In 1988 Public Enemy released their groundbreaking album It Takes A Nation of Millions To Us Back (Def Jam). 

In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of this historic hip-hop album (considered  by many to be the greatest hip-hop album ever), Public Enemy did some concerts in Europe as part of the Don't Look Back concert series, playing the entire album.

Don't Look Back is the concert series produced by All Tomorrow's Parties in which established artists perform in concert an album of theirs (generally an agreed-on classic release) from start to finish in its original sequence. Sonic Youth partook in the series when they performed their seminal Daydream Nation and Girls Against Boys did the Don't Look Back series last year when they performed their Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby, for which Johnny Temple of the group was interviewed for the Amoeblog.

For the recent Public Enemy Don't Look Back performances of It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, they did a short series of shows, including stops in Manchester, England and in Dublin, Ireland.  Tall Paul Lowe, today's special guest Amoeblogger, attended the group's Dublin, Ireland performance two weeks ago (5/25), which was at the Tripod in the Irish capitol. Paul's report follows, below the track listing to the classic 1988 LP. Note that the photo above and the photos below of Public Enemy in Dublin two weeks ago were all taken by Tall Paul Lowe.

  The folks who throw the fun themed All Tomorrow's Parties Don't Look Back series, in which they invite chosen acts to recreate live an album from their back-catalog, have convinced the seminal D.C.-born, NYC based Girls Against Boys to perform their classic, early nineties, post-hardcore album Venus Luxure No. 1 Baby.  And this weekend the band, that  began as a side project of Eli Janney and Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty and whose lineup then became Janney plus Scott McCloud, Johnny Temple, and Alexis Fleisig, will perform the entire album from start to finish in exact sequence for two performances only - one in NYC and one in LA.

The first concert is tonight, Friday (7/20) at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City  and the second is scheduled for Sunday night (7/22) in Los Angeles at the El Rey Theatre  at 5515 Wilshire Blvd. This will be the first time the band has performed in LA or New York in five years (they performed in Europe this year - most recently in Spain last month). I  recently caught up with Johnny Temple,  one of the band's two bassists, to ask him about this unique two-gig, bi-coastal, event, and the idea of a duel bass rock band.


AMOEBLOG:  How did the two bass players  idea come about and how does it affect the band's sound?

JOHNNY TEMPLE: A lot of the rock bands of our era, well really the rock bands of any era, tend to be more melody driven, while we tend to be more rhythm driven.  Basically we all grew up in Washington DC which is very funk music oriented. We grew up listening to a lot of soul and funk and Go-Go music which, as you know, is native to DC. And a lot of bands from DC have a greater emphasis on rhythm and groove than a lot of other (non DC) rock bands do. So by having two bass players it  kind of pronounces the bottom end, the sort of rhythmic feature of the songs, more so than  the melody.