On Christmas Day 1978, almost exactly a year after the implosion of the Sex Pistols while on tour in San Francisco, the artist formerly known as Johnny Rotten unveiled his new band, Public Image Ltd, at the Rainbow theatre in London. The audience, John Lydon remembers with amusement, were "nauseated, because the bass frequency was so low your bowels started to vibrate". He lets out his familiar arch cackle. "Well, it's a different experience at Christmas."@ 'The Guardian'
God! Was it that long ago?
I was actually at that gig at The Rainbow and well, it was an interesting Xmas day but to my ears the songs on that first album just were not that good, apart from obviously 'Public Image' itself, and I also always had problems with 'Belsen Was A Gas'.
Wobble WAS magnificent though.
God! Was it that long ago?
I was actually at that gig at The Rainbow and well, it was an interesting Xmas day but to my ears the songs on that first album just were not that good, apart from obviously 'Public Image' itself, and I also always had problems with 'Belsen Was A Gas'.
Wobble WAS magnificent though.
The speakers at those Rainbow shows were a prototype of the Turbosound series that now power the PA's of many stadiums worldwide and later won the Queen's award to Industry. The principle is essentialy to put a zepplein shape baffle in a tube in front of the speaker which compresses and then throws a concentrated beam of sound. It ultimately proved to be massively effective in mid-range speakers. However at this time designer Tony Andrews, known as Cosmic Tony in the trade, known for his exotic sources of inspiration, and, like me, a former Pink Fairies roadie, was working on bass cabinets. So we had a number - at least 4 - of these huge, took 6 people to lift them, hexagonal baffled tubes with 28" speakers bolted in the back of them scattered around the room, and the mixing was broken down into a quadphonic system so one could push any corner individually. I DJ'd on the second day and it was the most exciting system I've ever twiddled knobs on. I played a lot of Dread At The Controls stuff. I'll nevr forget the sight as Lydon slowly skanked onto the stage as I was playing the song 'Some of dem a dread, and some of dem... a commercial dread'.
ReplyDelete2Joly/
ReplyDeleteThanx for the comment. For those who don't know Joly runs the Punkcast website outta NY. Used to run Better Badges in London and recently had a bit of a You Tube run in with Richard hell which you can read about here. Oh and if that is not enough he is now digitising old cassettes of his radio shows and this one features Ari from The Slits.
Regards/