PiLOfficial.Com also
report PiL will be appearing on the
BBC2, Culture Show next
Thursday,
December 3rd
where they were filmed performing 'Rise' and 'Religion';
as well as being interviewed...
Also see PiLOfficial for a new
picture of the band…
Virgin Records
are re-issuing 'Metal Box'
on CD on December 14th. The 'Plastic
Box' compilation is also re-released
the same day.
'Metal Box' will be re-mastered and -
like the original 1979 vinyl LP – come
as 3 separate discs. The 4CD 'Plastic Box'
compilation was first released as a limited
edition in 1999 and features 64 tracks
in total; spanning from 1978-1992. See Discography for
more info…
October
30th 2009
PiL have announced
2 new London dates at the
London, Electric Ballroom in Camden, North
London. Get get some PiL for Xmas!
London,
Electric Ballroom, December 22nd
2009
London, Electric
Ballroom, December 23rd 2009
(Tickets for original Brixton Academy
Show on December 22nd will be valid for
The Electric Ballroom Show on December
22nd, or maybe exchanged for the Brixton
Academy Show on December 21st)
September
29th 2009
Jah Wobble's autobiography – Memoirs
of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem – is
now available via Serpent's Tail Books,
priced £12.99.
Wobble will be having a spoken-word event
to launch the book this Sunday, October
4th, at The Roundhouse in Camden.
Tickets priced £6 are on sale now from The
Roundhouse website.
The same day sees him sign copies of the
book at Rough Trade East in Brick Lane.
The book has
received several high-profile reviews
including The
Independent and The
Metro newspapers.
Press Release:
Memoirs of a Geezer: The Autobiography
of Jah Wobble Music, Mayhem, Life.
"I'm Jah Wobble, a geezer. I come
from Stepney in East London. I'm one of
the chaps. I'm a totally different kettle
of Fish and I haven't got time for all
that nonsense."
Born John Wardle in Stepney, east London
on 11 August 1958, Jah Wobble has always
refused to play by the rules of the game.
As a teenager he was expelled from school
and later ended up at Kingsway College
of Further Education where he met John
Lydon and John Beverley (Sid Vicious).
Together with Lydon's old school friend
John Gray, they were the Four Johns and,
as legend has it, he got his nickname one
drunken night when Sid mumbled 'Jah Wobble'
at him. It stuck.
When he was just 18, Lydon asked Wobble
to join his first post-Sex Pistols band,
Public Image Limited (PiL - they were almost
called The Carnivorous Butterflies - Wobble's
suggestion), who are still cited as one
of the most influential bands of the era.
With his love of Miles Davis and obsession
with dub reggae (he collected imports from
a local east end electrical shop), he devised
the new bass guitar sound which defined
PiL's oeuvre. In 1980, after two albums,
Wobble left the band, sick of the 'dirty
stinking music business' to go solo.
Throughout Memoirs, Wobble tells it like
he sees it: his opinions of the establishment's
great and good from Malcolm McLaren ('a
deeply flawed individual') to Peter Gabriel
('as much a businessman as an artist')
to Brian Eno ('the ultimate music business
'player'') to Iain Sinclair ('he wasn't
even a Londoner') are refreshingly disrespectful.
In Memoirs, Wobble riffs on British class
politics, his London and the music industry
and smashes the myths surrounding birth
of the punk scene, setting the record straight
with an authentic insider's account of
its beginnings. (NB: Wobble never hit Sid
Vicious on the head with an axe, nor was
his first bass-play on Sid's guitar.)
John
Lydon was
interviewed in Friday's (September 25th) Yorkshire
Evening Post previewing December's
PiL Leeds show. You can read the full interview
via their website.
The official
PiL website has now launched
MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter
Pages.
Pre-sale will be open to PiLofficial.Com
readers right up till General Sale starts
on Friday.
September
7th 2009
Public
Image Ltd Live 2009! Yes, you
read that correctly! In the 10 years
of Fodderstompf I never thought
I'd ever get to put PiL tour dates on
the site but today I can!
PiL will play 5 shows in
the UK in December,
starting at Birmingham Academy on Tuesday
December, 15th. The shows are to mark
the 30th Anniversary of 'Metal Box' but
the official information – via the newly
launched PiL
website – promises tracks from throughout
their career!
John Lydon will
be joined by former
PiL members Lu
Edmonds (Guitar
& Misc) and Bruce Smith (Drums), plus
new recruit Scott Firth (Bass). Tickets go on sale this Friday
11th at 9am, however, PiLOfficial.Com will
have a ticketpre-sale this week.
Public Image Limited
Live 2009
Birmingham, 02 Academy, December
15th 2009 Leeds, 02 Academy, December
16th 2009 Glasgow, 02 Academy, December
18th 2009 Manchester, Academy, December
19th 2009 London Brixton, 02 Academy, December
21st 2009
The
October issue of Uncut Magazine includes
a 3 page 'Making of ' feature on the 1984
Time Zone - World Destruction single.
John Lydon, Africa Bambaataa and Bill Laswell
were specially interviewed. The extensive
article reveals detailed information on the
background of the single and its recording;
plus further information on the recording
of 'Album' with Bill Laswell...
In recent interviews at The
Quietus and The
National Bill
Laswell also talks about
the single.
Jah
Wobble's autobiography – Memoirs
of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem – is
now available via his 30
Hertz website. The book is officially
published via Serpent's
Tail on September 24th (see News May 3rd
for more info).
Keith
Levene features heavily in the
new Slits biography: 'Typical
Girls? The Story Of The Slits'
by Zoë Street Howe; published by Omnibus
Press in July.
The book also reveals
Levene made a brief appearance on the
track 'Instant Hit' which was written
about him. Viv Albertine: "You
hear him at the end talking. He doesn't
know that. That little bit at the end
had been recorded at Ari's house with
a little tape recorder, he didn't know
that..."
Thanks to Karsten Roekens
September
2nd 2009
JohnLydon.Com today
announced there is to be an official
PiL website! The site is "coming
sometime" but you can check it out
now and sign up to their mailing list for
updates.
4 Men
with Beards – the US label who
re-issued 'Metal Box' on vinyl in 2006
– released another two PiL albums on
vinyl in the States earlier this year.
'Flowers of Romance'
(4M517) and 'Second Edition'
(4M518) were issued on 180 gram vinyl
on May 26th 2009.
Rhino Records in the
US also re-issued 'Album'
- again on 180 gram vinyl - on March 10th
2009 (RHI160438).
Thanks to Tim Bucknall
Jah
Wobble will be giving a spoken-word
performance at The Green Man
Festival, Brecon Beacons, Wales,
on Sunday, August 23rd.
See Green
Man Festival website for more info…
The New
Yorker has a a retrospective blog feature
on the infamous PiL appearance on American
Bandstand, May 1980.
July
4th 2009
Keith
Levene has began relaunching
the MurderGlobal.comwebsite.
Check out Area 51 to hear new tunes or
Research to play Asteroids! The accompanying
blog at MurderGlobal.net also
makes mention of new releases…
"Keith is concentrating on his own
projects under the Murder Global banner
which is made up of a team of like minded
individuals. With new releases in the pipeline
and other innovative concepts, Murder Global
is a space well worth watching!" -
MurderGlobal, 2009
Allan
Dias DJ's
every Tuesday night at The Beauty
Bar, 231
East 14th Street, New York City. Allan is
a resident DJ at The Skinny Jeans Club Night. Thanks to Olé Koretsky
Martin Atkins' Pigface released
the new studio album 'Pigface 6'
via Full
Effect Records in June. This is the
first Pigface album not to be released
through Invisible…
Atkins will also be holding a retrospective
gallery show The
Religion of Marketing at The Metro
Gallery in Baltimore,
July 10th and 11th.
For further Atkins / Invisible
/ Pigface listings and news etc see
the Invisible
Community.
Thanks to Jonathan Childers
June
1st 2009
Jah Wobble appeared
with Gary Crowley on BBC 6Music last
Friday night, May 29th. In the the hour long
special Wobble picked a selection of tracks
and talked about his career; including meeting
John Lydon and recording 'Metal Box'.
He
also received his Songlines
Music Award live on air (see News May
3rd for more info…). The interview
is currently available via the 6Music
website and the BBC iPlayer service.
Car Ad
Music, Jah Wobble's 2004 download-only
album is finally available on CD via the
(newly revamped) 30
Hertz website.
30 Hertz Description: This album was recorded in the year 2005.
It was never Jah Wobble's intention to
release it on CD. It was to be a download
only album. Indeed up to now that’s exactly
what it has been. However due to public,
(and some private), demand here it is on
CD. This album is mix of South American
and African rhythms with jazz licks and
‘ambient North European swaths’ along with
some Nigerian ‘Ju Ju music’ influenced
Pedal Steel, (courtesy of the excellent
BJ. Cole).
A
review of Wobble and Jon Savage's spoken-word
appearance at
The Brighton Festival is
available via Drowned
in Sound.
May
3rd 2009
Jah
Wobble's autobiography – Memoirs
of a Geezer: Music, Life, Mayhem – is
scheduled for a September release via Serpent's
Tail.
Amazon
Description:
Mercury-shortlisted musician, punk rebel
and genuine geezer, Wobble spills all in
his autobiography.
Written in his own unmistakable
voice, this is a frank and fascinating
account of a geezer’s
life in the music business. Jah Wobble
begins by offering the most authentic
insider’s account of the
beginning of punk rock yet written, but
there's much more to him than that.
His
is an eventful life, as the celebrated
ups – PiL’s The Metal Box,
90s hit Visions Of You with Sinead O’Connor – are
balanced by major downs – chronic
alcoholism and marital breakdown.
It begins
with an East End childhood in a London
barely recovered from the War and ends
with Wobble finally turning his back on
London that no longer feels like home.
Through the book Wobble tell it like he
sees it: his opinions of the great and
good from Malcolm Mcclaren to Peter Gabriel
to Brian Eno to Iain Sinclair are refreshingly
disrespectful.
Oh and if you ever wondered
how got his name, the answer is here: his
teenage pal Sid Vicious gave it to him
when he drunkenly slurred Wobble’s
real name, John Wardle.
Wobble will be
taking part in a spoken-word event
with Englands Dreaming author Jon
Savage at The Brighton Festival on
May 15th at Thistle Hotel, 4pm. See the Brighton
Festival website for more info.
Wobble also appeared on BBC Radio 6, Cerys
Matthews Show
on April 1st. And Radio 4, Inheritance
Tracks, March 28th. Both interviews can
be found via archive links on "The
List".
Songlines world-music
magazine have awarded Jah Wobble & The
Chinese Dub Orchestra their "Best
Cross-Cultural Collaboration".
See Songlines
interview with the worthy winner for
more info... "I’ve won? I’ve
never won anything in my life!"
John
Lydon appeared
on 'Queens of British Pop' (BBC1, April
1st) talking about
Kate Bush. The interview is
available via YouTube.
Martin
Atkins will
be bringing his TourSmart talk to
the UK in May-June. Dates are still
being confirmed. See tstouring.com for
more info... Pigface will also release
a new album.
Photographer Chester
Simpson has a wide selection of PiL pictures
available to view and purchase via his website.
His work includes rare interview and live
images from the 1980 US Tour, plus 1982/86.
Totally
Wired – Simon Reynolds
companion book to Rip
It Up and Start Again – features
an interview with Jah Wobble and two
of Simon's recent PiL review articles. Totally
Wired: Postpunk Interviews and Overviews was
published in February by Faber and Faber.
Rock
Town Hall website were supposed to
interview Keith Levene a few months
ago. You can read all about the "official
non-interview" on their blog. In a
recent interview with Quietus.Com Mark
Stewart again claimed to be working with
Levene. Thanks to The Back Office
PiL and
Sex Pistols were the "Show Stoppers" on
yesterday's (Saturday May 2nd) Liz
Kershaw Show on BBC 6 Music. Fans were
invited to email song requests and gig reviews
etc. Safe to say Liz isn't a "P.I.L" fan
as she can't pronounce John McGeoch's name
and mixes up 'Annalisa' with female pop
star Anastacia... Thanks to Chumley
