Music, The Features, We Love Music

We Love Music: Public Image Ltd. @ 9:30 Club — 10/8/12

“This is a fucking amazing band,” says John Lydon of his bandmates in Public Image Ltd., or PiL, toward the end of Monday’s show.

Well, yes, they are actually, so let’s take a quick look at them before we talk about Lydon himself and the Monday night concert.

Drawn largely from a PiL lineup in the late 1980s, the modern incarnation of the band plays funky post-punk. They are well coordinated as a unit in a way few bands are and they sound great. Drummer Bruce Smith thunders and snaps through the show. New guy Scott Firth on bass is a key ingredient in the consistency of the post-punk sound. And guitarist Lu Edmonds? On one song, the man is playing a saz, a kind of long-necked lute. The next, he’s on a big guitar. Before you know it, he’s fiddling (literally) with a banjo.

And the three bandmates provide a key part of a pattern to many PiL songs vocally — if PiL can be said to have any sort of pattern. They occasionally sing a repeating chant, usually consisting of a song’s title or subtitle, building a harmonious chorus as a backdrop to Lydon’s wails, yelps and croaks.

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Entertainment, Music, We Love Music

We Love Music: Public Image Ltd. @ 9:30 Club 5/12/10

Public Image Ltd. at 9:30 Club 5/12/10
courtesy of PiL.

“Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” – rumored FDR quote about Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García.*

I couldn’t help but think of this quote as John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten aka “Uncle John” took the stage at the 9:30 Club on Wednesday night. Lydon is one of the ultimate love/hate figures in music history. For every brilliant stroke like the Sex Pistol’s ‘Bodies’ or PiL’s ‘Rise’ there is an equally hypocritical public statement or ticket price outrage to offend anew. So I was not very surprised when a lot of professed fans of Public Image Ltd balked at attending Wednesday night’s concert. After all it was over-priced and the quality of a reformed (not reunited) PiL was a huge question mark. Lydon has a lot of audacity expecting sold-out crowds 18 years after the band’s last performance or album, especially after the radically mixed reviews received for the Sex Pistols reunion tours of the late-90’s and mid-00’s. And yet there I stood with a club full of people anxiously waiting for Lydon to challenge us with his noisy, confrontational, anti-pop onslaught. As I stared at the giant PiL banner behind the stage and the growing crowd I thought, John Lydon is a son of a bitch, but (if you love his music) he’s our son of a bitch.

For me, with regard to bands, front-men, legends, and their egos, it boils down to music first, personality second. I worship the Sex Pistols and think that Public Image Ltd. was one of the most inspired and brilliant career/style shifts in music history. Lydon’s ego aside, I was on-board for this show from the get-go. My two-song preview of PiL at the Coachella Music Festival left me confident that Public Image Ltd.’s 9:30 Club show was going to be something special. I had no clue just how special this show would turn out to be.

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Adventures, Entertainment, Music, We Love Music

We Love Music: Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival 2010

Coachella Music Festival Banner courtesy of Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival.

Everyone knows that sometimes the best way to appreciate where you live is to get away for a little while. It is also true that sometimes the best way for a music critic to reboot his love of music is to attend an awesome music festival without an impending review deadline hanging over his head. This past weekend I did both when I attended the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, California.

This was my third Coachella (2004, 2007*, 2010) and I think it is without a doubt the best music festival in the United States. After a three-legged, 12-hour journey by plane, I made my way into the California desert to enjoy some of the best music on the planet for three days. The weather was beautiful, the music was excellent, and I got the re-charge I was looking for. I decided to write mini-reviews of the bands I caught and to post them here for those who follow my music writing. Keep in mind, I was focused on enjoying the music this weekend without my reviewer’s hat on. So these little reviews are more personal and less detailed write-ups of the bands I saw over this great weekend.

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