In 2012, founding PIL members Jah Wobble and Keith Levene reunited to form a touring band that played the PIL material they created together in 1978-1979. (Unable to use the PIL name, they were called Metal Box in Dub.)
To hear Wobble and Levene (bass/guitar) lock into these grooves again, for the first time in decades, is something else. And with no spitting punks or Lydon pressures to deter them, their band freely explored the jam-band potential of early PIL.
Players:
- Jah Wobble: bass
- Keith Levene: guitar
- Nathan Maverick: vocals
- Mark Layton-Bennett: drums
- Sean Corby: trumpet
Lydon’s vocals are performed by the freakily on-point impersonator Nathan Maverick, plucked from “The Sex Pistols Experience” tribute band. Maverick has exactly the voice and flexibility of the young Lydon, so he can fluidly wail, keen, warble, and twist his way through Lydon’s wild, late-1970s vocalizations.
A curation of Metal Box in Dub’s recorded performances would make a fantastic Record Store Day release. In the meantime, here’s a great-sounding, whole-show recording I managed to grab at the time of the tour.
two-hour, mp3 file zipped up here
- Graveyard
- Theme
- Annalisa
- Careering
- Poptones
- Memories
- No Birds
- Death Disco
- (band intro and crowd)
- The Public Image
- Low Life
- (between-song chatter)
- Understand
- Albatross
- (singer changeover)
- Graveyard (vocals John Robb)
- (thank you and goodnight)
There's plenty of YouTube video of this group playing live on various dates. You'll find informative press clippings and interviews from the time as well.