PiL’s second best single, which went screaming straight to the top of the UK charts, sort of.

When Keith Levene left the band in 1983, John Lydon scrapped all the original sessions and had everything re-recorded for what would eventually become This Is What You Want . . . This Is What You Get. Meanwhile, Levene paid out of his own pocket for 10,000 copies of the U.S.-only semi-bootleg Commercial Zone, featuring the original recordings.

There was a later re-pressing in a black sleeve, differently sequenced, with re-named and sometimes slightly different versions of the songs, which Virgin tried to quash.

The original recording of Love Song oddly ended up on the B-side of the official 12″ single, noted as a remix, although it wasn’t one.

The 7″ version is different.

Then it all gets a bit complicated . . .

The songs on CZ are understandably more spare and stripped-down than those on TIWYW. Of the five songs that overlap, the versions on CZ are IMO better, and the remaining four songs better than the extraneous songs on TIWYW. I have a particular fondness for “Lou Reed pt. 1,” which seems like a gentle parody of the VU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGlvq16ry34

Get to the point! or at least the music.

CZ version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjJWcLDsWQk

TIWYW version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csKLO1YPIFs

-R