Tag Archives: Jah Wobble

115. public image

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“Public Image was the first single from Public Image Ltd, the concern that Johnny Rotten (aka Lydon) threw together amid the wreckage of the recently crashed and burned Sex Pistols. And it was damned good. Hell, even I liked it on first listen from my then mostly anti-punk perspective. A serious call to … seriousness, I guess, Mr. Rotten making the point that he was more than just a cartoon character, a gimmick, a punk, that he knew a thing or two about music, how to sing a song, make a record, take steady aim, hit them all where it hurts. And damn, what a bass line!” (Philip Random)

155. Invaders of the Heart

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“I first stumbled across Jah Wobble via his Bedroom Album, which was truth in advertising. It sounded exactly like a guy alone in his room with a multi-track recorder and various instruments, mucking around with various grooves and atmospheres, all cool and weirdly dreamy and easy to get lost in. But then a few months later, one of those moods (the one called Invaders Of The Heart) showed up in 12-inch extended play form, four dubbed up (and out) and ultimately quite powerful versions of the same track, bass now as big as a continent, everything else vibrating exquisitely from there. I’d never heard anything like it. I still haven’t really.” (Philip Random)

(image source)

275. death disco

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There’s no shortage of rage in the Johnny Rotten (aka Lydon) discography, but nowhere else does so much sorrow show itself than in Death Disco (aka Swan Lake because it cops a bit of the Tchaikovsky melody), a track recorded immediately after the death of his mother (she requested some disco for her funeral). It actually hurts to listen to it, but in a good way (not that the whole album doesn’t lean that way) — the punk is revealed as all too human, just in case there was any doubt.

PIL-1980-Bandstand

17. reSEARCH

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Invisible Cities, installment #17 of The Research Series aired in October-2018 on CiTR.FM.101.9.

The seventeenth of a planned forty-nine movies (without pictures), each forty-nine minutes long, featuring no particular artist, theme or agenda beyond boldly going … who knows? Or as Werner Von Braun once put it, “Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” And we definitely have no idea where all this will take us.

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17. Invisible Cities

Tom Waits – clap hands
Fred Frith – Navajo
Invaders of the Heart – good ghosts + invisible cities
DS Crew – frontier
Passengers – Plot 180 [edit]
Love + Rockets – all in my mind [acoustic]
Bauhaus – exquisite corpse
Olivia Tremor Control – late music 1
James – DVV
Man – c’mon [edit]
Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark – architecture + morality
Can – Come sta, la Luna

Further installments of the Research Series will air most Sundays at approximately 1am (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with Mixcloud streams usually available within twenty-four hours.

15. reSEARCH

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Childhood + Steam, installment #15 of The Research Series aired in July-2018 on CiTR.FM.101.9.

The fifteenth of a planned forty-nine movies (without pictures), each forty-nine minutes long, featuring no particular artist, theme or agenda beyond boldly going … who knows? Or as Werner Von Braun once put it, “Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” And we definitely have no idea where all this will take us.

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15. childhood + steam

Bob Dylan – if dogs run free
Flying Lizards – in my lifetime
Mo Bama – ijimuge two
Faithless – childhood [deep]
Neu – isi
Can – chain reaction [edit]
Laswell Ambient – aum fragments
King Crimson – the mincer [abbreviated]
David Sylvian – ancient evening
Scaredy Cat – you and I
Brian Eno + Jah Wobble – steam

Further installments of the Research Series will air most Sundays at approximately 1am (Pacific time) c/o CiTR.FM.101.9, with Mixcloud streams usually available within twenty-four hours.

 

318. the order of death

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Public Image Ltd‘s fourth album, 1984’s This is What you Want … This is What you Get is a mess, the end result of a major reconfiguration of what had been one of the essential post-punk units. Main man John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) was still on board, but previous compadres Jah Wobble and Keith Levine were both gone amid much drug and alcohol messing around and perhaps absconding with various master tapes. But the album wis not a complete write-off if only for its lead off track, The Order of Death, which is just a chant basically, the album’s title repeated and repeated to ultimately powerful effect. Or as Philip Random puts it, “… theme music for the movie I seemed to be stuck in at the time, the one concerning an entire culture going down in the sewage and bile of its own corrupt desires and obsessions. Or something like that.”

(photo: Rosie Greenway)