Totally Wired 9.28.02: Unpopular Pop Music
Posted by Garrett Martin on 09.28.2002
“How Many Dead or Alive: Wire’s Just About the God-Damned Greatest!!!”
Okay, it’s been a long damn while, but this here column does still exist, yes sir, and I apologize for the delay, ‘cuz I just know that there have been literally several people who have been wondering when the hell the latest installment of this worthless wingadingding was gonna get all writ up. So now your wait is over, and you can spend a few fleeting moments of your hectic hurly-burly day ignoring this shit and reading Katz’s most recent emo sermon instead. Yes!
The other night, in Atlanta, GA, I took in a show by what I consider to be one of the two or three greatest rock and roll bands of all time. Living legends WIRE are right up there with the Fall and the Velvets (and what the hell, I guess the god-damn Beatles too) on the very tippy-top of the all-time permanent shit-hot undeniably freakin’ BRILLIANT list, based of course almost entirely upon their unfathomably fantastic first two records, 1977’s Pink Flag and 1978’s Chairs Missing. These two records, two of the best ten albums ever made by anyone anywhere EVER, handedly trounce almost 100% of all music ever leaked out of any human receptacle and/or orifice, and earn Wire a one-way ticket to Rockin’ Valhalla despite the general shoddiness of their post-first-reunion ‘80’s dance stuff. If you don’t own these records already, don’t worry, you’re excused for now, just make sure you run out and fork over your hardly-earned ducats to the friendly Borders employee or (preferably) struggling independent record store shop keep, posthaste!
Yes, so anyway, the other night I got to see the four elderly British gents what make up Wire put on a performance of their rock and roll music in what was their first show in the American South since, well, EVER, and that’s an ever that stretches back to when Avril Lavigne was negative eight years old. Yeah, Wire’s a bunch of old men, okay, and here’s a quick history lesson for the uninitiated. Wire formed in England in 1976 shortly after the first wave of punk rippled through that halcyon isle. They were older than most other punks, already well into their 20’s, and although initially their music shared punk’s amateurish, anarchic spirit, they very quickly marked out their own distinct territory by infusing actual intelligence and artfulness into their three-chord, minute-long tunes. Pink Flag, their first record, had 21 songs in about 40 minutes, including the all-time classics “Ex-Lion Tamer”, “Lowdown”, “Three Girl Rhumba” (which was completely ripped off by Elastica), and their first single, “12XU” (later covered by Minor Threat on the seminal Flex Your Head DC Hardcore compilation). Wire were markedly different from their contemporaries; they were political, but not cartoonish like the Sex Pistols or stridently conscious like Gang of Four; their songs were frequently catchy and poppy, but not nearly as much as, say, the Buzzcocks, or the Damned; their lyrics were often witty, satirical, and cynical, but not nearly as misanthropic or disconsolate as the Fall or Joy Division. In a sense Wire both helped lay out the blueprint for an escape from punk’s already and suffocating dogma, and also bridged the gap between the first wave of straight-forward Iggy-Johnny-and-Joey influenced punk and the more intelligent and artistic post-punk of 1978 and beyond. Wire followed Pink Flag with the definitive post-punk indie-rock album Chairs Missing in 1978 probably my favorite album of all time), a completely brilliant record suffused with equal parts furious noise and fragile beauty (with occasional dollops of noisy fury and beautiful fragility).
After this Wire sort of went too far into egg-headed experimentation, as 1979’s 154, while still a remarkable record with some amazing songs, features a bit too much ortentous proto-techno-Goth doom ‘n’ gloom for my tastes. Shortly after 154’s release, Wire called it a day and disbanded. In the mid-‘80’s they reunited and manufactured a series of clinical and sterile dance-rock records that failed to sully Wire’s monumental reputation despite the largely uninspiring music contained thereon. A second break-up in 1991 seemed to be the honest-to-God end for everything, since they were already getting up there in years, and
most people didn’t really care about their new stuff anymore anyway. Surprising enough, however, Wire reconvened in 2000, and after a shocking retrospective tour in which they played material from throughout their career (in the past they were infamous for never playing old material, going so far as to have a Wire cover band open their American tours in the 1980’s in order to satiate the audience’s desire to hear their
‘70’s classics), they started writing and recording new material for the first time in almost a decade. Eventually they released two six-song eps in 2002, Read and Burn Volumes 1 and 2, both on their own Pink Flag Records label.
Yes, okay, I can hear you getting all impatient and wondering what the hell my point is, and everything. Throughout both of their first two tenures, Wire toured America without ever playing anywhere in the Southeast. Despite legions of fans everywhere, they never played in Austin, or Athens, or Chapel Hill, or even Atlanta, until September 21st, 2002, when they played to a sold-out crowd at East Atlanta’s Echo Lounge. But before we get to a review of the show itself, let’s take a short break, reread over everything I just told you, rush out and buy Wire’s first two albums, and then sidle back up to your computer and the magical flaming Interweb tomorrow or the next day for part two of my Wire review fantastia. Alright, thanks! Send comments to thehoaryhosts@yahoo.com, you assholes.
