Posted on by Rob Jones

Public Image ltd. Play “Rise”

Listen to this track by rotating cast of musical characters in orbit around one-time Rotten singer John Lydon; Public Image, Ltd. It’s “Rise”, a single and top twenty record as taken from the imaginatively titled 1986 LP, Album (or Cassette, or Compact Disc, depending on format…). The album was the fifth released under the name Public Image, Ltd. since forming in 1978. By this period, it was more like a John Lydon solo record with some very notable, and very unexpected players featured on it.

The musicians on this song alone are a fair distance away from the musical world with which Lydon was generally associated. Stylistically, they’re even pretty far from each other in terms of genre, coming in from parallel stylistic universes to make a (perhaps) surprisingly complementary set of noises together while still retaining their own signature styles. This internal cohesion is largely down to the involvement of producer, bassist, musical director, and co-writer of this song Bill Laswell, well known for his knack for finding common threads between genres and musician’s styles to create something seamless out of them.

What does singer John Lydon himself bring to this song in the middle of all of that, a charting hit that reached #11 on the UK pop charts? Well, perhaps unexpectedly from the guy who wailed “no future for you!” at one point in his career, I think this song is about hope for the future itself. But, it’s hope with a cost. Read more

Posted on by Rob Jones

The Clash Play “Guns Of Brixton”

theclashlondoncallingalbumcoverListen to this track by eclectic London punk rock folk heroes The Clash. It’s “Guns Of Brixton”, a key track as taken from their landmark 1979 album London Calling. The song was the product of a songwriting and vocal effort of bassist Paul Simonon, shown on the front cover of the album giving his bass guitar an introduction to the ground in what looks like an uncontrolled act of rage. Yet on this song, that bass is used very productively indeed, even if the rage is still boiling under the surface.

By the time the band recorded this, their third album, they’d strayed away from the straight-ahead punk rock on their first album. Reggae was only one musical style to be found on London Calling, although “Guns Of Brixton” is where they get to the heart of that style more so than ever before. Simonon in particular was inspired by the cult film The Harder They Come and its main character  actually referenced by name on this song. All of the violent imagery and paranoia found here comes from that same mythology found in the movie.

Having said that, it also sprang directly from the experiences and sensibilities of its writer, born and raised in Brixton and very aware of the tensions that were growing there by the end of the seventies. In this, the song was very prescient in what would happen in that very neighbourhood not long after this song was released. Read more

Posted on by Rob Jones · 1 Comment

Veruca Salt Play “Seether”

Veruca Salt American ThighsListen to this track by Chicagoan, Roald Dahl-monikered rock ‘n’ roll band Veruca Salt. It’s their hit song “Seether”, released as a single at the end of 1994 as a double A-side with “All Hail Me”, and eventually featured on their debut album American Thighs, scoring them a top ten showing on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. The song also made a top ten showing in Britain too on John Peel’s Festive Fifty that year.

Veruca Salt was one band whose sound obviously drew from a different musical well than the grunge-oriented rock music made earlier in the decade.  They drew from some of the same sources, but also from the power-pop sound of the ’60s, too. This song proved to be a big hit for them in that musical vein, mostly because even if they stood apart from the crowd, there were a lot of thematic touch points that aligned them with that early-to-mid ’90s “alternative” zeitgeist.

One such theme of that era was that of rage.
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