Public Image Ltd
The Public Image Is Rotten (Songs From The Heart) UMC Rotten’s classics freshened up in a massive multimedia box set.
Here’s what you need to know. The public image may be rotten, but the product most certainly is not. In the main, the product is scouring, challenging, invigorating – a cool 40 years after the band formed.
The product this time comes in the shape of a colossal five-CD/two-DVD, six-LP set. Let’s put this in perspective:
PiL’s still untouchable second album, the deformed and brutal motorik beatinspired Metal Box (1979) merited a fouralbum reissue on its own a few years back, and not a second felt wasted.
This set contains some wastage, but more than enough demented brilliance to merit serious consideration. The DVDs are a treat: footage of music videos as well as appearances on Top Of The Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test, and 1988 and 2013 concerts – the latter filmed after the band reformed in 2009 with former Pop Group member Bruce Smith on drums.
Disc one (Singles 1978-2015) includes the deranged genius of early tracks Public Image and Flowers Of Romance, Jah Wobble’s bass cutting straight through the crap, Keith Levene’s guitar a welter of abrasion, and Lydon’s sneering voice still provoking, chiding, even singing on occasion. Later singles such as Seattle, Rise and Warrior ain’t half bad too.
Disc two (B-sides, Rarities & Radio Sessions) is where much of the unpanned gold lies – the spirit of sheer nastiness of their debut B-side, 1978’s The Cowboy Song, carries through to 2015’s Turkey Tits, while the careening expressionism and plaintiveness of the 1979 Peel Session version of Poptones is matched for sheer noise terror by Acid Drops (Mark Goodier Session, 1992). Disco, dub, Krautrock and the Dadaist visions of Captain Beefheart all feed into the cacophony.
Disc three (12” Mixes & Dance Tracks) is a stormer: the brutal astringent brilliance of Death Disco allowed to fully blossom, the violin-led instrumental version of Flowers Of Romance astonishingly better than the original. Happy (1987) flounders pointlessly in such company.
There are gems on disc four (Unreleased Mixes & Tracks), particularly the spaced-out dance mix of Banging On The Door (1980) with its near Balearic feel, and the trippy, previously unreleased Vampire from the same year. The cover of Led Zep’s Kashmir is pointless though.
Disc five (Live @ New York Ritz – July
16th 1989) is as bombastic and cheering as you’d expect. If you’ve made it this far, you’ll love it.
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