WOEBOT

I picked up the reissue of P.I.L's "Second Edition" from, fittingly enough, the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street when it came out in 1987. I think it was Loop who turned me on to the LP. I was listening to their brilliant "Heavens End" repeatedly; I must have seen them live about 5 times.

But until the other day I've never had a copy of, you know, the beast, Metal Box. I've come across it from time to time, and passed. That's the thing when you get older isn't it, you have a bit more money, and you finally pick up the things you wanted when you were younger. Apparently that's what has happened all down the 'nuum too, fans reaching back five years and picking up the legendary records they never had the funds to collect when they were teenagers.

It's a shame that the record doesn't have an edition number, like The White Album, because you can't start a thread on a forum entitled: "What's the serial number of your Metal Box?" The critics say the low-end on it packs a punch, and they're not lying. Wobble's bass is like an oil tanker. The deck upon which the band is playing. There are lovely things about the format of the three tinned twelve inches*. Possibly the nicest is the end of "Death Disco".

On the twelve inch this is a very long track, but on Metal Box it cuts at the lines "Words Can Not Express" and then that section loops. The bass does this funky little Nile Rodgers-esque run and repeats four times. In tandem the synth trills cheaply like off a Freeze single. It's the only remotely Disco-like bit in the whole song, which is widely-known to be about the death of John Lydon's mother.

However the clincher is that straight after this craftily constructed, almost humorous coda, comes another loop. This time however it's as blank-eyed and bleak as it could possibly be. Cutting perpendicularly across the track's rhythm and even mocking the frivolity of the preceding cycle, it's built using the run-out groove of the vinyl itself. All one hears is Lydon going "aaahess", no sense at all, and the needle stuttering in the groove. Genius, and one of the great run-out grooves of all time, up there with "A Day in the Life" and "Madonna, Sean and Me". Needless to say this doesn't make it to "Second Edition" or the CD reissue. Listen to it here.

When I got home, I scratched my head, and realised with satisfaction that I also had a couple of other early Metal Box-era P.I.L twelve inches. I paid nothing whatsoever for these slabs of noise. It was nice to put them in a little pile together and kind of fondle them all. The first, the "Death Disco" twelve inch, is the full-length studio version of the track that's cropped mid-way on the LP. The b-side called "Megga Mix" is a re-working of "Fodderstompf" from the first LP. Apparently the whole first LP was re-worked this way, but this is the only track that ever saw the light of day. That's sort of intriguing.

The other Metal Box-era twelve inch is "Memories", again with exquisitely bleak artwork made up of photos taken of Lydon and Jeanette Lee by Dennis Morris. "Memories" is a stronger mix than the version that appears on Metal Box, the b-side a version of "Graveyard" with vocals on, which to my mind is inferior to the instrumental.

*There's a bad thing too. It's bloody difficult to get the records out of the tin.