I'm not listening to quite as much new music lately, so I'm starting a new program here, educating you in the basics of "seminal" bands, easily quotable in casual conversation to show off just how much you know about music and just how much your friends don't. Without further ado...
If you thought Johnny Rotten fell off the planet after the Sex Pistols' spectacular flame-out, you're clearly not a music snob. In fact, his second band probably had more influence, musically speaking, than the manufactured punks ever did. Originally entitled Metal Box, PiL's 1979 sophomore album was initially issued in a cost-prohibitive metal film canister. Reissued a year later in the more standard cardboard sleeve (and later, plastic jewel case), Second Edition is a standard-bearer for serious post-punk. With heavy, dubby rhythms and jagged, scraping guitars, the album is absolutely uncompromising in sound and epic in scope. John Lydon here is far more transgressive and iconoclastic than Johnny Rotten could ever have been. For snob bonus points, PiL also includes producer extraordinaire Jah Wobble on bass (sort of a proto-Albini) and original Clash member (before they ever recorded) Keith Levene on guitar.
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