PiL's Flowers of Romance: C/D

(Suddenly dozens of "Flowers of Romance" fans sell the album back.)

So our votes cancel each other out.

Anyhoo, classic. Been listening to it for 20 years, never gets old. Mood music, if you're in a really bad mood.

Lotsa discussion here as well:
Metal Box -- does anyone hate this as much as me?

reptilians
i won't let you in
if he knew we were here i'm sure he'd let us in
no i won't let you in

Did I mention my The Flowers of Romance-as-breakup-album theory?

Here's a good interview with the engineer. Everything you ever wanted to know about recording The Flowers of Romance:
http://www.fodderstompf.com/INTERVIEWS/nick.html

Stewart, Stewart. The more you listen the better it gets.

i've always thought the first record was Metal Box and the later were this one.

got this on vinyl finally!

this record is an excellent soundtrack for being in The Shed (TM Hank Rollins in Get In the Van)

the first time I heard "four enclosed walls," at the age of 16 or so, it made me so physically uncomfortable I wanted to jump out of my skin

this pretty much makes Metal Box sound like Look What the Cat Dragged In

Oh my god, people are reviving PIL threads. I feel so lucky. Must find this on my iPod, now.

once 2nd Edition got fully canonized as The One To Get (not wedded to this opinion but as far as I understand it, that's considered the canonical PiL album) I was really surprised because Flowers of Romance always seemed like such an incredibly brave and original sort of dysphoria - it's got that album-as-cinema feel, I love 2nd Ed don't get me wrong but Flowers is just its own thing

"Under the House" is/remains some kinda ultimate genius but the whole album is up there too. Maybe there really was nowhere else for him to go after it.

Yeah, it's a great song and performance, as is the title track, but a lot of this sounds unformed to me. The songs map out a host of possible beginnings.

(and I see I've posted the same thought 15 times on this thread. Carry on).

I don't know, I think a lot of that has to do with the obvious lack of Wobble -- his bass is 'supposed' to be there, it isn't, therefore it seems unfinished. Taking it on its own terms isn't easy (maybe isn't entirely feasible?).

I've always wanted to write at length about "This Is Not a Love Song," which to me represents the distillation of the half-formed ideas, bile, and uneasy accomodation with the recording studio begun on FOR.

yeah but it's too ambitious. Flowers of Romance is so...sort of willfully middling. Destructive toddler in a room with nothing to destroy, not part of any dialogue that's really going on. "This Is Not a Love Song" is great but is swinging for the fences. FOR is playing in the toybox, that's part of its appeal.

Happy with the PIL love, here. Thanks John D. and everyone else too.

I've always wanted to write at length about "This Is Not a Love Song," which to me represents the distillation of the half-formed ideas, bile, and uneasy accomodation with the recording studio begun on FOR.

interesting to hear a funk/disco capitulation as the "distillation" of FOR's sonic entropy

FOR is answering a question nobody asked, TINALS is just asking "do you wanna dance?"

and I do like this is what you want... this is what you get, but it's hard for me to hear it as anything other than a retreat from the lip of the abyss lydon et al were peering into on metal box/FOR

that's not a judgmental statement either, it's hard to live longterm on the lip of the abyss without tipping over into it

maybe this also explains why I think liars are totally great
-- dar1a g (daria.il...), October 12th, 2006 5:13 PM. (daria g)

i've always thought the first record was Metal Box and the later were this one.

― jaxon (jaxon), Saturday, October 14, 2006 1:09 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

when pretzel walrus interviewed liars right after the second album came out, i suggested he ask them about whether FoR was a touchstone for their recording, and i think they were like WHOA WE LOVE THAT RECORD

it was a weird world PiL was creating/inhabiting... I think of them on american bandstand playing their bizarro metal box art rock in the middle of a crowd full of dancing people vs. lydon performing "this is not a love song" for the crowd on TOTP in a much more passive-spectator mode

there was some active examination of the provocation / reaction impulse during MB/FOR - "the method is the madness" - but that dissolved into more classic forms of the entertainer & the entertained on TIWYWTIWYG

and you can hear it in the music

clearly one is going to be more easily digestible than the other

pretzel walrus interviewed liars? awesome.

FoR still the coolest album ever made IMHO, inc the photo on the cover. gorgeous

FOR is no leap into the abyss – it's Kabuki theatre, with lots of yuks (except for the title track).

interesting to hear a funk/disco capitulation as the "distillation" of FOR's sonic entropy

FOR is answering a question nobody asked, TINALS is just asking "do you wanna dance?"

One man's funk/disco capitulation is another man's funk/disco distillation of J. Rotten Lydon's sincerity and bad faith before it curdled into cynicism. ("I'm crossing over into enterprise" is one of my favorite Lydon bon mots).

kabuki has plenty of abyss I would say

It's hard to notice through the leering, though.

back dat abyss up

yeah Flowers sounds like it's all up in the abyss's guts IMO

I don't think it's as good as Metal Box...but I think it's close and perhaps even braver.

God, Lydon is so unhinged on this with the weird UK yowl half gone arabic...crazy ass vocal performance....

I know, I know, but can we see it on You Tube?

what, the abyss?

now that you mention it, watching youtube *is* kind of like staring into the abyss

when you stare into the youtube, the youtube also stares into you

youtube comments make the abyss seems like caddyshack

There really should be a DVD of all of JR's TOTP Appearances.

Definitely my favorite PiL album, by a wide margin. I love Wobble elsewhere (like with Czukay) but don't find I miss him with Ltd.

Starts off Classic, but palls after a while, Lydon's melodic limitations are rather exposed

tevs geir jr!

LOL, but it is amelodic and rhythm dominate, to coin a phrase

pulled this out for the first time in a long while cos of this thread, it wails!

all the songs seems like they're a year long even tho they're all ~3 mins, but then the endings all seem very abrupt

Levine's electronics on this record are superb.

I don't know, I think a lot of that has to do with the obvious lack of Wobble -- his bass is 'supposed' to be there, it isn't, therefore it seems unfinished. Taking it on its own terms isn't easy (maybe isn't entirely feasible?).

was thinking about this thread of missing wobble - I love wobble's playing on metal box but I'm not sure if his bass is 'supposed' to be there on the flowers of romance?

always thought both "albatross" and "four enclosed walls" were perfect lead off tracks on their respective albums, laying down the rules of engagement. "four enclosed walls" is just drums + vocals + odd noises, and it's a complete song - when I listen to it and I don't think there's anything missing, in fact it's quite perfect.

I only pull this out every once in a while, but every time I do, it really hits the spot.

35 years old today

So fucking good

35 years old today

Wow, really?! I had no idea when I revived. . .

this is embarrassing, but i scored a cheap copy of flowers of romance yesterday, then got home and realized i bought the 12" single. no wonder it was $8. :(

I saw DJ Shadow do his "pass me a record and I'll mix it" routine at Other Music a few years ago. Somebody passed him Flowers of Romance, and he didn't get anywhere. After a couple minutes of fussing with the crossfader, he handed it back, flustered, and said something like "I'm not into that."

surprised he couldn't do anything with Atkins' drums on "Four Enclosed Walls"...I mean, that bass drum

/I saw DJ Shadow do his "pass me a record and I'll mix it" routine at Other Music a few years ago. Somebody passed him Flowers of Romance, and he didn't get anywhere. After a couple minutes of fussing with the crossfader, he handed it back, flustered, and said something like "I'm not into that."/

surprised he couldn't do anything with Atkins' drums on "Four Enclosed Walls"...I mean, that bass drum

I was thinking the same!!

My mate was looking for a nice phono amp for his system and brought a bunch of records to the store to test out, of which one was this. It was a sweet setup, probably a $20-30k demo system in one of those acoustically treated rooms, no angles, just a couch, etc.

This record sounded ungodly.

As if I had never heard it before, my reaction was "so THIS is what John was going for!"

Not that you need that kind of environment to appreciate it, but it helped reveal a different aspect.

It's not really a good album but I appreciate it as gesture. Context matters too: at last night's Pearl Jam show it played -- LOUDLY -- over the PA system.

it = title track

I remember buying this on the first day and taking it home and playing it.

How to make an album that's minimal, but huge at the same time.

I was marginally disappointed that the "Pied Piper" lineup didn't do more stuff, but then PIL have a whole bunch of "didn't do a lot" about them, up to "Commercial Zone"

It took close to 30 years, but this album finally clicked for me.