The prospect of experiencing Public Image Ltd.'s landmark 1979 post-punk album Metal Box (aka Second Edition) live was tantalizing, even if it were just PiL bassist Jah Wobble and a pick-up band, 45 years after the fact. After all, Metal Box set a new standard for fusing avant-rock and dub; Keith Levene's scathing, scything guitar attack, John Lydon's harrowing lyrics delivered with traumatized charisma, and Wobble's supple yet chest-caving bass lines were unprecedented and vastly influential. Simon Reynolds—author of the totemic post-punk study Rip It Up and Start Again—has declared Metal Box to be the genre's peak. Stereolab's Tim Gane considers Metal Box "probably my favorite album ever."
Calling this the "Metal Box - Rebuilt in Dub Tour" primed audiences not to expect Wobble to faithfully replicate the LP from "Albatross" to "Radio 4." Rather, it allowed the Stockport, England musician and his Invaders of the Heart band latitude to take liberties with the rich source material. Of course, early PiL were anything but traditionalists. Tearing up the plans came naturally to them. And the man born John Wardle had plenty of surprises in store on Saturday night for the reverent Triple Door crowd (which should've been larger, honestly).
Behatted, dressed in all working-class black threads, and sporting a white surgical glove on his right hand, the 65-year-old Wobble comported himself with both Shakespearean pomp (reciting a passage from Richard III) and Cockney goofiness (those running-on-the-spot dances were adorable). He was backed by former Siouxsie and the Banshees guitarist Jon Klein, guitarist Martin Chung, drummer Marc Layton-Bennett, and keyboardist George King—outstanding players all. Interestingly, it took two guitarists to approximate Levene's sulfuric calligraphy.
"Albatross" kicked off the show, with the guitarists teasing out its latent spy-jazz aura while also evoking the heat-haze rock of Savage Republic. On "Memories," King unexpectedly added fusionoid keyboard embellishments amid the clangorous martial rock, as Wobble sang in an off-key Cockney accent. If there was one weak link in the set it was Jah's limited vocal abilities. While Lydon isn't technically a "good" singer, he does possess riveting charisma and gravitas. His absence (and the late Keith Levene's) haunted the set, but certainly didn't spoil it.
In a curious move, Wobble transformed the stark menace of my fave Metal Box cut, "The Suit," to a jaunty bounce. But it's good to tinker with classic works, to subvert expectations, to change the tenor of a beloved song, isn't it? Yes—just this once. Another drastic remake occurred on "Fodderstompf," an epic funk spoof on PiL's debut album. It started off sounding like a disco-fied take on Stone Roses' "Fools Gold," but then came a Frank Zappa-like guitar solo and virtuosic, jazz-rock keyboard showboating. Finally, Wobble got funky on the cowbell and timbale. It was hilarious, but in a different way from the version on Public Image (First Issue).
Wobble & co. reimagined Lydon's definitive anthem, "Public Image," in dub and rock incarnations, but they oddly came off like the frontman doing karaoke, even as the music took surprising detours and featured bombastic crescendos that made you wonder where one ended and the other began. Wobble knew he couldn't match Lydon's defiant delivery, so he did "Public Image" sprechstimme-style. Faring better was "Socialist," an insanely OCD dub-disco jam that gave keyboardist King a chance to swerve into rococo whirlwinds, as the group shockingly ended it with a noisy freakout.
Speaking of shocks, Wobble sprinkled the set with covers that showed diversity and perversity. If they had any connection to Metal Box, I couldn't discern it. But the musicians put distinctive stamps on their renditions of John Barry's gorgeously melancholic "Midnight Cowboy" (sometimes my favorite song ever), Harry J Allstars' reggae gem "Liquidator," and Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" (Rumours' peak), making you hear these golden oldies in new ways. That's a kind of genius.
But the night's highlight was "Poptones." On record, it's a wonderfully woozy meander of a track that unpredictably bobs on one of Wobble's nimblest and most beautiful bass lines. King's florid, Chick Corea-esque keyboard provided a profound surprise, and then the band lunged back to the hypnotic main theme with even more grandiosity. No exaggeration, this was a peak in my show-going life.
While the omission of "Bad Baby" disappointed, overall the Metal Box - Rebuilt in Dub Tour proved that an old bassist can teach his band new tricks, that your cherished memories of a classic album can withstand an artist's decision to radically rewire it and make you appreciate it anew, and that Mr. Wobble can recite Shakespeare with as much aplomb as he can skank.
SETLIST
01 Albatross
02 Memories
03 The Suit
04 Poptones
05 Fodderstompf
06 Public Image (dub version)
07 Public Image (rock version)
08 No Birds
09 Socialist
10 Midnight Cowboy (John Barry cover)
11 The Liquidator (Harry J Allstars cover)
12 The Chain (Fleetwood Mac cover)
13 Visions of You (Invaders of the Heart cover)
14 Careering
15 Graveyard
ENCORE
16 Swan Lake
