Jah Wobble: May 11, 2001

Jah Wobble is a much more exotic moniker than the man's given name, John Wardle. The stage name is also a better fit for the music he creates. Starting off as the bass player in the most respected and influential version of John Lydon's post-Pistols group, Public Image Ltd., as a solo artist Wobble has experimented with sounds from around the globe. His biggest commercial success came with the 1991 album Rising Above Bedlam and the Sinéad O'Connor duet "Visions of You." 

In 2001 Wobble embarked on a very brief U.S. tour (just five cities) in support of his album Passage to Hades with a group dubbed Deep Space. The opener was Chicago's 8 Bold Souls, a respected jazz ensemble that nicely complemented Wobble's worldly, experimental sounds.

The porkpie-topped Wobble and his band, which included keyboards and winds, were all business. Of course, part of the lack of stage banter was due to the nature of the music. Here's what I wrote in a blog just after the show: 

Saw Jah Wobble at the Double Door with ----. He played one song for the entire show. Good, sexy music, but not exciting to watch. The highlight was the bad white people going "native" with their dancing. At one point, ---- turned to me and said, "I feel like Chicken Tonight."

So, yeah. Droning, experimental sounds that looped and loped into each other for about an hour or 90 minutes. And then a cheerful and sincere-sounding "thanks" and off he went. Being a sucker for a good hook, I guess I'd have preferred to hear more pop-structured songs, but I admire Wobble's experimentation and musicianship and am glad I got to see one of his rare American appearances.

Sex Pistols: August 16, 1996

Maybe the situation was particularly loaded because the band symbolized anti-establishmentarianism to so many, or maybe it was because of the acrimonious way the members had parted ways, but a lot of people greeted the Sex Pistols' 1996 reunion with anger or derision. It probably didn't help matters that the group baited critics by naming the tour Filthy Lucre and releasing a live album to cash in on it. Regardless of whether I felt skeptical about the artistic merit of the tour or the motivations behind it, I certainly wasn't going to sit it out. At the time, the reunion seemed to come out of nowhere and could well have been as tenuous as it was unexpected. Besides, it had been four years since lead singer John Lydon's Public Image Ltd. had released the disappointing, and at the time seemingly final, album That What Is Not so for a fan the Pistols reunion was the only game in town.

Cobo Arena is part of a sprawling convention center and this caused a weird clash of cultures when gingham-clad attendees of a square dance convention were filtering through the building at the same time as the Sex Pistols fans. It might have been cool if people really were going to a Pistols show wearing square dance outfits, though!

The gig itself was a huge letdown. I certainly didn't expect an anarchic spectacle from middle-aged men on a large-scale tour, but I also wasn't prepared for their stiff professionalism. They played the songs -- of which there aren't really that many, are there? -- skillfully and true to the studio versions. But those songs had a humor and energy that was totally lacking during the show, and the presence of an audience seemed to have little effect. When Lydon reconstituted PiL for a tour in 2010, it was quite a different story. At the later PiL gig, he had the spark, even if it wasn't lit at Cobo Arena that night in 1996.