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Friday, March 21, 2003

By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic

On "Easy Listening ... for Difficult [Expletive]heads," the first studio album we've gotten in a good long while from Martin Atkins' industrial supergroup, Pigface, he's opened his revolving door to everyone from PiL guitarist Keith Levene to Kittie's Fallon Bowman.

	Pigface WITH: My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult. WHERE: Metropol, Strip. WHEN: Sun. 7:30 p.m. TICKETS: $17. 412-323-1919. BAND SITE: www.invisiblerecords.com /pigface.htm

And as Atkins says, "At a time when VH1 is showing 'The Best of American Bandstand' or 'The Wildest 50 Moments in Rock History' and there I am 22 years ago on 'American Bandstand,' it feels pretty good to be making a record with people who weren't even born then."

What they missed -- unless they've seen the footage on a highlight reel -- is total chaos as only the once and future Johnny Rotten (then John Lydon) could have staged it.

As Atkins recalls, with pride, "John was on Dick Clark's podium -- which no one had ever done before. Or since. We had the audience on stage and in the end, I just gave up playing drums and picked up a bass guitar. Keith Levene gave his guitar to a member of the audience and went back to the hotel. I mean, Dick Clark freaked out! It took Warner Bros. a month to get them to air the show. Dick Clark was furious. And I get calls from England. They're still showing it 22 years later."

At the time, he says, he felt like he was drumming for the most dangerous band on the planet.

And today? It still seems pretty dangerous.

"I suppose for me," he says, "it grows more magical the further away I get from it. I forget the [nonsense]. I romanticize the good. And there are people for whom it remains a very landmark experience. It's something that struck a nerve for a lot of people. Twenty-two years later, I just opened Mojo magazine and there's the guys from Massive Attack saying the biggest influence on them was PiL."

He's stayed in touch with Lydon through the years.

"When I'm in L.A. sometimes," Atkins says, "we'll go and have sushi or something. It's funny because it's like 'Keep coming down that street. Not that house. That's Herb Alpert's house. Keep on coming past that.' And it's like 'For Christ's sake, John, if you could hear yourself.' "

As for Levene, they haven't been the best of sushi buddies lately.

"Keith fired me twice," he says, "and then he disappeared and I spent three years back in PiL without Keith. But it felt good for me personally as I continue to hopefully grow as a person and as a producer and a record label owner to move away from the pettiness that is so pervasive in the music business and reach out and invite him to play on an album and reconnect."

Having gone from PiL through work with Ministry, Killing Joke, Nine Inch Nails and Murder Inc., he feels he's rekindled a bit of the danger of old on this new Pigface tour, on which the latest version of the band is joined by My Life With the Thrill Kill Cult, Bile and Zeromancer.

"It's going to be a very dangerous combination indeed," he says.

It may be more professional, however, than those early Pigface shows.

"Early Pigface might have been handicapped," he says, "by a desire to do everything differently -- even things that should have been done a certain way -- just for the hell of it. 'Let's not rehearse.' That was radical and different. And I think it was unfair to the audience at our first 20 shows because we didn't know what we were doing. It's good to question things, but I think that now we have a more responsible attitude toward people who are taking time out from their busy schedules downloading pornography to go to a venue and spend their money and try to find parking."

Even in this atmosphere of new responsibility, the unexpected has a way of happening. And fans expect as much.

As Atkins says, "A girl walked on stage in Toronto and ate a lightbulb. Fine. Of course she did. It's Pigface. She knew she could do it. She knew she'd be welcomed. No one was like 'Oh my Lord. I don't believe it.' It was just like 'Yeah, the girl ate a lightbulb.' "

The last time the band was in Pittsburgh, a couple got married on stage.

For this tour, there's a wedding in Atlanta.

"When Scott and Kimmy were married on stage with us in Pittsburgh," he says, "we picked up on their premarital nerves so it was a little bit stressful for us. But then, when this couple came to us who wanted to be married in Atlanta, we've kind of refined the idea a little bit and we've offered them the rear lounge of the Pigface tour bus to consummate their wedding. They have an hour and it's up to them whether they invite any members of the band or not or the wedding photographer."

There may be bellydancers in Milwaukee. And the band has been approached by a fan in Los Angeles who'd like to jump off a building in their honor.

"I mean, he's a stunt man," Atkins says. "But God only knows the insurance issues that are involved."

It all goes into making Pigface something he can credit in the liner notes to "Easy Listening" with having saved his soul. Repeatedly.

"There are times," he says, "when Pigface threatens me, my family, everything, because it's this all-encompassing thing. And it has to be. But once you ride through that, if I hadn't begun Pigface 12 years ago or 10 years ago, I don't know what I'd be doing now. I think I would have gotten very bored with everything. And my children probably wouldn't have seen me play. They'd just say 'Yeah, my dad is on the telephone all day. That's what he does.' So it continues to energize me and save me from the cynicism that I see in a lot of people who have spent a lot more time than I have in the music business."