Commercial Zone
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Commercial Zone is a semi-official "bootleg" album released by guitarist Keith Levene and credited to Public Image Ltd.. It mainly consists of the last material recorded during Levene's time in the band. (One track, "Miller Hi Life" may have been recorded without his input.) After Levene's split, he took the tapes to America and had a relatively small number released under the "Pil Records" imprint. This version was released in late 1983. The album was reissued in 1984 as "Commercial Zone - Limited Edition" with an altered running order for the tracks and a slightly shorter mix of "Bad Night." About 30,000 copies of this version were released.
Two of these tracks ("This Is Not A Love Song" and "Blue Water") were released by Virgin on the 12" issue of "This Is Not A Love Song." (This version of "This Is Not A Love Song" was credited as a remix on that release.) "This Is Not A Love Song" and four other tracks were subsequently re-recorded by the Lydon-Atkins lineup of Public Image Ltd for the first post-Levene album, "This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get." While "Commercial Zone" is more accessible than previous records, with some laidback Velvet Underground-style guitar on a few tracks, "This Is What You Want..." has an even starker sound than the previous album "The Flowers Of Romance."
[edit] About the album
After Keith Levene quit PiL, John Lydon and Martin Atkins re-recorded the material for the band’s fourth studio album (deleting Levene’s contributions) and the result was the album This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get. With dubious legality, Levene released the original album tapes under the title Commercial Zone before This Is What You Want came out, and then as Commercial Zone: Limited Edition after it. Many fans as well as Levene regard Commercial Zone as the last "true" PiL album; others see it as just a collection of demos (it could be argued that Commercial Zone is unpolished and undeveloped – a work in progress, obviously – yet This Is What You Want, in its desire to sound as modern as possible for its time, has dated more).
Commercial Zone and This Is What You Want both have songs that the other doesn’t have. The songs on Commercial Zone are more sparse and synth-flavoured (a recognizable, if more accessible, evolution from Flowers Of Romance), whereas the This Is What You Want remakes feature heavier production (and an incongruous horn section).
[edit] Track listing
1. "This Is Not A Love Song" (a remix was released as a single, although the Commercial Zone version was a B-side on the 12’’ release; a totally re-recorded version, with saxophones, featured on This Is What You Want).
2. "Mad Max" (re-recorded as "Bad Life" for This Is What You Want).
3. "Bad Night" (only on Commercial Zone).
4. "Solitaire" (re-recorded for This Is What You Want; Commercial Zone: Limited Edition lists this song under the title "Young Brits").
5. "The Slab" (re-recorded as "The Order Of Death" for This Is What You Want).
6. "Lou Reed Part 1" (only on Commercial Zone).
7. "Lou Reed Part 2" (re-recorded as "Where Are You?" for This Is What You Want).
8. "Blue Water" (B-side on the "This Is Not A Love Song" 12’’ single, but not re-recorded/included on This Is What You Want).
9. "Miller Hi-Life" (only on Commercial Zone).
The tracks on This Is What You Want…This Is What You Get that did not originate from Commercial Zone are "Tie Me To The Length Of That," "The Pardon" and "1981."
On PiL's Live In Tokyo album, the songs "This Is Not A Love Song," "Solitaire" and "Bad Life" sound more like the Commercial Zone versions than the (later) This Is What You Want remakes.
