8 Days to Flowers of Romance Revisited!

FLOWERS OF ROMANCE REVISITED 
45th Anniversary Celebration 
Saturday, April 11 
8 Days to get Tickets – GA, VIP, Ultra VIP, and Livestream! 

Just 8 days to go until we celebrate Flowers of Romance at Reggies….it was, for sure, a strange, unexpected and difficult album for most. Pretty much (as was most of my output with PiL) universally panned except by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone who called it the “most brutal, frightening music” Lydon had voiced since “Anarchy in the U.K.” 

I’ve accumulated all kinds of pieces of interesting background over the years – the album was a large influence on The Melvins, confounded others and destroyed Jeff Tweedy‘s Christmas. The name comes from a band that John Richie (Sid Vicious) was in before the Sex Pistols along with Keith Levene and (I think) Viv from the Slits. Belsen Was A Gas was originally a Flowers of Romance song before being covered by the Pistols. Justin Pearson of The Locust stole a cassette from a mall in Arizona. The album was on Kurt Cobain’s top 50 albums list. Under The House was chosen by director Danny Boyle to be used during the opening ceremony of the UK Olympic Games in 2012. 

The iconic front cover is Jeannette Lee – part of PiL for a while in the beginning (’78 to 82?) founded Acme Attractions, a fashion shop with Don Letts, and is now a co director of Rough Trade Records in the UK and manages Jarvis Cocker.

The album was the first notable work by Nick Launay, who engineered but was a part of the production really – he went on to work with Kate Bush, INXS, Nick Cave, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Idles, and soooo much more !

It’s almost 45 years ago that I was asked to rejoin PiL to work on what would become The Flowers Of Romance album. If PiL’s First Edition album in 1978 was a break from punk – utilizing Jah Wobble’s bass and Keith Levene’s guitar – then with the departure of Wobble and pushing music concrete experimentation, and basically early industrial ideas to the front, was its complete destruction (except of course it wasn’t).

All kinds of things have been written about this album, the strategies of creation, the planning etc. but the truth is there wasn’t any. Nick and I worked, bounced off each other while John hovered unseen until he would walk in with words on the back of a Marlboro cigarette packet, and sing in one (sometimes but rarely), or two takes.

There are so many anniversaries to celebrate this year it seems – we just honored Extremities last November and this is the 35th anniversary of Pigface and, I think the 25th of The Damage Manual but, 45 years of this album feels important. Too important to ignore it.

Ganser will be opening this show – their final show before they head to Europe for their first tour over there!

Chris Connelly and I will be joined by Orville Kline on loops, Robert Byrne on guitar, Leyla Royale on cello, Alicia Gaines on bass, and Alan Lake on occasional percussion to revisit and celebrate this important album along with interpretations of the missing songs at Reggie’s Chicago on Saturday April 11th.

The Livestream Link is now available! We’re acutely aware of the amount of people who really want to see this, so we’ve set up a $10 ticket livestream for the night. It’s a 5-camera production, with 1-2 moving cameras + 3 stationary. Join in from wherever you are, if you can’t make it to Chicago!

Don’t forget, you can buy tickets with 4 smaller installments through PayPal on our website HERE. With a purchase of the VIP package, you’ll receive your GA ticket, the poster, a shirt, and merch coupons! Ultra VIP gets the shirt, signed poster, exclusive access, and more!

PPIM Presents:
The unveiling of PPIM’s custom-built engineering monitors in conjunction with Illinois State University

Fri April 24, 7:00pm

Sat April 25, 2:00pm

Join us for this unique, intimate, seated event in the museum’s main showroom. We will play tracks you’ve never heard before through a pair of custom-made speakers, the sound of which you’ve likely never experienced.

This event celebrates the arrival of a set of unparalleled engineering monitors custom-designed by Aaron Paolucci and built by his students at Illinois State University. These speakers were created for cutting-edge transparency and three-dimensional sound fields, pushing the limits of sound quality. In a world of earbuds, low-end speakers, and secondary music, it’s a rare opportunity to hear pivotal tracks in our archive through such a uniquely crafted system.

While we can’t say exactly what you’ll hear at this event, we can tell you that the museum’s audio archives feature artists connected to many of the artifacts and sections throughout our main gallery, where the intimate seating for this event will take place.

Unreleased material could include:

• PiL

• Skinny Puppy

• Nine Inch Nails

• My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult

• RX from Ohgr and Atkins

• Swans

• Cynthia Plaster Caster

• China Dub Soundsystem

• + more

This project has been made possible through a partnership with the School of Creative Technologies within the Wonsook Kim College of Fine Arts at Illinois State University. Aaron Paolucci instructed and guided students, Aries Clark, Teala Torres, Harley Meyers, Finley Hast, Sam Machek, and Lucas Ford, to build these monitors based on Aaron’s original design.

Refreshments provided.

We look forward to hosting you for this special event!