Word: public
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...networks believe that controversial issues of public importance are best presented in the formats determined by broadcast journalists," Schmertz said, adding. "There can be no other points of view except that which the network journalists decide you should...
...public image" is the unifying concept for the album. Clearly uncomfortable with the sneering, puke-spitting persona created for him by Pistols manager Malcolm MacLaren (who gets singled out for abuse in "Lowlife"), Lydon wants to defy public expectations while still maintaining an audience, a limited public image. Unfortunately, it is Lydon's purposed demarche, his frankly experimental music, which fails most miserably...
Lydon overreaches his intellect as well. The political and social critique of Bollocks was acceptable because it was sincere and angry; the critique in Public Image rings hollow, the dull abstractions of a pseudo intellectual. Consider "Religion," a tedious diatribe against the Church, which is trite and too long...
...roll without attempts at transcendence. "Annalisa," about a girl in Germany whose parents starved her to death to exorcise the devil, moves as forcefully as some of the lesser Bollocks numbers. "Lowlife," a slam at former manager MacLaren, and "Attack," another standard rocker, are at least not bad. And "Public Image," which Simon Frith of Melody Maker called "the best non-disco 45 of the year," might be just that, although there's always the Stones' "Shattered...
...scintallae are obscured by too much pretentious claptrap. Like the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties' Requests, the Beatles' "Revolution #9," or anything by Led Zeppelin, Public Image suffers from too much unearned self-seriousness. "A man's reach should exceed his grasp," Browning wrote, "or what's a heaven for?" Well, not for rock and roll. Sid Vicious got out in the nick of time...