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Courtesy of IHEG

John Lydon of Public Image Ltd.

"Get your musical ears on; you will need them," intoned John Lydon, moments after walking onto the Pearl Street stage last Sunday night with his band Public Image Ltd. He said the words slowly and belittlingly - or maybe ominously, like Big Brother.

And yet by the end of the show, the fiftysomething Lydon seemed more like a familial big brother (or oddball dad, depending on your age), offering advice and words of wisdom, as well as over two hours of largely uncompromising, original music.

Lydon once raised hackles and hell as Johnny Rotten, frontperson of the immediately legendary group the Sex Pistols, and though they're probably considered the ultimate punk band, Lydon hated the label "punk." Or any label. So in 1978 he started PiL, a band so bracingly unique that the group's early recordings still sound ahead of their time.

The band went through many lineup changes, got more accessible and even had video hits in the late-'80s; during that MTV peak, PiL played at the Fine Arts Center at UMass (possibly the loudest show I've ever been to; my ears rang for two days). Lydon ended the band in 1992. But last year he re-formed PiL, which now includes former mid-'80s members Bruce Smith on drums and Lu Edmonds on guitar, as well as Scott Firth on bass.

The new PiL's 19-song set at Pearl Street was wonderfully all-encompassing, mixing together songs from every era of the band - quite literally, as one song morphed seamlessly into another like a DJ set - plus some rarely heard songs from Lydon's 1997 solo record ("Sun," "Psychopath").

The catchy "This Is Not a Love Song" is what the group used to start the show, but the song "Death Disco" gives a good description of the long suite of dark early material that came next: pounding, metronomic dance rhythms; throbbing bass and spiky, stream-of-consciousness guitar, both fascinated with disorienting atonal clashes; and Lydon wailing emotionally over the top, with little interest in hitting "notes."

"Poptones" was a creepy crawl based around a woozy, sickly bass line, with Lydon archly doing a stop-start funky cluck dance, like a robotic marionette. The lengthy, largely unchanging "Albatross" gained power as it went along, with the rhythm section of Smith and Firth really laying into the rhythm as Edmonds played siren-like arpeggios and outbursts of noise.

"Good little town this, you've got your groove on," Lydon said approvingly to the dedicated dancers in front.

Those looking for a little Rotten action got one moment of expletive-filled confrontation, when Lydon complained about someone in the crowd throwing peanuts at the stage. "You are a coward in the dark," he said dismissively, adding some acidic mouthfuls of colorful put-downs over a swell of cheers, then suggested the club find the person and throw them out with a refund.

"Tie Me To the Length of That," a nightmarish story of babies, mommies and daddies, was Lydon's most theatrical song of the night. "Is this life worth saving?" he yelled and pulled open his shirt to show off his nipples, sticking his tongue out and posing with a maniacal stare. A true showman. Without fail, fans whipped out phones to dutifully capture the image.

PiL performing "Tie Me To The Length Of That" at Pearl Street

Otherwise Lydon really focused on the music and words (he even had a lit music stand and lyric book in front of him just in case), and his bandmates rose to the occasion, singing full-throated three-part harmonies on the MTV hit "Disappointed" and working hard to give the frontman a solid, sparking foundation. In fact, after a number of songs throughout the night, Lydon turned to give cute little appreciative bows to his musicians.

Edmonds used an arsenal of unusual instruments, like the Turkish, mandolin-like electric baglama saz. Drummer Smith worked well with the occasional pre-programmed backing track (more bottom-end bang for the buck). And bassist Firth proved he could summon up the power of the band's celebrated original bassist Jah Wobble, like on the set-closing "Religion."

"On the 8th day, the Lord said, #Let there be bass.' And there was bass," Lydon spoke jokingly over the music, but he wasn't totally kidding. Firth laid down the song's mercilessly repetitive three note groove so loudly and deeply that it created a full-body vibration. It felt like putting your face on one of those "massage your feet for 25 cents" machines found at state fairs.

As PiL's set moved into some deep cuts from later records ("Warrior," "U.S.L.S.1") and the crowd's attention was possibly flagging, Lydon gave them a friendly hard time. "Get your hands up," he demanded sternly. "You're all under arrest for laziness."

Lydon made attempts to engage and rouse the crowd on numerous levels, including making some political points ("After eight years, is there a bright new future? Answer: yes."). He was particularly dismayed about a certain previous vice presidential nominee. "Religion: road to ruin - and Sarah Palin," he said, and returned to the topic at the very end of the night, almost imploring the audience to not give her any more political power. "Buy her book, make her a million dollars but don't make her a politician."

Lydon had other advice. When finishing the song "Disappointed," he answered the song's rhetorical question "What are friends for?" by saying, "Friends are for forgiving. If you do not forgive your friends, you have no future."

During "Sun," Lydon gently chided the non-dancing people in the crowd. "Why do you care what other people think of you, when you could be having fun?" he said, and then, to show by example, proceeded to do a totally goofy dance.

Lydon was either cheekily teasing the crowd or honestly confused about where the show was taking place ("Where are we? Where's the lesbians?" he asked at the start, yet made a couple references to Connecticut throughout the night), but seemed honestly happy to be performing for the people in attendance, wherever they all were.

"It's nice to see such an extraordinary mixture of human beings here tonight. That's the point of PiL," Lydon said, enunciating the next word slowly and emphatically. "Di-ver-si-ty."