I bought two new records this week (well, I actually bought three but that spoils the story) by icons fron the '70s. I got 'This Is PiL' by Public Image Limited and '... Ya Know?' by Joey Ramone, both of which are very fab.
The first song on 'This Is Pil' is called 'This Is PiL' and it's lyrical content is basically, "This is PiL... Public Image Limited... You are now entering a PiL zone... This is PiL..." and so on and so forth. The music builds from a simple drum track to add swirling guitars that gets more hypnotic by the second with John shouting the lyrics in an echo chamber. It's very simple and powerful and I like the sheer hubris of just repeating 'This is PiL' in various combinations for three and a half minutes. A challenge as well as a welcome. This is PiL indeed.
Joey’s
album is all that you’d expect. It seems to be getting mixed reviews which I
don’t quite understand since it’s full of three minute pop songs, some with
buzzsaw guitar and some not. It closes with ‘Life’s A Gas’, an acoustic song
that at first I thought might be a T.Rex cover but it’s not. It finishes with the lines,
‘Life’s a gas, so don’t be sad cos I’ll be there, don’t be sad at all’ which
brought a tear to my eye given that Joey was dying when he recorded it.
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