Live In Tokyo

With their line-up in complete disarray, founding member John Lydon and drummer Martin Atkins signed up unknown local New Jersey musicians for a short Japanese tour in 1983. The band runs through the highlights of the first three solo albums with a curiously more conventional post-punk attack. “(This Is Not A) Love Song” and “Bad Life” are previews of material to appear on the band’s upcoming LP, This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get. The spotlight is on the former Sex Pistol vocalist who turns in deliberately grating performances. The anger behind “Annalisa” and “Religion” are met with the more compassionate, “Death Disco,” written for the passing of Lydon’s mother and released as a single several years earlier (and later on Second Edition as “Memories”). The sparseness of “Banging the Door” and “Under the House” are colored in or turned into call and response numbers while “Flowers of Romance” has its creepy synth textures replaced with effect-heavy electric guitars. It’s a solid live album, if not another complete reinvention of the band’s music.