pretty aggro, and if you think that's good, you'll buy a ticket to go see them play "Public Image" and "Careering" and whatever other songs you actually care about.

careering

There's actually a performance of "Public Image" on the NBC site: http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2010/05/web-exclusive-public-image-ltd-plays-public-image/

wish he would mellow out and do a shitty spoken word album or something

"Religion Part One" for you then...

:)
that clip ain't tooo bad but the dancing girlies in the background made it worse... i've never seen or have any idea who jimmy fallon is tho

just saw them last weekend. The band was terrific - if they did a "Pil Does Metal Box" tour I'd see it tomorrow - but the late '80s stretch of the setlist was pretty ridiculous. I know they have to acknowledge 9 for all the late '80s college radio DJs or whatever, but they could have played something with a beat like "Seattle" instead of "Warrior" into "Disappointed." But the big blurt of extended Metal Box grooves following the "Love Song" opener - would see that anytime. And John was in really great voice.

Dude had a good take on playing a casino - mocking without sounding like he was wrestling with the implications Cobain-style. Most of his banter was fun, though at one point he shouted "i'm not a gambling man, but I'd bet Sarah Palin's book is shit!" and I'm not sure if he expected to blow someone's mind or what.

Oh was it *your* casino, da croupier?

pardon?

haha sorry forgot my screenname

A buddy says they were unexpectedly awesome at Coachella.

I saw some stuff on their website, it looked/sounded great.

I did see PIL in their "cabaret" phase, 1984 or thereabouts...

Those live CD things might actually be worth the effort!

"Poptones"

"No Birds Do Sing"

still "Home"

"Rise."

"memories"

"Rise."

― Filmmaker, Author, Radio Host Stephen Baldwin (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

^

Second Edition rules all, but "Rise" gets under my skin most often.

"Poptones"

― Myonga Vön Bontee, Tuesday, May 18, 2010 9:34 AM

"Death Disco"

Another vote for "Rise" but it's part of a killer one-two punch with "FFF", gotta say.

Tons of good stuff here. I'll go with 'Albatross.'

It's a boring, predicatable 'Public Image' or 'Careering' for me

Lives in a house, in a very big house in the Country (butter) LA

Sorry OPO

Public Image for the Levene/Wobble early gaze effort

Annalisa off Live in Tokyo, the bright spot in an otherwise poor album (though brilliant technical recording).

No votes for Flowers of Romance title track, "Under the House," or (someone has to say it) "The Order of Death" yet?

I think "Death Disco" is fantastic, and it probably would be my top pick.

hey, i was gonna say "Under The House"! that and "Banging The Door" are my all-time fave PiL trax. not that i have any beef with the entirety of Metal Box, mind...

btw kudos on having the board's most disturbing display name

"Go Back"

omigod I just heard "FAT CHANCE MOTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEL!!!"

Er, "Hotel" isn't it? See, while I understand the preference for the stuff from their first 3 albums it's short-sighted to outright dismiss the rest of the catalog. Even that last album, which sank like a stone, has some good stuff on it like "Cruel". John doing alt-rock always had an insidious feel to it anyway and some of the new versions of stuff like "Warrior" on the tour are fantastic, I really hope we get a good live album from the US tour.

I'm very fond of "Disappointed," the best INXS track ever recorded.

Must be a lot better than PiL's "Disappointed," then.

I taped the "Late Show" performance of "Disappointed" back in the day.

Must be on utube.

The version of "Covered" live on the Dennis Miller show (complete with old-timey CD longbox!) is great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyOJ91KYh7E

D:

crazy that there's been more years between that video and now than between that video and the sex pistols

Not enough years between the pants in that video and us imo.

nu track

http://whatisa.tumblr.com/post/17646752576/public-image-ltd-one-drop-first-new-song-in

this is not my OPO

I just grabbed a PIL thread, tbh

But I DO like this track. I had zero interest in a new PIL album until now.

My OPO is the very long version of "Death Disco / Swan Lake", as on the "£ british notes best" DVD.

Or, that bootleg 12" single..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/feb/13/jah-wobble-keith-levene-metal-box

Apparently, Lydon's threatening a lawsuit if these gigs come off. And so it goes...

Keith Levene has passed:

RIP KEITH LEVENE

— Jah Wobble (@realjahwobble) November 12, 2022

RIP to one of the greatest

Otm

We talk about the "influence" of a lot of players, but there are so many sounds that Keith Levene pioneered on his three albums with PIL. The rhythmically picked false harmonics of Death Disco/Swan Lake that stay just this side of consonant, the incessantly rolling arpeggios of Poptones, the phased/spazzed out metal of Theme, and Beefheart-ian chords on Graveyard. And those are the just the guitar pieces. Levene also was behind the reverse orchestral and choral clusters of Under the House (and most of of the music on Flowers of Romance IIRC), the quacked All of My Love strings of Radio 4, rising ominous drone of Careering. Whole bands and scenes came out of each of these sounds. RIP, my dude.

Yeah, I just mentioned to someone - we weren’t ‘friends’ we were band mates - it’s entirely different. Much less and very much more at the same time.

— Martin Atkins (@marteeeen) November 12, 2022

I've never heard Commercial Zone, but I'd been listening to This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get before this news. Though Levene didn't perform on the record, there's a lot of stylistic continuity with The Flowers of Romance, just with cleaned-up sonics. Of course, the Metal Box lineup had an incredible group dynamic that they weren't going to be able to recapture, but I wonder if they would have become a more commercial act even if Levene had remained.

Well, the hit single version of "This is not a love song" was Levene aplenty, and the rest of "Commercial Zone" is very like that, yes.

Those late Levine-era live shows with Atkins and Pete Jones definitely feel like they are walking back towards a more conventional pop place - like the Ritz show was a peak of their confrontational era - I remember being quite surprised by how tight and crowd-pleasing they sounded on the bootlegs I have heard

in my levine memorial listening i dug into the expanded metal box last night - didn’t know there was a long version of radio 4 - simultaneously fascinating and disappointing to hear this, one of those ones where the LP edit is just perfect in the way it hints at extra dimensions to the song that are just out of reach

I need to dig it out but I've got the reworking of Commercial Zone he did on privately released CD-R in 2014 somewhere. Should be relatively obvious, I seem to remember it has some spray painted 12" cardboard in lieu of a sleeve.

Collab with Supreme dropping on Thursday, some nice pieces here:

https://i.imgur.com/Dqjo5vUl.jpg

xpost: https://www.discogs.com/release/7023459-Keith-Levene-CZ2014

That's the one

new album tomorrow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_World

UK/Europe tour Sept/oct 2023 https://www.pilofficial.com/tour/

I’ve liked most of what I’ve heard of this so far.

yeah this album is good

They're on tour again, including a stop in Philly (where I be).

Never saw the band in the day.

Is it worth going?

The equation means adding in points for "seeing important band before that is not possible" but also deducting points for the band not having essential members anymore and of course for Lydon being a wanker.

Discuss...

I saw this online but not sure if its accurate-

Name Years active Instruments
John Lydon 1978–1992 2009–present lead vocals keyboards synthesisers violin saxophone percussion
Robert "Lu" Edmonds 1986–1988 2009–present guitar saz banjo backing vocals keyboards
Scott Firth 2009–present bass keyboards synthesisers backing vocals
Mark Roberts 2025–present drums

Lu Edmonds is also a Mekon sometimes.

John Lydon on Donald Trump: “I’ll never like him. I’ll vote for him, but that’s about it”

https://www.nme.com/news/music/john-lydon-on-donald-trump-ill-never-like-him-ill-vote-for-him-but-thats-about-it-3839343

xp I saw them the last time they came to NYC (Brooklyn Steel) and they were awesome. I showed up very early to secure a spot right in front of Lydon, and I was taken aback by how shy he would be between songs. But once a number started up, he changed, and the first time he shot a look right into my eyes (for no particular reason except that I was standing in his line of sight) it was really unnerving how intense he looked.

I should add, mercifully, he didn't spew any MAGA nonsense during the show. (I don't recall him mentioning anything political outside of what he might've sang from their back catalog.)

So yeah, I guess worth going to see Lydon onstage. I saw him with PIL, with Minor Threat opening way back when; and much later in a reunited Sex Pistols

and Lu does a great job on the guitar stuff, including the Levene material

I want to say I saw them around 2012, and was sort of underwhelmed. Lydon is one of one, of course, but I thought the Jah Wobble Metal Box Revisited tour last year or so was better.

dude is such a tosser but I might relent and go to this anyway, missed the last few tours but have seen live clips and this band smokes and makes that diverse catalog sound really cohesive.

Which dinosaur would you choose?

https://imgur.com/a/YsnUsPT

https://imgur.com/a/YsnUsPT

I'm tempted, I've never seen Lydon in any capacity, though bummed Bruce Smith isn't drumming for them any more, gotta feeling tickets are going to be available up until the last minute locally so I can probably hold off on making my decision

The equation means adding in points for "seeing important band before that is not possible" but also deducting points for the band not having essential members anymore and of course for Lydon being a wanker.

Pretty much the same reasons why I got the ol'gang together to go see PIL at Reading Uni back in 1983.

I want to say I saw them around 2012, and was sort of underwhelmed. Lydon is one of one, of course, but I thought the Jah Wobble Metal Box Revisited tour last year or so was better.

I saw Wobble on the Rising Above Bedlam tour with Justin Adams on guitar in 1992 and we high fived him after the show – my friend said we’d been “touched by the hand of Jah.”

Wobble played my local folk festival in 2001 except he was booked to be the final act on the Saturday night when people were drunk and just wanted something to dance to. It really didn't go down well (T-shirts saying 'I'm Alan Briars and I booked Jah Wobble to play the [etc etc]' went round the following year) but I wish I was old enough to appreciate it.

I also saw PiL in 2012 and I remember them being great, though I was in a bit of a PiL phase at the time and was lapping up that new album I've barely heard since.

my interest in their last new album, which I declared "good" up above, vanished after I finished listening to it. who needs a new PIL album, really? that said I haven't made my mind up about seeing them when they come through town. He's a twat but I do like the tunes and I find him less offensive than Morrissey, who I refuse to see

I "got off the bus" with "Happy?" which, production-wise was v.muddy but did get "This is PIL" with the extra live dvd, worth having but very long.

Good luck to him, but that's all I needed...

I like 9, possibly due to it coming out during the time Soto calls the "poppy bush interzone" when I liked the vast majority of radio-friendly 'alternative' music.