If Public Image Limited’s first album (see ABON 0134) helped kick start the Post Punk phenomenon, then their second album, ‘Metal Box’, demonstrated at length and in depth how rich a territory Post Punk could be.

The first album had combined Dub Reggae bass and Can-like Krautrock guitar sensibilities and sounds to create a new music that was more creatively experimental than Punk. As wonderful and ground-breaking as that album was, particularly on stand-out tracks ‘Public Image’ and ‘Annalisa’, it was also a fairly one-dimensional - and short – affair. Almost as if PIL were too awed by what they’d discovered to be able to develop the sound further or laterally beyond that initial creative breakthrough.

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Johnny Rotten, aka John Lydon, is such a colourful, controversial and out-spoken character that it’s not surprising that so much has been written about him. But nine times out of ten what’s written about him completely ignores, or even seems to deny, the fact that, underneath all the media hype and silliness - admittedly often created by Lydon himself - there lays an underrated genuine musical genius. How else can you explain the fact that Lydon was a key character in four - count ‘em - of the most remarkable albums of the past 50 years?

Everyone of course, is aware of ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ by the Sex Pistols. But what is often over-looked is that after he left the Pistols, he produced with his new band, Public Image Limited (PIL), another three phenomenal and phenomenally influential albums, ‘Public Image’, ‘Metal Box’ and ‘Flowers Of Romance’ between 1978 and 1981.

PIL was quite a different outfit to the Pistols.

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The first of many reggae tracks from the golden period of Jamaican reggae, the 1970′s, that will appear on ABON.
By 1978 Culture had already recorded one of the most influential reggae albums of all time, 1976′s ‘Two Sevens Clash’. That album inspired the reggae loving Clash to name themselves, er, The Clash. It was also one of those very rare events in the 1970′s Britain – a genuine Jamaican-produced roots reggae album that sold in numbers to a white audience. Admittedly most were Punks who took the lead from the Clash or John Peel, but it was also because of the sublime harmonies and wonderful tunes.
It was in some ways a weird success story. Punk was championing unpolished rawer sounds in rock and ridiculing over-production. Culture’s first album was layered with production, was highly polished and very glossy. In particular, the heavy rhythms of the best Jamaican reggae – with the bass featuring more as a physical phenomenon rather than just a musical instrument – was missing from the Joe Gibbs-produced ‘Two Sevens Clash’. It was – God forbid – quite trebly. Punks didn’t seem to mind, although when DJ Don Letts played ‘Two Sevens Clash’ at the punk venue The Roxy, as far as I can tell he always seemed to play it through a graphic equaliser with the bass turned to max.

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