Venue:
Northampton Roadmender
Date: 17/05/2024
This was a tremendous gig; some seriously good re-workings of PiL’s “Metal Box”, the theme from “Midnight Cowboy”, and a couple from the first album turned inside out, upside down, and played straight, all at the same time, and mixed by the sound engineer with serious appreciation of the importance of bowel-loosening reverberations (the previous curry didn’t help) and dubwise tricks, often shouted by Mr Wobble as he was going along. The band were excellent with an ex-Banshee from the latter years doing the scratchy bits, and the “gorgeous and handsome” keyboard player (as Jah W insisted on introducing him) being distinctly proggy at points. The youthful drummer was not the PiL drummer of yore, but he was bloody good. At one point JW was playing timbales for a jazzier workout of a post-punk great, another time it was ALMOST heavy metal (but not really). You really didn’t know what was coming next, though we all knew the original album inside out. This is the way to play a classic album, and fair dues to JW for indicating the way forward.
The audience:
A mix of post-punk types now late-middle aged and more sensible in haircut and attire, a few hippies, more women in pairs (rather than accompanying male fans as long-suffering partners) than you’d think, young people in going-out gear looking quite flash, and generally PLU (“people like us”).
It made me think..
My hips were aching from the joys of being 63 and standing up; then I made the discovery that is you danced and moved around, you feel a lot better. There you go – you are never too old to learn. Maybe i should do that more. JW really IS a diamond geezer.
It’s curious, I can’t stand PiL; I can’t get past Lydon. (To be fair, these days, who can…) But I have this rebuilt in Dub and find most of it right up my street. Maybe Wobble should drop the singing, but otherwise. Live he is always excellent value, too.
I can stand him. Don’t think he has changed at all since the Sex Pistols. Was always a contrarian and not easy to pin down. And I saw a relatively recent PIL gig, no Jah Wobble, but it was brilliant
I’d say he’s completely changed since the Sex Pistols. He used to be cool, taciturn, sharp and scathing. Now he’s a jolly pantomime act, happy to entertain the crowds with an end-of-pier singalong. Hawaii was very good, but I find this sort of stuff embarrassing:
He was always a kind of pantomime act. That’s how the Sex Pistols got on the front pages of every newspaper in the land (with McLaren’s help)
Love his dub stuff , remote hope this might come to Oz.
Seen Jah Wobble a good few times in this iteration. His band is HOT, particularly the drummer.
A great blend of jazz, punk and dub stylings. Mr. Wobble is a very affable frontman.
I recall going to see them at a packed-out Borderline quite a few years ago and Mr. Wobble’s bass frequencies (and volume) were causing the club’s aircon ducting to rattle.