How weird what the years can slowly do to you.
But sometimes change is a good thing.
The rest, is just simply in blank territory.
Out from the alcove of the Sex Pistols, John Lydon was on a mission; to make music that was both extremely noncommercial and left a signature worthy of two special fingers ("..i.. ..i.." this are the fingers i was referring to. and if you get what i'm talking about, well, eff' you too.) to the industry that tore both his music into a soulless enterprise and his well-being with the death of his dear friend, Sid Vicious, and a betrayal of his manager, Malcolm McLaren. So he restarted his music perspective with a new band, Public Image Limited, that welcomed new ideas + some innovation and rejected old traditions. While old fans and the media was expecting another incarnation of his Sex Pistols, ol' Johnny wanted to get one thing clear: "Punk is Dead." To this day, we ultimately know this statement is false! But in his eyes, punk became nothing but an old ghost. The composition off people in the band that contribute to the band differently, is not only limited to the people playing the instruments, mainly due to the fact that Johnny did not consider his band a "band", but more of a corporation, a business if you will. Why? To probably point out how the industry is so infatuated with money and its effort to control the market, in contrast to the anarchist outfits from the Pistols. He went the all out to prove this theory to the household people, but in the end, no one ever got the message.
There first single, "Public Image" lashed out at his old manager, and left old traces of its punk form, but when its debut came out, "First Issue" you could point and picked out its innovation, even though this album is noted for its great lack of effort. It was reasonably O.k. for a debut album, but it was later their artistic abilities were able to grow. What is considered to be their magnum opus (which by all means, it is, hands down) is their next album, the strange and quite eerie "Metal Box." A personal favorite, it was proven to be a landmark to the post-rock, post-punk, and experimental rock genres as its legacy branched far out then its initial release.
Hmmmmmmm....O.k. I'm probably giving Johnny too much credit here...
The bands sound is not greatly created by Johnny himself, but a great amount of innovation came from the founding members. Keith Levene, one of the founding members of the Clash, created a new sound from using Travis Bean guitars, which have aluminum necks that gave off a unique, "metallic" guitar sound. He often contribute very tight guitar sounds that was very clear cut and sharp enough to feel the knife rising upon your listening ear. The bassist, Jah Wobble, was surprisingly new at playing bass but unlike Sid Vicious, he was actually good at playing the bass. He founded his signature bass playing, which was hailed as "impossibly deep" by early contemporary reviews. All of them, were great control-freaks, all wanting their sound to go in a different directions then the other, which would later would be the cause of their slow decay. The first one to go was Wobble as he became frustrated with creative decisions and darken by all of the band members (including himself) drug usage. This left Johnny and Levene alone to create this underrated masterpiece.
Somewhere in late 1980, the songs written for "Flowers of Romance" proved to be another step in experimental music making. Levene's signature guitar sound was all but missing, as he traded his guitar for synthesizers and drums. He stretched his guitar sounds with the use of reverse taping and shaky distortion. Lydon garnered any instrument he could find that could just bang on or just recklessly play on. But the main distinction of this album is it violent and haunting drumming and percussion playing. For example, "Under the House" is comprised of relentless drum banging, while somewhere in the middle is the ghostly sound of an old opera. "Four Enclosed Walls" give the feeling of claustrophobia with its dry drumming and its haunting shrieking from Johnny's dampened soul. My favorite track is "an obvious track" (imagine that!), "Track 8" which gives you the feel that your in a trance on emotionless thoughts, which sirens and television noise appear but don't phase you at all. Another good track is "Phenagen" which has a middle eastern feel that feels like your in an old Romanian church in the night or something. I certainly feel that way in a sense. It's lead and only single is the dry title song, which is certainly odd and feels like shouting torture but in Johnny voice and in your ears. But i'm not saying thats a bad thing. The ending track, "Francis Massacre" sounds like a band playful at most after so much darkness. It probably after so much dark recording, they recorded themselves destroying all the equipment and instruments, and made a song on it. In the end, it became the least commercial record ever created.
After the album was released, it was greeted with lukewarm reviews as this effort was seen as even more challenging, in comparison to the bleak "Metal Box," but welcomed its exploration. In contrast, the band continued to decay, as planning for the next album became difficult with frustrated label heads and tensions within the band. Levene, was the next to leave, with similar reasons to Wobble, but with bigger drug abuse problems. The next few albums, fronted by only Lydon as the main songwriter, shifted into more contemporary rock and sounded less innovative and experimental as it once was. With the possible exception to "Compact Disc", "Flowers of Romance" was Public Image's last great album. Sure, it was extremely noncommercial to great extends, but it still is a great record that is even celebrated and inspired some of the artists today. Weird how its quite inspiring, yet its not your everyday record. It's funny how the years can treat and change you.
Damn. The chick (the same one on the album cover) is a total babe.
I'm serious, she appears like a ringleader for a Gothic circus or something.
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