Originally
a nucleus of John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten), Keith Levene, and Jah
Wobble, Public Image Ltd. simplified and energized a bunch of ideas
that had been floating around in underground rock and the avant-garde,
alluding to everyone from the Velvets to Can to Big Youth to Hawkwind.
Difficult to classify, they remained deviously obvious and as concerned
with sound as they were with power. In public, they imitated subversion
and constantly mocked the rock industry.
But PIL was
made up of individual talents as much as it was made up of a unifying
idea, and personal laziness dogged them throughout. After two studio
albums, 1978’s First Issue and 1980’s Metal Box
(released in the U.S. as Second Edition) and one live set, Paris
Au Printemps, bassist Wobble left. Following 1981’s Flowers
of Romance the "band" moved to New York City, where they
drank a lot, mouthed off, and eventually recorded the hit "This
Is Not A Love Song," which was a No. 1 hit in Britain.
Then drummer
Martin Atkins and Lydon picked up some studio hacks, toured, put out
a duff live album, and went into the studio for a major label to make
This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get. Levene—who
departed after "Love Song" and still owns half the PIL name—simultaneously
released, in a white-sleeve bootleg format, the (mostly finished) album
that he, bassist Pete Jones, Lydon, and Atkins were working on when
he left the band. His record, of dubious legality, is Commercial
Zone.
This Is What
You Want is Atkins and Lydon’s solid, hard mixture of naiveté
and enthusiasm. "Real" musicians wouldn’t be caught dead
putting most of this stuff on vinyl: completely amateurish (and completely
appropriate) bleats and scratches of saxophone, violin, piano, synths,
etc. Yet it’s a more coherent, better produced, and more inspired
effort than PIL’s last studio record; for them, it’s progress.
There’s plenty of aggressive repetition here, and what I’d
call minimalism by default: dense patterns of sound built with just
a few instruments. And vocals, a lot of ’em, used for rhythm, melody,
or texture; percussion, along with the vocals, is way up in the mix.
The rest of the instrumentation for a tight, gray web droning in the
same simple patterns. Atkins and Lydon never imitate funk; they absorb
it and make it their own. This is dance music that’s forceful,
redundant, and rhythmic, the same qualities that have been a constant
in all of their work, especially the masterpiece Metal Box. Only
the new version of "This Is Not A Love Song" is less than
exemplary; the skeletal playing of Levene and Jones on the original
has been replaced by slick horn parts and unnecessary overproduction.
Unfortunately, this single lapse is a pretty visible one.
As for the feature
object itself, the Lydon voice, it remains one of the most distinct,
powerful, and creatively used instruments this critic has ever heard.
From shrill whine to basso swoon to blubbery conversational rap. It
mocks, accuses, begs, seduces.
First Issue
and Metal Box are better records, and Paris Au Printemps
is probably as good; inspiration, in its pure sudden-light-bulb-over-head
form, may be lacking, but this is still a great album.
Commercial
Zone is not much more than a curious companion piece. If you believe
that Keith Levene’s work on the first two PIL albums made him a
musician to watch, this is going to be a letdown. His guitar and synthwork
is very ordinary, simultaneously too arty and quite common. "Bad
Night," the sole Lydon vocal that appears exclusively, is the most
normal thing Lydon has done since the Sex Pistols covered "Johnny
B. Goode," and at least they trashed that. Only "Lou Reed
Pt. 1" - a drony, western-flavored acoustic and electric instrumental
with an infectious Wobblesque bass run - and "Lou Reed Pt. 2"
(called "Where Are You" on This Is What You Want),
does Levene unveil his renowned scratchy, harmonic, heavy style.
If the Elektra
record didn’t exist, I might speak more highly of Commercial
Zone; it would have been an adequate if anticlimactic offering from
some very talented people. But as it is, this release supplies substantial
evidence of Levene’s mediocrity (at least within the context—confines?—of
PIL), leading us to the conclusion (unthinkable prior to these two LPs)
that PIL is better off without him, at least in the short run.
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