public image limited - OPO

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