World Destruction

This week's edition of Retro Friday features the band Time Zone, and the song "World Destruction."

I guess since I am reading the book "The Hunger Games" ... this song seemed appropriate this week!

The band Time Zone was an electro band in the 1980's headed by Afrika Bambaataa. Bambaataa worked with different musicians for each Time Zone project.

The first Time Zone single was the 1983 electro song "The Wildstyle" which featured music from a German project called Wunderwerke. Bambaataa was introduced to their music by Rusty Egan of Visage. The song became popular amongst breakdancers in the 80's.

In 1984, the Time Zone released their most well-known single, "World Destruction". A collaboration between Bambaataa, ex-Sex Pistol/Public Image Ltd. leader John Lydon, and producer/bassist Bill Laswell. Although this single did predate Run-DMC and Aerosmith's "Walk This Way", it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the first rap-rock record. This, however, is inaccurate as Run-DMC had incorporated hard rock guitar into songs, most notably "Rock Box", well before "World Destruction".

The "World Destruction" single was arranged by Laswell after Lydon and Bambaataa had acknowledged respect for each others work:

Afrika Bambaataa said, "I was talking to Bill Laswell saying I need somebody who's really crazy, man, and he thought of John Lydon. I knew he was perfect because I'd seen this movie that he'd made (Copkiller), I knew about all the Sex Pistols and Public Image stuff, so we got together and we did a smashing crazy version, and a version where he cussed the Queen something terrible, which was never released."

John Lydon explained, "We went in, put a drum beat down on the machine and did the whole thing in about four-and-a-half hours. It was very, very quick." Bernie Worrell, Nicky Skopelitis, and Aïyb Dieng also played on the single, which was released by Celluloid Records in December of 1984. The track reached the #44 spot in the UK Singles Chart in February 1985.

"World Destruction" was also featured in the first episode of the fourth season of The Sopranos, "For All Debts Public and Private". The song played at the beginning of the episode as Tony gets his newspaper and again during the closing credits.

The interesting thing about this particular video for "World Destruction" is they have a Ronald Regan clip at the beginning ... the perfect iconic figure of the 80's.

And here it is, for your listening pleasure, "World Destruction" ... KABOOM!



Cheers!