Indeed my vote was enough to make The Kinks the most popular artist yet, one vote more than the VU.
Next up from
Urban Hatemonger
Public Image LTD
I am nominating this band for the simple reason that the bands they influenced and the music they made were much better than the Sex Pistols, and I think it would be nice if they got some much deserved credit and got into a hall of fame before the Pistols for a change.
Public Image Ltd's influence is massive. The Clash get credit for bringing dub to guitar rock but P.I.L. were the ones that took the ball and really ran with it. Any band you can think of in the late 80s / 90s who thought of using samples with guitar riffs credit P.I.L. as being a huge influence whether it be Primal Scream , Leftfield , Massive Attack , Death In Vegas , Killing Joke or many many others.
With Lydon being a huge fan of bands like Hawkwind , Can , Van Der Graaf Generator and early Alice Cooper it came as no surprise that he was getting more & more frustrated at having his material turned down by the rest of the Pistols who just wanted to carry on with the kind of material they were already doing. When he quit the Pistols he had that chance.
Rather than looking for talented musicians Lydon preferred to recruit people who had a broad taste in music . Lydon even referred to himself as a 'noise structuralist' rather than a musician. Jah Wobble on bass was recruited first even though he couldn't play a note , Keith Levine was added on guitar after having walked out on The Clash the previous year. After a succession of drummers (Including Karl Burns of The Fall who walked out when Jah Wobble set fire to him
) Eventually during the recording of Metal Box they came across Martin Atkins. The line up of Lydon/Wobble/Levene/Atkins only lasted just over a year but during that year they recorded two albums that would blow the doors off what 'punk rock' was in Metal Box & Flowers Of Romance as well as the Paris Au Printempts live album.
What started off as a bunch of songs the Sex Pistols didn't want , the first album entitled First Issue took the nucleus of what Lydon was doing with the Pistols and grew with it. The first single from that album 'Public Image' was a near copy of a Sex Pistols songs , in fact it was originally written as one. Most of the songs on the album followed this trend but the exceptions to this are where P.I.L. would build from such as 'Theme' and 'Fodderstompf' Both clocking in at 8/9 minutes one being a bass driven dirge , the other a proto dance tune.
Metal Box / Second Edition is where things really took off. The anger of punk mixed up with thunderous dub bass , samples and abrasive synths. Never Mind The Bollocks doesn't hold a candle to this album, this is the album that should have defined punk rock. You don't know whether you should dance to it or be totally pulverized by it. Not a moment on this album is wasted right from the opening bars of Albatross right till the end of Radio 4 , a beautifully calm instrumental synth piece that's totally at odds with the rest of the album yet it works.
The album was slated when it came out by the media and gigs became violent when people were disappointed with this new sound and wanted the old Johnny Rotten. Lydon himself didn't help things by constantly baiting the crowds , the media or anybody else for that matter. All of this seemed to fuel him to want to go even further.
And they did go away further with their next album Flowers Of Romance. If Metal Box was all about the bass Flowers Of Romance is all about drums & percussion.The album is the closest thing P.I.L. ever did to something close to World Music. In fact the title track with it's tribal drumming and Arabian style horns sounds like it could have been recorded in the Sahara desert. In most of the tracks the other instruments are virtually non existent and are used sparingly throughout. Only a couple of songs such as 'Francis Massacre' and 'Home Is Where The Heart Is' follow the same pattern as the previous album.
Around this point the band started to disintegrate and P.I.L. became a vehicle for a Lydon solo project. Musically he also did another U-turn and started recording much more commercial material working alongside people such as Steve Vai , Ginger Baker & Bill Laswell.
Although this material didn't reach the heights of the first few albums there's plenty of great material to pick from such as This Is Not A Love Song , Rise , Home , Seattle , Don't Ask Me , This Is What You Want This Is What You Get and many others.
I could have picked many bands to go into a hall of fame but I wanted one that really is under appreciated to get in there , and with the musicbanter hall of fame supposed to be different from the rest of the dross that call themselves halls of fame I can't think of a band more fitting to be placed in there to show it's difference . I have seen plenty of people dismiss P.I.L. just because of John Lydon and being biased against them for feelings they have for the Sex Pistols. To revolutionize music once is difficult enough , to do it twice in different genres is unthinkable yet Lydon managed it. And that's why Public Image LTD should be entered into a hall of fame.