Public Image Limited at the Warfield Theater in SF 6/2/86

[mayer]

I have wanted to see PiL for a while. The last time I saw Johnny
Rotten performing was with the sex pistols back in London in 1977. I
was 13.  I've often been told to check out PiL.... "they're intense"
....  I was told. THEY were right. THEY often are.

Opening band sucked donkey dicks. I can't remember their name, but
they do that stupid semi-rap song "We Care Alot" that I had the
misfortune of hearing the night after seeing PiL at Club DNA in SF.
Anybody know who these clowns are so I can be sure to miss them next
time?

PIL: Yowza! The show started off slow with the band playing some Led
Zeppelin tune and Johnny howling. It all comes full circle y'know.
Johnny Lydon, a.k.a. Johnny Rotten, was doing it as a reaction to the
purple acid haze left by the sixties and found in Led Zeppelin's
music.  And now PiL is churning out their own version of postpunk
acid-haze.  Pil, why, they're the Grateful Dead of punk! Cult-followed
since the demise of punk (whenever that happened), Pil, has that "old
band" feel that you only get out of really practised bands like the
Dead, or like Siouxsie and the Banshees. And besides, everything PiL
does on album is shit. Just like the dead. But they sure give good
concerts. Just like the dead. The band itself puts you in a high-tech
acid haze brought on by lots of digital delays on the voice, guitar
synthesizers... a mean bass line churned out by some natty looking
black dude playing a steinberger really drove the music. The overall
effect was a whirling dervish of sound that sounded like King Crimson
meets Ravi Shankar. The Indo-rock aspect of the music was really
unmistakeable when the guitar player brought out some four string
indian thang (well, it wasn't a sarod, sitar, or tamboura, as far as I
can tell) that sounded like the high end of a sitar. And the bass
player at times could have been playing a sarod. They both seemed to
be plugged into a sounds effects machine that seemed to give mached
digital efxts between the guitar and the bass.... so that
pitch-shifting modulations of the harmonics of the bass and guitar
seemed to be synchronized.... both the guit and bass stayed in tune
with each other despite the wide pitch modulations caused by the
harmonizer-delays. It seems like they were feeding the guitar and bass
sounds to a synth. Its hard to describe. It sounds really nice. Makes
you want to melt.

Ok, so what about Johnny? well, he was simply this incredible stage
presense. If you're into ascerbic english fellows of extreme pallor
and egomaniacal tendencies, then you'd probly like Johnny's stage
presence.  Some fuckwad had a flashback to '77 and thought it cool to
spit on Johnny, which prompted a nasty "You little bastard" from Lydon
and audience applause.  As far as stage prescience goes... well I was
fucking overwhelmed at about 10 feet away from Lydon in the
really-mild-thrash-pit-consisting-of-mostly-kids-from-milpitas.
Hopefully the rest of the audience notices Lydon's energy else half
the show is gone.

The result. A bunch of intense musicians, with a ex. Sex Pistols
member thrown in for free to provide "test-of-time-respectability". So
there.

Niels Mayer (mayer@hplabs.hp.com)
Hewlett Packard Laboratories.