Public Image Limited - "The Flowers of Romance"

John Lydon and his mates in Public Image Limited, or if you will, PiL, by no means messed around. We are talking about Experimental music at its finest. Call it Post-Punk, call it Death Disco, regardless of the labels, I am of the opinion that "The Flowers of Romance" is the very best record by Public Image Limited. Sure, we had some laughs with the 1978 debut and 1979's epic "Metal Box," but with "The Flowers of Romance," one of the defining outfits in Post-Punk almost sounds altogether unlike Post-Punk or anything else for that matter, so as I put it simply: Experimental music. What to make of this material? I mean, did John Lydon invent the English counterpart to Rap, because just what is it that he is rapping about exactly, playa? And I'm not being sarcastic, because the bloke once known as Rotten had some devilish axes to grind, and whether those be about nosey neighbors or what have you, doesn't seem to matter, because John has got some genuine flow in his throat.

Percussion is crucial to this album, and the real star of "The Flowers of Romance" is no doubt the percussionist Martin Atkins, as all sounds like an endless death march with this git on the drum kit. It must be made clear as well that John is quite probably at his caterwauling best on this record. Already at this rather early point in PiL's musical legacy, John had a pretty quick falling out with some of his mates, including bass master Jah Wabble. In fact, the only other original member of the PiL outfit to appear on "The Flowers of Romance" besides John is guitarist Keith Levene, and for the most part he pretty much occupies his time dinking around with cheesy synths. So, here you have a very inventive and peculiar record that is very far from Pop yet rather catchy. One must give Mr. Lydon and his songwriting partners some credit for cooking up worthwhile lyrical themes with quite strange music to match. I must say I have heard little that is similar to this album, and being a Captain Beefheart fan, John seems to have taken the anything goes approach to a very interesting place.

My favorite cut is the album opener "Four Enclosed Walls." I believe this is a cut that mocks absurd religious viewpoints and generalized cultural ignorance. Of course, it is that bone dry death march beat that really drives the point home, and do try your best to locate this album on the vinyl LP format, because the currently released CD version is so "tiny" in terms of sound quality. Mr. Rotten's personality has always steered his musical life, and while the first PiL record was a nice start and the sophomore effort "Metal Box" may very well be the PiL masterpiece, it is then "The Flowers of Romance" that is the fond farewell. It is unfortunate that John did get rather commercial as the '80's moved along, but perhaps this could not be helped in a decade that Michael Jackson pretty much defined. I will say that the singles "This Is Not A Love Song" and "Rise" are some rather curious and worthwhile songs that were featured on PiL records that followed "The Flowers of Romance," however, those albums lacked any real cohesion in the creative sense and mostly fell flat.

If you haven't, give "The Flowers of Romance" a chance and give John credit for in part defining a genre of music that was clearly far more musically worthwhile than Punk if not culturally. Watch "The Flowers of Romance" with John looking like a dandy, mates: