PiL in their current line-up
John Lydon’s Countrylife embarrassment paid for this tour. It’s sort of like those classic ‘would you rather’ questions – would you rather run naked down the street and reach a loved one (Countrylife for PiL) or walk down that street clothed, unnoticed and live on averagely (the alternative)? He’s a braver man than most to risk everything, or at least his credibility, for what he frequently calls his first love. My first love was when I was about 8, and I think she’s got a baby now, and she was ginger, and didn’t like my loving poetry (not much has changed). She was not PiL.
Their influence continues to be in everything musical today. Surprisingly at this, the last date of the tour at Camden’s immensely small (for a band of their stature) Electric Ballroom, the pre-action soundtrack is pure dubstep, including TC’s ‘Where’s My Money?’ and surprisingly the criminally underexposed High Rankin. Now, say what you will, but it is a fact that Lydon was the first person to get skinny white kids into dub bass. The legacy lives on.
The band hold back whilst offstage Lydon raps ‘The Rabbit Song’ over samples. When they walk on, they don’t act like session musicians, most probably because they don’t consider themselves as such. They wave like returning rock heroes – yes, even the sometime-Spice Girls bassist. And the bass smashes into ‘Public Image’, with Lydon’s more than intimidating ‘hello’, and everyone hits the fucking roof. Well, nearly everyone, but more on that later.
‘This Is Not A Love Song’ is The Rapture if they’d managed to do the Marty McFly thing of going back in time and tricking people into believing they wrote Jonny B. Goode. ‘Poptones’ is The Cribs on sedatives, with a poetry to rival Morrissey or Cobain for its dark subject matter. Tracks like ‘Warrior’ sound like cuts from the last Bloc Party album – it’s easy to see why Lydon would be so devastated at the current state of music; he was doing what is now considered innovative nearly twenty years ago and being panned for it. Pulsing through every bassline, every spazzy guitar line and synth drumbeat is the heart of today’s music. PiL are the post-punk Beatles, except unlike the Beatles they’ve never been bettered, and aren’t timelocked. The Beatles are shit and PiL are not, is what I am trying to say.
Lydon soon leads his gang of circus freaks through a deranged rendition of ‘Death Disco.’ The guy in front of me refusing to shake a tail feather, he gets covered in spit, because I am disgusted that anyone attending could not be moved by this. ‘Religion’ is a highlight, with Lydon caterwauling ‘more bass’ like a man possessed. He is the preacher to the crowd’s discontent. By the second verse that double bass is handing out irrepairable ear damage like leaflets, and the ‘devil be gone’ effect it is having on the crowd is dizzying.
People doubted the reunion because it’s status as a reunion is questionable. The only original member is Lydon himself. Yet to me, the band seem like a new and offensive being, unlike the usual cash cow reunion. If they don’t record new material I will give you £50. The way that Lydon names them each individually at the end of this, the last show of the tour, and then calls them each a genius is almost heartwarming. This, the man who singlehandedly invented post-punk before punk was even done, is a man welling up with excitement for the future of the band he once called his ‘first love.’ I only hope that next time around the crowd isn’t filled with suits, buying into something they were never part of but would have loved to have been.
PiL played:
The Rabbit Song (intro)
Public Image
Careering
This Is Not a Love Song
Poptones
Albatross
Tie Me To The Length Of That
The Suit
Death Disco
Four Enclosed Walls
Flowers of Romance
Psychopath
Disappointed
Warrior
USLS 1
Banging The Door
Chant
Bags
Memories
Annalisa
Religion
(Encore/wait while ‘Uncle Johnny has a quick fag’)
Sun
Rise
Open Up
WHAT TO DO NOW?