"It's too bad this club did not know how to properly promote this show" was most definitely not the opening line I expected punk/art-rock legend John Lydon to greet us with when he finally took the stage last Wednesday to front the second of a two-night stand for the newly-reunited Public Image Ltd. at the newly-opened Royale. Of course, it was true that he was gallivanting onto the stage of a room only fractionally full of human beings-- and perhaps this was finally the inversion of Lydon's famous "Ever get the feeling that you've been cheated?" line come back to haunt him. "It was at capacity last night!", Lydon moaned, and for a second, I thought I might be witnessing one of my childhood rock heroes flameout onstage.But Lydon's wounded pride mattered little in terms of the show delivered, a dream gig for even a casual fan which saw Lydon (with a band comprised mostly of members of Happy?-era PIL) fancifully traipsing through the PIL songbook, stopping for extended periods with material from every era of the band's oeuvre. Of special note was the way the band, early in the set, decided to drive the truck off the cliff with an extended detour into a number of cuts from 1979's Metal Box. The band's run-through of "Poptones", a peculiar track where voice, guitar, bass and drums all operate as separate parts in an ever-shifting machine that never requires all four pieces to be doing the same thing at the same time, was particularly sublime. The Metal Box material is tortured material, full of disembodied wailing and scurrying furvor in both voice and instruments, and it was thrilling to see this band tackle this tricky material and pull it off so winningly, right down to guitarist Lu Edmonds's expert recreation of Keith Levene's spindly guitar doodles.
At around the one-hour mark, John Lydon paused between songs, appearing to choose his words carefully. "It can be... nice, sometimes, to share your pain." A sensible and sensitive statement, especially coming out of the workcamp dancefloor dirge that was "Death Disco," summing up in large part the Public Image blueprint that Lydon has adhered to ever since shedding the Johnny Rotten persona in order to exorcise his own personal demons in the music of PIL. And make no mistake: As much fun as it was to bop around to the ur-grooving of this PIL's recreation of the classic Levene/Wobble/Atkins shake-and-grind, Lydon's PIL voice is pain personified. He may have strode out in comfortable clothing more fitting to a beach bum than a punk legend, with dyed orange hair moussed to stick straight up in the air like someone's crazy uncle in the circus; but his frequent between-song swigs of Hennessy eventually embolded him to dive into the dark recesses of the band's discography.
Related:
Ghost stories, Winged migration, Injustice for all, More 
- Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
- Winged migration
Since their start in the middle of the decade, Brown Bird have been one of the region's go-to chamber-folk outfits, with a couple of dark and stormy albums earning them a following in various nooks of New England. The release of their latest album, The Devil Dancing , feels like both an ending and a new beginning.
- Injustice for all
Scott Sturgeon loses his train of thought a couple of times during this interview. He's loopy from jet lag — which is unavoidable after a 20-hour flight from New Zealand (halfway around the planet from his non-residency at a squatted apartment building in New York City), where he's just finished a tour with his claim-to-fame band, Leftover Crack.
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Group hug
Things aren’t always what they’re called — we know that flying fish don’t fly and starfish aren’t even fish.
- Local heroes, ’09 edition
The Rhode Island music community flourished in 2009, with new full-lengths from the Coming Weak, California Smile, and the pride of Cranston West and official big-leaguers Monty Are I, who released Break Through the Silence in September.
- Local flavor
Local journalist and acclaimed hip-hop scribe Andrew Martin has corralled a flavorful roster of Rhody-based rap talent on the Ocean State Sampler , 10 exclusive tracks available for free download.
- Beyond Dilla and Dipset
With a semi-sober face I'll claim that hip-hop in 2010 might deliver more than just posthumous Dilla discs, Dipset mixtapes, and a new ignoramus coke rapper whom critics pretend rhymes in triple-entendres.
- John Harbison plus 10
Classical music in Boston is so rich, having to pick 10 special events for this winter preview is more like one-tenth of the performances I'm actually looking forward to.
- Shout it out!
Sharks Come Cruisin' founder Mark Lambert is a Warwick native with a penchant for reworking and penning sea shanties from centuries past, often revised with rollicking punk flare — all thanks to the golden pipes of Quint, the shark-obsessed skipper in Jaws .
- Punk wreck
Guitar punk rock has a long and, frankly, dull history.
- Less
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Live Reviews
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