The 1980 Listening Post - Jah Wobble - The Legend Lives On...Jah Wobble in Betrayal

 Reviewed by Paul J Zickler

Released: May 9 1980 Jah Wobble The Legend Lives On... Jah Wobble In Betrayal Genre: Post-Punk Rating: 2 out of 5 Highlights: Blueberry Hill Jah Wobble was born John Wardle, but Sid Vicious pronounced his name all slurred, and he liked it so much he changed it. Jah played bass with John Lydon in Public Image Ltd. He seemed like sort of a semi-talented guy who listened to a lot of dub & reggae and brought that style to Lydon’s crazy post-punk minimalism, and it just clicked on songs like Public Image, Poptones and Careering. Only trouble was, he basically stole a bunch of tracks PiL had recorded and put his own vocals over them. Lydon didn’t like it and fired Jah. Imagine that, Johnny Rotten getting pissed off and firing a musician. Shocking, I know. I can’t really get with any of the songs where Wobble tries to sing. The closest thing would be Blueberry Hill, which is quirky and experimental but also funky underneath it all. It definitely makes better use of the backing track than its Metal Box corollary, The Suit.. The instrumental Not Another (the other one pinched from the PiL session) is kind of cool and spacey, but not particularly memorable. The songs where Snow White (Bernadine Lawrence) sings are hard to listen to, unless you enjoy the whole out of tune thing, which I’m good with sometimes, but not really here. The backing track on Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life almost saves it from the vocal, but when you compare it to what other bands were doing in the same vein, it just doesn’t hold up, especially not for 7 minutes plus. Dan McArthur is mostly weird noise for the sake of weird noise. I’m definitely a fan of weird noise when it goes somewhere or serves some purpose. Jah Wobble has sustained a long career, following his muse through various genres and collaborations. Maybe he was just too drunk and high in 1980 to really make anything listenable. It’s probably best we forgive him for that and move on.