Public Image Ltd – This is Not a Love Song (Live)

One notable upside with the popularity with Coachella and other large scale summer festivals is that they seem to have the clout and the will to resurrect any band they want in order to keep each year featuring a new surprise. I am assuming that Johnny Lyndon was tempted last year with that mad Coachella money and was therefore cajoled to dust off the long dormant Public Image Ltd.

Unfortunately founding member of the 1978 face-melting-ahead-of-its-time-Can-channeling 1978 members such as Jah Wobble were not similarly tempted. This 2010 PiL may not have been the original PiL lineup, but nearly every PiL iteration were full of notable musicians, in this case later members Lu Edmonds (The Damned) on guitar and Bruce Smith (The Slits) on drums. I continue to be pleasantly surprised by how good the sound and performance are of these resurrected bands, who are presumably well beyond their prime. PiL did not disappoint. They performed 2 hours straight with almost no breaks which is particularly impressive since the set consisted of Lyndon’s caterwauling vocals and his trademark trilled rs, that have to be demanding on the ole 50 year-old voicebox. I am pretty convinced that few would be able to wail in that manner for that length of time without some serious vocal training. So kids, if you are out there and you sing vocals, be sure to invest on breathing and vocal training.

Download: Public Image Ltd – This is Not a Love Song (Live)