Is PiL's "Poptones" about Peter Sutcliffe?

is he a famous dead body?

Well I mean the Yorkshire Ripper, who of course is/was PS.

chilling, isn't it? immediately conjures up a mid-seventies datsun in crappy grey, with plastic seats and ... gah. astounding song - perhaps my favourite thing they ever did - but one that really freaked me out when i first heard it (at a relatively tender age).

I'm pretty sure it's about driving out to the countryside to have a picnic with a top 40 cassette in the tape deck, only to end up being raped and murdered. Maybe it's kind of supposed to symbolize society selling you idyllic dreams when reality is much bleaker. Regardless, there's some black humor to it (especially "I can't forget the impression you made/ you left a hole in the back of my head").

destroyalltacoson May 23, 2006

it never struck me that these lyrics were dark or anything until now. weird.

the music is quite dark and malevolent though. although i never knew it was meant to be about a murder. i thought it was about someone having a nervous breakdown.

He explained that song in detail somewhere. It was based on a rape/murder he read about in the newspaper

Ok, from the Wikipedia page...I guess no murder

John Lydon (1979/99): “It's straight out of the Daily Mirror, so I can't guarantee its authenticity.”[11] “This was another newspaper story which fascinated me. A girl bundled blindfolded into the back of a car by a couple of bad men and driven off into a forest, where they eventually dumped her. The men had a cassette machine with an unusual tune on the cassette, which they kept playing over and over. The girl remembered the song, and that, along with her recollection of the car and the men's voices, is how the police identified them. The police eventually stopped the car and found the cassette was still in the machine, with the same distinctive song on the tape.”[12]

let the sick play

Talk about getting a song stuck in yoru head

Bye teh way the version from American bandstand to me is the definitive

yeah but they are miming there aren't they?

when post-punk and early new wave are described as "dark", "eerie", "cold", "gloomy", "ominous", etc.

...this song is the blueprint. because damn. very classic.

I think I was thinking of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMZFyaI0Wsw

However, the American Bandstand is definitely the definitive mimed video version.

What is poptones about? A painful human suffering? Or confusion and being dazed?
Or the strange juxtaposition of pop music and crime? The singer just sounds annoyed, not really scared.
Song about an event is not the same thing as the event. It is a cloud of thoughts, feelings, uncertainties...

"I can't forget the impression you made
You left a hole in the back of my head
I don't like hiding in this foliage and peat
It's wet and I'm losing my body heat"