For this week’s installment of Vintage Video, we bring you the full hour-long performance by Public Image Ltd. on the West German TV show “Rockpalast” in 1983, a 13-song set that recently was released on both CD and DVD — but the folks at the RockpalastOfficial YouTube channel put it online.
Tonight’s “Saturday Night Live” season finale was notable for its final appearances by a number of soon-to-be-former castmembers, including, in all likelihood, Fred Armisen, who reprised his Ian Rubbish punk character with a live band that included Kim Gordon, Steve Jones, J Mascis, Carrie Brownstein, Aimee Mann and more.
This week’s new releases include expanded reissues of albums from R.E.M. (‘Document’), Sex Pistols (‘Never Mind the Bollocks’), INXS (‘Kick’) and Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, plus new music from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, with Yoko Ono, and Mark Eitzel, John Foxx and The Cure’s Robert Smith.
For fans, one of the highlights of the Sex Pistols’ upcoming ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ box set is the “lost” 1977 studio demo of “Belsen Was a Gas” with John Lydon’s vocals, the controversial Holocaust-themed song billed as the only “original Sex Pistols composition of the era thought not to be recorded.”
John Lydon will bring his reconvened Public Image Ltd. back to the U.S. for its first North American tour in two years this fall, playing 18 dates in the U.S. and Canada throughout October and into early November, culminating with the previously announced appearance at the FunFunFun Fest in Austin, Texas.
Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This edition includes items about New Order, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Steve Kilbey, The Stone Roses, The Mission, Bad Religion, Killing Joke, Sex Pistols, They Might Be Giants and more.
The Sex Pistols this week revealed the full tracklist to this fall’s super-deluxe ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ box set, a 3CD/1DVD collection that will mark the classic punk album’s 35th anniversary with demos, B-sides, live cuts and a remastered edition of the record using newly re-discovered original master tapes.
Q&A: Daniel Ash on Love and Rockets’ reunion, his new band — and figuring out how to play “So Alive” 
Q&A: Chris Frantz talks Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club and new book ‘Remain in Love’ 
Q&A: Steve Wynn on The Dream Syndicate’s first new album in nearly 30 years 
Q&A: Bauhaus’ David J on his ‘accidental’ concept album ‘Not Long For This World’ 
Q&A: Peter Murphy on ‘Ninth,’ Bauhaus’ break-up, reuniting Dalis Car 
Q&A: Joey Santiago on Pixies’ ‘Doolittle’ tour, possible ‘Surfer Rosa’ shows, new album talk 
Q&A: Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon on new album, changing the world with music 
Q&A: Peter Hook talks ‘Unknown Pleasures’ tour, re-recording Joy Division 