WIRE - Album by Album

I agree 100%. I think a lot of people rate Red Barked Trees higher, but I never got it with that one as much, although it has a few great tracks.

 

I should add I only really like about half of Nocturnal Koreans, not that any of it is bad.

 

Did anyone see Bob's appearance with Wire last year at one of their 'Drill' performances? That sounded so good a proposition it made me very disappointed I live thousands of miles away.

 

I would say it is great to see this thread hit 100 posts so quickly if half of them weren't folk arguing about what constitutes 'punk' or not.

 

Cool! Then, by God I will listen to that album!!

 

I agree about Change... and Red..., but Send is a whole other thing, one of the most feral and pissed off albums I've ever heard.

 

I totally agree. RBT does contain a few excellent tracks, but to me just isn't as cohesive or consistent as the 2015 S/T. I like Changes Becomes Us a lot too, though it might not appeal to quite as many people.

 

Couple a things:

Wire is a band.
Who gives a flying frog what genre they are?
We were supposed to be doing an album by album thread.
Pink Flag (remember Pink Flag?) is the first record in Wire's discography. Maybe we should respect the OP and stay on task.
I am as guilty as anyone else for leaping forward.
Pink Flag.
Pink Flag.
Pink Flag.
"Mannequin" sounds a little like it could have been done by the 101ers:

 

We will get to all of these debates, album-by-album. Right? There are periods of their career that didn't excite me too much, but I never lost faith and the occasional single would blow me away.

 

Hope so. My recent post tried to get us (me included) back on task.
But if people keep trying to define punk rock...I'm out.

 

Even Colin Newman admitted it could have been done by the Flaming Groovies

 

Apologies for butting in with an ignorant question, but... I only know one Wire song, "Kidney Bingos," which I love; however, when at one point I checked out a couple of other things by the band, they didn't gel with me and therefore for the past 30 years, I haven't bother to reinvestigate.

So, given that I like "Kidney Bingos," any tips on particular songs I might want to check out next that might appeal?

 

While it wasn't obvious at the time, Eno was a big inspiration on early Wire, and Pink Flag might be thought of as a synthesis of the arty, deconstructed rock of Here Come The Warm Jets with the abrasive energy and minimalist punk of something like Buzzcock's Spiral Scratch EP.

 

Check back in when this thread arrives at the album A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck, the singles Eardrum Buzz and In Vivo, and the live remix album IBTABA.

But you might also be enamored of their albums from this century, and some of their earlier work including the soon-to-be-discussed Chairs Missing.

 

Bingo! Or Kidney Bingo, if you prefer.

 

Yeah I love CBU. It's brilliant, but the 2015 album is probably even better, I think.

EDIT: Urgh! I am chastened. Pink Flag is a brilliant album, and Fragile may be my favorite song on it...

 

Send = music for angry insects...

:

:

...or something.

 

Another inspiration for early Wire was Bowie, especially his Berlin album Low, which had just come out.

"As Colin Newman of Wire, the most conceptual band of punk’s first wave, recalls in Punk Rock: An Oral History, “I was a big, big Bowie fan [prior to forming Wire]. There was a sense that Bowie was art […]. There was no other music about other than that. There was nothing else to talk about at the time. The fact that people were still talking about Bowie during punk just shows how important he was to that generation and not to be slagged in any way.”"

 

I think he also said they wanted to be faster than the Ramones.

 

Outdoor Miner, an absolutely gorgeous pop song from about ten years earlier.

 

More from the ROT cuttings file...article first.

 

"[Bruce] Gilbert took his lead from the pre-punk theory and practice of Brian Eno, who was a visiting lecturer at Watford. Eno would become an intellectual and artistic touchstone for Wire. “I have a lot to thank Brian Eno for in terms of the idea that you could operate in music without a great deal of musical skill. I thought this was an ideal opportunity to experiment and see what happens, albeit with song-based, word-based material.”

 

I haven't seen this mentioned above but what always intrigued me about my UK original of "Pink Flag" is this small area of silent groove between "12 XU" and the run out groove. So when that song ends and you wait for the stylus to lift off there's a very long - approximately 15 seconds? - period of silence making the room suddenly very quiet. This is awkward but effective. Still wonder who's idea this was....

 

And a gig review clearly from before PF came out but not sure which one it was.





I'm kinda embarrassed to think that I've still got these after 40 years...

 

Also early Pink Floyd and Steely Dan.