New Wave Outpost Forum

At the Abbey Pub in Chicago, Saturday, January 28

With his bass guitar or...with a beer in his hand ?[8D]
Have fun. Would love to see him perform. Didn't know he did so. Can you give a bit more info ?

I so would love to see him. His latest CD "MU" is excellent![8D]

This story appeared in Friday's Chicago Tribune:

Years after punk past, Jah Wobble keeps on dubbing

By Joshua Klein
Special to the Tribune
Published January 27, 2006

In retrospect, the '70s United Kingdom punk movement seems like a spontaneous flourishing of mass creativity. That's partly accurate, but in truth something simpler helped provoke punk: boredom -- with pop music, dead-end jobs and lives, and a conservative society that favored strict rules over the vibrancy and recklessness of youth.

Bassist Jah Wobble (born John Wardle) was one of many nascent musicians caught up with punk's appeal as a means of escape, falling in with the likes of troublemakers and future Sex Pistols Sid Vicious and John Lydon. It was with the latter that Wobble -- who comes to the Abbey Pub Saturday -- later formed the avant-garde leaning Public Image Limited, the group that would solidify his part in punk history. But as fellow punk Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks discovered, boredom isn't always so easily staved.

"Punk inspired people to become creative," recalls Shelley. "That's why I've always called it an artistic movement. But people have this idea that it must have been wonderful at the time. I mean, there were wonderful moments, but the rest of it was just as boring as any other day."

So the ever-restless Wobble set out on a globetrotting, journeyman career that in recent years has seen him tackling English ballads, collaborating with the likes of saxophonist Evan Parker, interpreting the works of William Blake and working on his own hypnotic permutations of dub music, the latest of which is "Mu."

"I always [mess] it up when I try to make a commercial record," concedes the affable Wobble. "I always spoil it in some way. But I must admit the general idea with this one was to make something with good production quality, good production standards, and present it in a very straightforward way.

"Although, having said that, to begin with it was supposed to be a 5.1 [surround sound] record. It was supposed to be a weird record. And then as we started working on it, this stuff came along that was kind of soul-like, so we decided to keep it straightforward."

But often Wobble doesn't even try to clean up his music, choosing instead to stick to his DIY, dub-wise roots.

"It was very brave, at the beginning," says Wobble of Jamaican dub music. "It was like this revolutionary approach, really. I can still remember the first time I heard it. But I think that sensibility has been lost quite a bit. Necessity was the mother of invention at that time. They were pretty limited, but consequently their imagination expanded greatly, their consciousness expanded. I'm quite happy working with very basic systems. You're more likely, sitting at home working on some cheap equipment, to just make something really good. You're relaxed. You're not trying too hard."

To that end, Wobble is wary of the very ease that ever-more sophisticated recording technology offers as its selling point. "I don't use computers to make music myself," he says. "Obviously I use studios, and I'm conversant with [technology]. But I . . . hate it, to be quite honest, looking at a screen of red and purple and blue globules that represents the music. I actually cut a few of the [`Mu'] rhythm tracks at home. I really like to push faders, and get that tactile thing going on. I sometimes think, when you're using the mouse to manipulate the music, it's a little bit of a dangerous thing.

"I don't hear the adventurousness in music nowadays," he says, "yet it's so easy to make. I think [during the early '70s advent of dub] there was kind of an alchemy at play. You had to catch an atmosphere. It was almost like a holy element, where you had to capture an atmosphere. You had to bring forth the holy ghost. And now it's so ... easy, it's incredible.

"I'm making another gritty, grainy record right now," Wobble says enthusiastically. "After doing something that's so hi-fi, I wanted to do something more lo-fi again. You just want that gritty thing going again. VU meters going into the red and all that."

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Jah Wobble & The English Roots Band

When: 9 p.m. Saturday

Where: Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace St.

Price: $15; 773-478-4408





Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Thanks for the interview and the tip.
Great guy. I heard an interview with him on the internet some time ago.
Didn't follow him after his 1980 solo album (which I only bought last year !) and his work with Jaki Liebeziet and Holger Czukay with the superb 12" 'How much are they".
I found his music a bit too relaxed and worldmusic like. But then again...I don't know these albums very well. May be I should give his last cd a go ? You reckon ?

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this is a good starting point - his music is varied to say the least, profound one minute and farting-about in the studio the next - always unexpected and always quality...

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