[tweetmeme]Keith Levene, founding member of both The Clash and Public Image Ltd., plans to resurrect what was to be PiL’s fourth album
—1984′s
Commercial Zone, released in two different incarnations — and “enhance it with original material,” finishing the album 30 years later “not so much to set the record straight, but get the right record out the right way.”
To that end, Levene recently launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign with a goal of raising $12,500 (and, as of late Sunday, he was more than halfway there, with a month still to go).
On his website, Levene writes:
“Finally producing the Commercial Zone my way will allow me to finish important unfinished business. I know there’s been a gap in time of 30 years. However, it seems like it’s coming right on time for a myriad of reasons. So now with Commercial Zone 2014, you will get what the fourth album was supposed to be — and much more. It will be much better because it’s current and has the benefit of 30 years of my work.”
In early 1983, Levene began work on what was intended to be PiL’s fourth album, Commercial Zone. Because of what he terms “endless complications,” Levene quit PiL later that year, taking the tapes of the unfinished album and securing, in early 1984, his own release of Commerical Zone.
John Lydon re-recorded the album, releasing his version — PiL’s This Is What You Want… This Is What You Get — in the summer of 1984 as Virgin Records took legal action to quash Levene’s release.
That rift between Levene and Lydon, the guitarist notes on his Indiegogo page for the Commercial Zone 2014 project, resulted “in two diluted releases, neither of which were satisfactory.”
The new version of Commercial Zone will feature multiple remixes of “This Is Not a Love Song” as well as “four original, totally unheard tracks,” Levene says in a video introducing the project (see below). Also, “there’s some stuff taken off the Commerical Zone I put out.”
Of the revived record, Levene says: “For me, it was the album that was gonna consolidate everything. It was going to make it. It was going to be better than anything we’d done.”
For more on Levene’s
Commercial Zone 2014and to pre-order, visit the project’s
Indiegogo page.
Below, check out a short video of Levene explaining the project:
Video: Keith Levene on Commercial Zone 2014
