Some righteous fury for Wednesday from the 1993 collaboration between Leftfield and John Lydon. Leftfield were at the height in 93 mixing techno with dub and progressive house and found a variety of guest vocalists to give their music some focus. On Open Up Lydon is back at his best too, the butter advert, celebrity jungle game show, Sex Pistols re-unions and Brexit backing bollocks being some years away in the future. In Open Up he takes out his fury at least partly on Tinsel Town with the 'Burn, Hollywood, burn' line and 'open up, make room for me' refrain but the earlier lines could have been written with any number of people in mind- 'you lied, you faked, you cheated, you changed the stakes'. I don't know what Lydon's views on Boris Johnson are (and actually don't want to just in case Johnny has decided that Boris is ok). As everyone knows when the song came out there were real forest fires blazing through parts of Los Angeles and threatening Lydon's own home.
Musically Open Up is a thumping Leftfield tour de force with pounding kick drums, hi hats buzzing away at the top end, a pummelling bassline and in your face squiggles and synths. It is enormous and a massive adrenaline shot.
Open Up (Vocal Edit)
The 12" remix single came with versions by Sabres Of Paradise and The Dust Brothers. Sabres found the dubbier parts of the song, some metallic guitar lines and stripped it down leaving Lydon's vocal sounding even more at- the- edge than on the original mix.
Open Up (I Hate Pink Floyd Mix)
Love that picture!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff and after blasting out Never Mind The Bollocks and The Winterland bootleg at the Weekend, I forgive Lydon everything even the Brexit comments which I think may have been shit stirring anyway, well I hope so
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