Time Zone! Lydon & Bambaataa unheralded nostrodami?

"Putting people in faceless categories
Knowledge isn't what it used to be
Military tactics to control a nation
Who wants to be a president or king? Me!

Mother Nature is gonna work against you
Nothing in your power that you can do"

.... it's accurately prophecied the last series of "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here" and in particular Mr. Lydon's efforts to get crowned King Of The Jungle!

That is what you meant, right?

Would you like to explain, Mr. In NYC, or shall I?

Over to you Alex.

And if any song didn't follow more strongly with the call for "MORE COWBELL!", this one is it.

God Bless Laswell and his Gated Glam Rock Drums Of God.

Granted it was 5 years later, but no mention of that horrible Matt Johnson monstrosity on Mind Bomb?

Yes, Chuckles, but this was the first time an arguably prominent figure from each genre had collaborated together.

Your point?

if i were to somehow get on a hip-hop station and put on PiL's "Fodderstompf," do you think I'd get away with it?

Chuck Eddy otm. It wasn't the first rock/rap x-over. In any case, when i first heard it (1997) it wasn't 'what the fuck is THIS?' any more: sic transit g-l-o-r-i-a.

And the Pistols *were* shite too.

Whippin' out the Latin isn't going to save you from missing the point again. "World Deestruction" was the first COLLABORATION between PROMINENT FIGURES of each genre. The reason it didn't strike you as amazing when you heard it was probably `cos you didn't hear it until quite some time after Hip Hop had become well-established cultural dominance. At the time, however (`84), it was as alien sounding as could be.

And the Pistols *were* shite too.

And when'd you first hear them?

bc-person's view seems a bit narrow to me - but to them, the 'larger-perspective' view may seem irrelevant/dry/academic/pretentious/crustacean
- maybe it's about perception vs sensation - the extent to which 'understanding' is supposed to enhance enjoyment

and if you have a Celebration-Of-The-Here-&-Now (popist?) mode of listening, being expected to admire a record because IT WAS THERE FIRST may just seem like Respect-Due-To-Rock's-Rich-Tapestry (rockist?) ideology ?
(i am not defending ignorance here - but being interested in hearing something in order to frame/contextualise need not necessarily mean that you will/should like how it actually sounds)

Stewart - the problem i have had for the last 1,000 yrs is that the Sex Pistols played their instruments very 'properly' (albeit a tad sloppily) indeed !

(unlike that shouting-over-other-ppls-records shower - haha !)

WARNINGWARNING
IMMINENT EVERYTHING-BEING-CALLED-'PUNK'-ALERT
WARNINGWARNING

Ssssssh! People aren't supposed to know that! Don't you know the only reason they recruited Sid was to try to keep that secret?

(xpost Blimey ...)

Is it really too much to expect that people might try to hold both of these ideas in their little heads at once?

My point is that he also did the whole "Muslims be comin' to getcha!!" bit — though it was 1989 by then. Wasn't that partly the point of this whole thread? Or was it that "Time Zone" was the post-modern "Ebony and Ivory"?

with harpsichord

Avoid the "<" and ">" characters from now on, and surround what your quoting with "<i>" and "</i>" instead. This will italicize the thing you're quoting.

By the way, the only reason you're actually seeing these in my post here is because you have to type "&lt;" for "<", and "&gt;" for ">".

Also do a "View Source" on this page.

Shouldn't you be on another thread spreading ridiculous theories about how A Flock of Seagulls invented disco-death-metal or something?

Seriously, though, in 1984, Lydon wasn't yet a has-been (that wouldn't happen until around `86 or so, I'd reckon). I think Bambaataa was still respected as well, but I'll defer to the experts on that one. Fab Five Freddy, at the time of "Rapture" was merely namechecked. Moreover, he was a graffitti artist/scenester before he was as big a figure as Bambaataa. I don't mean to slag "Rapture," but it was more Blondie attempting hip hop rather than a COLLABORATION on the scale of "World Destruction" (however corny and arguably obvious it remains). Grandmaster Flash opening for the Clash at Bond's, while admirable and forward-looking, isn't a recorded collaboration.

Lots of people thought Lydon was washed up by the time *Flowers of Romance* came out; *Album* is okay, but most people I knew still considered a fluke by this old guy who'd once been, um, *important.*

I have no idea what a "view source" is. Never even heard of it before. And all those silly brackets and "i"'s sound damn complicated.

It's HTML weirdness. Just use quote marks, I figure.

If you're using Internet Explorer, go the View menu then go down to Source. You should open up some text file editor program and it will show you the guts of the html page you're looking at. Fun at least the one time you do it. Essential if you're a web programmer geek like me.

Lots of people thought Lydon was washed up by the time *Flowers of Romance* came out; *Album* is okay, but most people I knew still considered a fluke by this old guy who'd once been, um, *important.*

I'd imagine the "Live in Tokyo" release would have done the damage. I keep it only to show people how goddamn inferior the live versions of those songs are to the originals, and how basically Lydon creatively died in 1982. Album was a slight rise (no pun intended) in an other wise constant slide from there on out. And the credit to Album's goodness should be given to Laswell if anybody.

That other stuff made no sense to me at all, but was enjoyable to read. I have no idea if I'm using Internet Explorer, much less why I would want to see the guts of a web page, or what it would mean if I did. Either way, the View part of my toolbar has no Source under it!

As for when it all went wrong for Lydon, I think This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get was certainly the first record they released that showed major slippage.

No way - "Frantic Situation" was great! Not as good as "Looking For the Perfect Beat", no ... but what is?

I'd also say it's an entirely different ball of wax than "Unity" (Bambaataa's afore-mentioned lame duet with James Brown) beyond the obvious race-bridging being that James Brown's brand of funk isn't as far removed from Hip Hop as Lydon's brand of rock (punk/post-punk/whatever you'd care to call it).

(If only someone would finally explain, en masse, WHY this is now the case.. sigh)

As good as "Looking For the Perfect Beat" (or at least a lot closer to it than "Frantic Situation" is): "Jazzy Sensation," "Funky Sensation," "Zulu Nation Throwdown," "Zulu Wildstyle," "Wildstyle," "Planet Rock." And yeah, he did good records after that (actually, his Uberzone collaboration was one of the best singles of 2001 or some year around then, come to think of it), but starting with "Renegades of Funk" or so, you could tell Bam was really starting to fish for ideas....

Alex in NYC in comparing every song I have reservations about to some random Kix record shocka. (There, I used quotes. I hope everybody is happy. But those double quotes within the double ones look retarded, I swear.)

"Alex thinks 'Contrary Mary' by Kix is a pile of crap!"

The "less than" key starts such a tag.

Recently, some hacker dude has been fucking with ILXOR, which is why anything that even SMELLS like an HTML tag (or anything that looks like "<this>") now gets filtered out. Hence, if you type a "less than" sign, everything after it gets removed.

So there is a good reason there has been some filtering going on. The problem is.... there has been no explanation of this new filtering anywhere, catching you and I and others off-guard.

Mega turd polish. Side 2's actually somewhat decent, especially the instrumentals.

But Lydon's brand of rock (in PiL) might be closer to BAMBAATAA'S brand of hip-hop (at least starting with "Planet Rock") than James Brown was. In other words, I think "Looking For a Perfect Beat" might have more in common with "Memories" than with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." (As somebody suggeseted above, the common denominator was Kraut rock, probably -- Lydon's via Can, Bambaataa's via Kraftwerk.)

with beats via Chinn/Chapman or Cozy Powell.

Did I mention that I love "World Destruction"?

But we won't.

i get Tape Op magazine (recording magazine) but anyway they always get a few cool anecdotes out of the people they interview...

anyway, in the current issue there's a Bill Laswell interview, and he talks about Time Zone/World Destruction, and apparently, the whole genesis of the project was Afrika contacting Bill about wanting to do a "heavy metal" record with Def Leppard....Bill didn't know Def Leppard, so apparently the closest he could suggest to Afrika was "John Lydon from the Sex Pistols" which Afrika was cool with....along the way the idea of it being heavy metal record was scrapped and it became the Time Zone we all know and love.

something about Lydon being the Def Leppard of Bill Laswell's world makes a lot of sense

Lol.

Loved this when it first came out, but it didn't wear well. If Afrika Bambaataa had managed to collaborate with Def Leppard at that point in time, how might it have changed things?

If I remember correctly, in Malcolm McLaren's autobiography he talks about seeing a big black dude in NYC in 1980 wearing a Sex Pistols t-shirt, he introduced himself and it turned out to be Afrika, who invited him to a block party etc etc. So Bambaataa was already a fan of Lydon for a few years.

Actually it is from that album with remixes and stories etc from McLaren

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2ydF4Nelg8

This thread... context and precedence have nothing to do with pure enjoyment. "World Destruction" still rules as far as I'm concerned but to kids today, sure, it may not mean a thing or work for them. As for Lydon's slide towards irrelevance - I think everything through "Album" is gold and half of the rest is great, including his album from last year but not including his one solo album.

I would like to perform a redo of this w/ Lupe Fiasco