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‘People in a Film’: A new movie about post-punk art rockers Wire
07.01.2019
09:23 am
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With 40+ years of groundbreaking musical activities under their belts, it only seems right that hugely influential British art-rockers Wire should (finally!) receive the feature documentary treatment. And who better to give it to them than lifelong Wire megafan Graham Duff, the writer/director/actor best known for creating the Johnny Vegas cult favorite sitcom Ideal

Duff and producer/co-director Malcolm Boyle have set about creating the definitive cinematic portrait of Wire, and the film, still in production is entitled People in a Film:

“We’ve already shot serious in-depth interviews with all the members of Wire, including original guitarist Bruce Gilbert who has given the movie his blessing. And we also filmed Wire writing and recording their new album at Rockfield Studios in Wales. It’s fascinating to see how the band work together. Lots of harmony, but quite a lot of friction too.

It seems ridiculous there hasn’t already been a documentary about them. So we want to make something which mirrors the strange and often surreal world of Wire. They really are a unique proposition. Their intensity is only matched by their often silly sense of humor. Who else but Wire would perform a gig inside a row of cubes? Or employ a support band to play their entire 1977 debut album in full, so that they don’t have to?”

Duff and Boyle are currently looking for investors to help them finish the movie. “We’ve just launched a crowdfunding project to fund the recording of the last batch of interviews and edit the final film.  One of the things we want to do is come out to the US and shoot interviews with Ian MacKaye and Henry Rollins.”

If any band deserves a documentary it’s Wire.  If you want to find out more about how to help get People in a Film finished, follow this link to the crowdfunding site.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.01.2019
09:23 am
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Ramshackle (and exciting) early Wire tunes that didn’t make it onto their studio records
07.05.2018
11:03 am
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Wire 1
 
Wire is a band known for evolving at a fast clip, especially in their early years. The first three Wire LPs—Pink Flag (1977), Chairs Missing (1978), and 154 (1979)—all vary stylistically. Being that the group refused to stand still, it’s no wonder that good songs got left behind—this is early Wire we’re talking about, after all. Some of this initial, subsequently discarded material was recorded during what would turn out to be momentous gigs for the group.

The Roxy club was the focal point of London’s punk scene. The live album recorded there, The Roxy London WC2 (Jan - Apr 77), is an essential document of that era, capturing a number of bands during their formative stages. Two Wire songs were included on the LP—“Lowdown” and “12XU.” Both would be subsequently re-recorded and included on Pink Flag.

Wire formed in August 1976, and initially consisted of five members. When guitarist George Gill broke his leg, the other four continued to rehearse, and quickly realized that they sounded better without him. Gill was sacked soon after. Wire performed on both dates of the Roxy’s two-day punk-themed event, which took place on April 1 & 2, 1977. These were the band’s first appearances as a four-piece.
 
Wire 2
 
Wire opened the first night of the punk fest, playing to nearly no one. But they made an impression and were moved up to slot #3 for night two. Punk historian Jon Savage, then writing for Sounds, caught the second performance. Savage later recalled that this version of Wire “were conceptually fascinating, horribly sarcastic and very funny.” Here’s an excerpt from his original review for Sounds:

(Wire) short circuit the audience totally, playing about 20 numbers, most about one minute long. The audience doesn’t know when one has finished and another is beginning. I like the band for that…good theatre. Image-wise they look convincingly bug-eyed, flash speed automations caught in a Mod time-warp. There seems to be a scheme of things, but this is buried in the poor sound and limitations in the format. There were glimpses of genuine originality.

Much more early Wire after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Bart Bealmear
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07.05.2018
11:03 am
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Read & Burn: Post-punk legends Wire get Cubist (and accidentally inspire Kanye West) live in 2004
05.11.2017
02:15 pm
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An eye, a nose, a mouth, a cup, a bell, a drill…....

In 2002, after more than a decade of quiescence, London’s legendary punk group Wire abruptly reappeared on the scene, looking as vigorous as ever. They unveiled the first two sections of Read & Burn online, which ended up being combined into the CD release Send a year later. At the time, the reunion was seen as a temporary matter, and the band in fact played a “farewell” at the Barbican in London in 2003—this event was titled “Flag: Burning,” which tells you something of Wire’s motivations at the time. (I’ve seen them twice since then, so so much for farewells.)

Read & Burn 01 featured “I Don’t Understand” and “The Agfers of Kodack,” two songs that have become concert staples for Wire ever since, which is significant insofar as it’s quite evident that they dislike singing material from Pink Flag over and over again.

In 2005 Wire released a live album and DVD called The Scottish Play: 2004, which perversely documented not only Wire’s show at the Tramway Theatre in Glasgow in 2004 but also the Barbican appearance from the year before, meaning that a significant portion of the material had nothing to do with Scotland or 2004. (Needless to say, the shows had precious little to do Macbeth either.) 
 

 
It was still a canny title, however, because the performances, some of which used a stage design by British designer Es Devlin, were “theatrical” and “play-like” in a way that few rock performances had ever been. As Graham Lewis explained to Pop Matters last year of the Barbican event, “The set consisted of four large mirrored cubes across the front of the stage on to / in to which lighting and projections were made. The individual members inhabited a box each.”

This was far from the spontaneous and sweaty rock experience of countless clubs anywhere, and if you’ve seen Wire’s effective yet undemonstrative live shows, it’s not surprising that Wire might be the band to accept such a bold challenge in their live presentation.

Famously, Kanye West was inspired by the footage to contact Devlin for his 2005 Touch the Sky tour, and she’s been much in demand by major pop stars ever since. I didn’t know it at the time, but I saw her conceptions for U2’s Innocence + Experience Tour a couple of years ago. Devlin’s experiences working with Wire were recently featured on the Netflix documentary series Abstract.

Watch after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.11.2017
02:15 pm
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When Vince Clarke met Wire
03.09.2017
07:25 am
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Dome’s fourth album, ‘Will You Speak This Word’
 
Just like in the Judgment of Solomon, Wire broke up neatly, splitting in half. Robert Gotobed drummed on Colin Newman’s first three solo albums, while Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis put on their suits and “big tube heads” to become Dome.

Though they primarily recorded as a duo, Lewis and Gilbert had some interesting collaborators, such as Daniel Miller and Russell Mills, the artist who later designed the cover of The Downward Spiral. On “To Speak,” the nearly 20-minute composition that filled the A-side of Will You Speak This Word (a/k/a Dome 4), they were joined by Vince Clarke, then in Yazoo, late of Depeche Mode; Deb Danahay, Clarke’s onetime girlfriend and founder of the Depeche Mode and Yazoo fan clubs; novice saxophonist Terrence Leach; and folk violinist David Drinkwater, who now plays guitar in “Norfolk’s biggest ceilidh band.”

In Everybody Loves A History, the first Wire biography, Gilbert and engineer Eric Radcliffe suggest their main reason for inviting Clarke to the studio was that he knew how to play a Fairlight:

Bruce: Eric and Vince Clarke had formed some sort of partnership, and they were wizards on [the Fairlight], but it still had a lot of teething problems. We had several demonstrations of what it could do. It was a complete mystery to me and Graham.

Eric: I asked Vince if he’d come in, and play over a track because there was something missing.

Bruce: It consisted mostly of sampling Deborah Donahay’s [sic] voice and reconstructing it. It was an experiment.

Terence [sic] Leach was a friend of someone at the Waterloo Gallery, and was learning to play saxophone. David Drinkwater was someone who lived where Angela and I lived in Barnet. He’s a folk music fanatic, and played fiddle. Graham and I felt we would quite like the texture of a real violin, that we could manipulate. We asked him to go through his entire repertoire of violin sounds, plus his favourite licks. We simply manipulated the sound on tape.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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03.09.2017
07:25 am
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Rare Wire covers by My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Lee Ranaldo and more
10.26.2016
10:15 am
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It seemed like for much of the ‘90s another tribute compilation came out every damn week, and since huge-deal affairs like If I Were a Carpenter, Red, Hot & Blue, and KISS My Ass hogged the lion’s share of attention, the sheer volume of also-rans consigned the majority of the truly great ones to obscurity. One of those was inarguably among the most interestingWhore: Various Artists Play Wire, from 1996. Interesting partly because bands that would even want to be on a Wire tribute album are likely to be vastly more interesting than those which wouldn’t, and partly because the label that released it was WMO, which stood for Wire Mail Order. Though it released Wire compilations and Wire members’ solo projects, the members of Wire didn’t run the label; it existed with their blessing, but not their involvement, so this wasn’t an exercise in self-curated narcissism like the above-mentioned KISS tribute. Still, the fact that this could have been construed to have existed under the band’s imprimatur, even if only indirectly, made it a tantalizing disc to dive into.

Interesting also because it contains one of the only two My Bloody Valentine songs released during the lengthy drought that band suffered after Loveless basically changed music. It was their cover of the 154 classic “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W.” Bassist Debbie Googe and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig had already left the band in 1995, so this cover features only Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher. Still rules, though. And while we’re gazing at shoes, there was a worthy contribution from Lush: the Pink Flag track “Mannequin,” which frankly stomps all over Lush’s better known Wire cover, the version of “Outdoor Miner” on their For Love EP.
 

 
Wire’s influence on multiple genres is reflected in the comp’s diversity of artists—New York noise gets a solid nod here via Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo contribution of a reverent rendition of “Fragile” that’s good for multiple spins. Less worthy is Band of Susans’ tepid version of The Ideal Copy’s lead-off single “Ahead.” BoS’ tour with Wire was the first time I saw both bands, and their opening set was much more exciting than their Wire cover here.

Much heavier fare is in the offing as well—Godflesh, the long-running experimental project of Napalm Death’s Justin Broadrick, transform “40 Versions” into an industrial metal dirge, and Fudge Tunnel are a great choice for the already sludgy “Lowdown,” and their lo-fi take on the song hits a really satisfying groove. But not everything hits its mark so well—a favorite band of mine, Bark Psychosis, debase “Three Girl Rhumba” so completely that I kind of wonder why Wire couldn’t have just forgiven Elastica. Ministry/Revolting Cocks singer Chris Connelly goes completely off the map for “A Mutual Friend,” and while his mostly a capella-and-whistling performance is definitely novel and transformative, it’s also, um, not that good.

More after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Ron Kretsch
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10.26.2016
10:15 am
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Truly Post-Punk: Suzanne Somers meets Wire on ‘The Late Show,’ 1987
08.02.2016
12:53 pm
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image
 
Here’s a clip of Suzanne Somers guest hosting The Late Show (subbing for Joan Rivers after she was fired) in 1987.

The musical guests that night? Wire.

Suzanne Somers: “You’re sorta a far-out kinda group, you know?”

Bruce Gilbert: “Ummm, I doubt it.”

Watch the whole thing. The short interview at the end is, er, awkward to say the least.

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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08.02.2016
12:53 pm
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‘Pig Pile’: Big Black live on their final tour, with members of Wire, 1987
07.23.2014
12:23 pm
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In 1992, five years after their breakup in the wake of their amazing LP Songs About Fucking, the influential and scathing post-hardcore pioneers Big Black released a boxed set called Pig Pile, which featured a shirt, a poster, a VHS tape, a vinyl LP, and a clear-vinyl 5” single. The LP and VHS were documents of the band’s July 1987 concert at London’s Hammersmith Clarendon, and the 5” was a totally incongruous cover of the Mary Jane Girls’ “In My House.”
 

In My House by Big Black on Grooveshark

 
Yyyyyyyep.

Talking to NME about the show, the band’s singer/guitarist Steve Albini had this to offer:

We made a splash immediately before we broke up; now a band starts shopping its demos to majors after its third rehearsal. By the end, I think we improved; on the live record and video we were probably as good as we were ever gonna be. That gig was exciting—there was this giant belch and everyone involved in this giant belch felt immensely relieved afterwards.

 

 
It was indeed a hell of a belch. The band at its height was known for a relentlessly concussive and scarifying musical blitz—Albini’s guitar tone alone could practically sever limbs—paired with true-story lyrics that unflinchingly detailed the most reprehensible of human behaviors, often to genuinely chilling effect. The videotape and album show the band slaying an excoriating best-of set, and for their encore, a cover of Wire’s “Heartbeat,” they were joined onstage by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis in what must have been a fan-fantasy score of a lifetime. The LP was rereleased as a CD in short order, and inevitably came out on vinyl again in the ‘oughts, but the video has never been reissued in any format. Per the band’s label, Touch and Go records,

In 1992, Touch and Go released a Big Black live album and video, titled Pig Pile, that were recorded (mostly) in 1987 during Big Black’s final tour. Someday, we might release the video on DVD. Until then, please don’t ask us about it.

As of this writing, used copies of the complete set are being offered on discogs.com for between $60 USD (box condition fair, shirt worn) and well over $200. But if you’re really that hot to watch it, and you don’t mind tiny and fuzzy, here it is.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
‘Shellac Pistols’: Shellac and David Yow do the Sex Pistols, 1998
Awkward, hilarious interview with Steve Albini
Absolute Nirvana: new Steve Albini mixes push in utero anniversary set into essential territory

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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07.23.2014
12:23 pm
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Change Becomes Them: Post-punk legends Wire return to the concert stage, 1985
01.13.2014
03:06 pm
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Art rock gods Wire were inactive between 1981 and 1985 due to solo outings and other projects. When they reformed, the sound of Wire 2.0 moved away from their earlier harder-edged material towards more electronic instrumentation and experimentation.

The band had moved on and announced that they would play none of the older songs live, hilariously opting instead to hire a Wire tribute band called The Ex-Lion Tamers—their name taken from one of Pink Flag‘s song titles—to open their American tour playing tunes from their first few albums.

You have to love that. What other band save for Wire would do such a thing?

Wire live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London on Sunday July 21, 1985. This is, I’m pretty sure, the first gig of their return.

Set list: “Drill,” “Serious Of Snakes,” “Ambulance Chasers,” “Harry,” “Madman’s Honey,” “Come Back In Two Halves,” “Kidney Bingos,” “Up To The Sun,” “Drill.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.13.2014
03:06 pm
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Wire’s Colin Newman advised My Bloody Valentine to cut down on the white noise stuff!
11.13.2013
10:56 am
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Two nights ago I saw My Bloody Valentine in New York. I had not seen them before, and they more than lived up to expectations. Way back in 1992 I was living in Austria, I was feeling out of touch with music so I asked a friend to send me three discs—my choice of material was almost arbitrary, and yet I was inexplicably certain that all three albums would be at worst really solid. The CDs were Doolittle, Loveless, and Slanted & Enchanted. Yeah. And MBV has been a constant, beloved companion of mine ever since.

Some of the reviews of the MBV shows from earlier this year were surprisingly tepid, but I can assure you that they worked out whatever was holding them back. The unremitting volume of the gig was a constant theme, including the free earplugs distributed at the venue. The show ended with a tibia-rattling rendition of “You Made Me Realise” that for quite a while sounded approximately like Apollo 11 taking off for orbit.

I didn’t time the white noise section, but according to reports it lasted six minutes—BrooklynVegan referred to it as a “Holocaust.” In an intriguing comment in that same BV thread (most of the time BV threads are entertainingly moronic), reader “ME” wrote, “MBV faced a lot of criticism after the previous tour, when the white noise ... lasted for about 20 minutes. Even Colin Newman, who knows a thing or two about making noise from when MBV were still infants, confronted Kevin, telling him it was irresponsible to inflict such a damage on their fans. Maybe that is why they cut it short now?”

Curiosity piqued, I decided to hit the Google machine. There does indeed seem to have been such an incident. In a 2008 interview with exclaim.ca, Newman tells the following story:
 

Last night, before we went home, my wife and I were at the after party and I had to use the loo. And Kevin [Shields] was in there. There were three stalls and I was on one side and Kevin was on the far side and there was another guy, who was at the after party, but he looked like he was just a fan. Kevin said to me, “What do you think?” and I just said that it just “hurt my ears” and that the last song “went on too long.” He said, “Yeah, we’re going to have to do some work on that, it was something that we were just kicking around.” And the guy in the middle said, “I can’t believe you just said that! It was such a religious experience for me!” But to me it was just my friend being too loud.

 
It all reminded me of MBV’s cover of the Wire classic “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W,” which appeared on the 1996 album Whore: Tribute to Wire. By the way, did you know that 41°N 93°W correlates to a town called Centerville, Iowa? I didn’t even know it was about America. Here’s a gratuitous picture of Centerville:
 
Centerville, Iowa
 
My Bloody Valentine, “Map Ref. 41°N 93°W”:

 
Below, the little-known orginal music video for “You Made Me Realise” from 1989:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Seven Commandments of art punk: Wire’s rules of negative self-definition, 1977
My Bloody Valentine: Classic albums remastered, plus rarities, EPs

Posted by Martin Schneider
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11.13.2013
10:56 am
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The Seven Commandments of art punk: Wire’s rules of negative self-definition, 1977
02.18.2013
11:15 am
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Posted by Tara McGinley
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02.18.2013
11:15 am
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Post-punk art rock gods Wire, live in 1979
01.04.2013
05:03 pm
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image
 
I spent a fair amount of the holidays rediscovering the timeless genius of Wire’s late 70’s punk/post punk/art rock triptych of Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154 and I’d have to say, those three albums will never get old for me.

This 1979 set for the German TV series RockPalast, taped between Chairs Missing
and 154, is the only professionally shot record of Wire during their (first) glory days and it kicks ass so hard. If you’re a fan of the band and you’ve never seen this before, prepare to be blown the fuck away.

1 Intro + Another The letter
2 The 15th
3 Practice Makes Perfect
4 Two People In A Room
5 I Feel Mysterious Today
6 Being Sucked In Again
7 Once Is Enough
8 Blessed State
9 A Question of Degree
10 Single KO
11 Mercy
12 Forty Versions
13 Former Airline
14 French Film Blurred
15 Men 2nd
16 Map Ref. 41°N 93°W
17 Heartbeat
18 Pink Flag (encore)

From the looks of things, the audience of long-haired German stoners had no idea what had just hit them!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.04.2013
05:03 pm
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Chuck Berry reviews Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, Clash and many more, 1980

image
Chuck Berry & Debbie Harry.
 
Chuck Berry interviewed by punk zine Jet Lag in 1980. Berry shares his thoughts about “what the kids are listening to these days.”
 

The Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”:

What’s this guy so angry about anyway? Guitar work and progression is like mine. Good backbeat. Can’t understand most of the vocals. If you’re going to be mad at least let the people know what you’re mad about.

 

The Clash’s “Complete Control”:

Sounds like the first one. The rhythm and chording work well together. Did this guy have a sore throat when he sang the vocals?

 

The Ramones’ “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”:

A good little jump number. These guys remind me of myself when I first started, I only knew three chords too.

 

The Romantics’ “What I Like About You”:

Finally something you can dance to. Sounds a lot like the sixties with some of my riffs thrown in for good measure. You say this is new? I’ve heard this stuff plenty of times. I can’t understand the big fuss.

 

Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer”:

A funky little number, that’s for sure. I like the bass a lot. Good mixture and a real good flow. The singer sounds like he has a bad case of stage fright.


Wire’s “I Am the Fly” and Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures:

So this is the so-called new stuff. It’s nothing I ain’t heard before. It sounds like an old blues jam that BB and Muddy would carry on backstage at the old amphitheatre in Chicago. The instruments may be different but the experiment’s the same.

image
Click here to see larger image.
 
image
Click here to see larger image.
 
H/T WFMU and Music Ruined My Life

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.03.2013
02:25 pm
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Gary War: Highspeed Drift
01.21.2010
04:00 pm
Topics:
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Check out this Illuminoid sunspot blitzkreig courtesy of Gary War, from the “Horribles Parade” LP (Sacred Bones Records 2009). #23 in The WIRE’s Top 50 of 2009.

(Gary War: Horribles Parade)

Via Swen’s Blog

Gary War’s MySpace

Posted by Jason Louv
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01.21.2010
04:00 pm
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