Wire!

[dem bones]

Jul 9, 2014 9:17:22 GMT franklinmarsh said:

Amid my current piles of 90s acts that I missed (Marilyn Manson, White/Rob Zombie, Insane Clown Posse and (waves Union Jack) Cradle Of Filth), I've obsessively spinning the meagre selection of Scott Walker I have access to. The Brel covers are monumental, but Montague Terrace (In Blue) and the Bergman-inspired The Seventh Seal are running them close.

Noticed a recent Rob Zombie release in library the other day, his novelisation of own film The Lords of Salem. will try find out more. As to Scott Walker, you really owe it to yourself to seek out the Walker Brothers' The Electrician. Entirely devoid of laughs.

Kevin S. Eden - Wire ... Everybody Loves A History (SAF, 1991)

Photo: Andrew Catlin

Blurb:
Wire remain one of the most original and influential groups to have emerged from the early 'punk rock' circuit. Since their formation in 1976, the group has collectively and individually created a highly original body of work that has redefined the context of pop and has crossed into the boundaries of art.

Unique in their attitude toward both performance and composition, Wire have continually confounded and amazed the press and public alike with their constantly shifting musical changes. This refusal to be pinned down has been amply demonstrated by diversification into performance art, audio-visual installations and ballet scores.

These pages consist of frank disclosures by the founding four members about their past, as well as a self-analysis of their working methods.

Extensively researched, the group explore and expand the ideas and philosophies behind their music.

Everybody Loves A History successfully unravels the complexities of this enigmatic and multi-faceted group.

Including full discography, gigography, and over 70 photos spanning their complete history.



Another top pop star smash hit read for you, Franklin. Everybody Loves A History takes the story up to 1991's Manscape album and Wire's brief Robert Gotobed-less incarnation as Wir. Told in a series of interviews, revelations include the bands lack of "relationship" with EMI who thought they'd signed a trad punk gobbing and safety-pins act, the Outdoor Minor plugging controversy, the harrowing creation of 154 ("the blood on the walls album"), touring with The Tubes, Roxy Music's despicable road crew, Lydia Lunch seeks alien baby, plus Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, The Ideal Copy, A Bell Is A Cup ... and the various conceptual art solo project hi-jinks. Lock up your hats.

[valdemar]

I love Wire - I heard '12XU', and was immediately smitten with their odd, angular noise. I really liked 'Pink Flag'. If you didn't like a track, you didn't have to wait long for another to turn up. Several later 'Britpop' bands based their entire output on them, in fact, on one song - 'Three Girl Rhumba'. I'm not naming anyone here, but Elastica and Sleeper, I'm looking at you... My favourite Wire Tracks are 'Reuters', 'I Am The Fly', 'I Should Have Known Better', 'Used To', 'Ambitious', 'In Vivo', and 'So And Slow It Goes'. Graham Lewis did a side project called 'He Said', and the singles 'Could You' and 'Pump' are absolutely brilliant. Wire are one of those bands that I keep turning back to, and who never leave the listener feeling short changed. A truly great band. And still touring.

[Shrink Proof]

You can add "Outdoor Miner" and "Eardrum Buzz" to the list....

[valdemar]

I would - but those two songs are, according to my long term radio listening, the only two songs that the band ever produced... And, as a consequence, I'm not that bothered, good songs that they are, to hear them again for a long time...

[franklinmarsh]

Haven't been to a gig in ages but the West End Centre in Aldershot is set to become Rock City later in the year. Have acquired tickets for The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Wire and the UK Subs.All three have new albums out which will add to my financial misery. Haven't seen Wire before - apparently Colin Newman said their career is a one way ticket so they don't tend to look back. You may get one old number in a vastly different form. Apparently a few years ago they did a tour with a Wire tribute act as support to stem the shouts for 1-2-X-U and Lowdown. Have seen the other two before - remarkable to consider Arthur is 72 years young and Sir Charles Harper a veritable baby at 71!

[dem bones]

Jul 7, 2015 8:53:11 GMT franklinmarsh said:

Haven't been to a gig in ages but the West End Centre in Aldershot is set to become Rock City later in the year. Have acquired tickets for The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Wire and the UK Subs.All three have new albums out which will add to my financial misery. Haven't seen Wire before - apparently Colin Newman said their career is a one way ticket so they don't tend to look back. You may get one old number in a vastly different form. Apparently a few years ago they did a tour with a Wire tribute act as support to stem the shouts for 1-2-X-U and Lowdown. Have seen the other two before - remarkable to consider Arthur is 72 years young and Sir Charles Harper a veritable baby at 71!

The Wire tribute act were the Ex-Lion Tamers, pretty sure they were American. Their set was comprised of Pink Flag in its entirety, except one night for variations sake, they did Chairs Missing from start to finish. The real Wire seem to have thoroughly enjoyed that tour!

First time I saw Wire was at Harrow Tek back in the day. (geriatric punk's reminiscences alert). A little crew of us had banded together at the time, Wealdstone fans/ morbids/ anti-musicians who couldn't get it together (though Martin Russian and Russ Russian went on to form They Must Be Russians: Russ was Arthur Brown's nephew or something!), kind of prided ourselves on being the local outcasts, and we were at full strength that night which added to the sheer wonderfulness of the occasion. Chairs Missing had not long been released so, by way of promotion, they played what was to become 154 instead, the only concessions to the current album I can remember being I Feel Mysterious Today (always better live), and a blistering, metal-edged version of Mercy. A few students, clearly the worse for Ribena super-strength, thought it was the done thing to gob at Newman. Lewis slung down his guitar and threatened to beat the shit out of them if they did it again. They didn't. That hallowed night went a long way to exorcising the ghastly spectre of those unspeakable bastards Gr**nsl*de who'd so traumatised innocent little paperboy self three/ four years earlier at same venue (a set by Destroy All Monsters circa 1979 would complete the cleansing process). A few years later, Robert Gotobed (no less!) told me that the Harrow gig was not one the band remembered fondly - they'd had a guitar nicked that night and it wasn't like they were millionaires.

Bonus boring aside. Support act at HT were The Screens, possibly the first out and out Wire-clones, who, as far as I know, never recorded a note, but I can still hum bits from two of their songs, Motorway Services - a poor man's Dot Dash - and Who Controls The Weather?. Saw 'em open for the late, great Kevin Coyne around the same time at Hendon Tek, so presume they were a local band.

[franklinmarsh]

Brilliantine! The only Wire song I've ever seen performed live was Ex-Lion Tamer - performed by The Sting-Rays, supporting The Cramps at Ham Od. Have just learned that I've acquired Wire's new album. Huzzah! Have Arthur's new 'un Zim Zam Zim which is a little strange (to say the least)- but the man is in good form and voice. Last saw him at The Guilfest a couple years back. My stepdaughter was not impressed. He introduced Fire with "I performed this on the Tom Jones Show. He gave me a bottle of champagne."

[dem bones]

I had Arthur's Crazy World Of Arthur Brown on heavy rotation throughout teen cemetery haunting years (see above), still adore his version of I Put A Spell On You. I seem to remember he took a sabbatical from rock biz after Kingdom Come and took up nursing in war-torn countries or am I having a hallucination of my own? There was some story of him singing to the injured while a girl belly-danced on a table?

Henry Rollins gives good Ex Lion-Tamer! Very faithful to the original but - well, with added Henry Rollins.

[pulphack]

That first Crazy World album is wonderful - and I agree, his version of I Put A Spell On You is the best I've heard (better even than Nina Simone). I have a real soft spot for Rest Cure. Strangelands, the demos for the second Crazy World album put out by Reckless is a bit rough but still worth tracking down, and the Kingdom Come albums are pretty good. The solo stuff is patchy but never less than interesting. I saw him with Hawkwind at Walthamstow Town Hall and he was great, windmill dancing in his suit of multi-coloured bulbs. A couple of years before I saw at the Standard, Walthamstow (I don't venture far, really) and he was electric - the band began to play and he came from the back of the pub, walking through the audience and singing the first number, so strong that his voice cut through the band even though he didn't have a mic! I still find it odd that he had a decorating business in Texas with Jimmy Carl Black from the Mothers Of Invention - imagine them turning up to paint your lounge!

Wire - I know this is a 'look at me' story, but it's true! Back in '85 myself and Paul Day from The History Of Gardening (a great lost punk-prog band) were The Underground Bus, putting on gigs in Dalston at the Crown & Castle. I knew this band called Shiver My Timbers, and we booked them. They asked if their mate's band could play. It was bloody Wire, the night after they'd played their reformation gig at the Ashmolean museum. We were packed, and they took £40, insisting the rest go to Shiver My Timbers. They also insisted that SMT headlined. Paul got dead excited when Graham Lewis rang him a couple of days later - alas, visions of THOG supporting Wire went out the window when GL plaintively asked if we'd found his plugboard as he'd lost it... Turned out that two of SMT lived in some arty community in Barnet where Bruce Gilbert and Colin Newman were living at the time. I went out for a night with the SMT lads and Bruce Gilbert - my God, that man could drink Guiness. I disgraced myself by puking on the 279 in Edmonton, going home. Wire never played for us again...

I tell you what though, Dem - I am dead jealous you saw Destroy All Monsters, as I would have paid through the nose to have seen them but missed out when they came here.

[pulphack]

Incidentally, I think that story about Arthur Brown nursing the wounded is true - he lived in Israel on a kibbutz for some time, and spent a good while in the Middle East before being lured back to music by Klaus Schulze (AB was on a Schulze album, and made one with Vincent Crane for Schulze's IC label, which was a bit of a disappointment to me then, but I wouldn't mind hearing it again - a youtube search is coming on me...)

[Jojo Lapin X]

Jul 7, 2015 18:49:49 GMT pulphack said:

before being lured back to music by Klaus Schulze

Say what? I had no idea.

Edit: Oh, I see. That is him on DUNE! If I ever even noted the name, I certainly never realized that was the Arthur Brown.

[franklinmarsh]

Amazing stories! Arthur keeps cropping up. He sang The Song Of The Gremlin on Bob Calvert's Captain Lockheed & The Starfighters, The Tell-Tale Heart on the Alan Parsons Project's Tales Of Mystery & Imagination and gave it some as the odd priest at the Church Of Marilyn in Ken Russell's film of The Who's Tommy.

[dem bones]

Jul 7, 2015 18:45:29 GMT pulphack said:

I tell you what though, Dem - I am dead jealous you saw Destroy All Monsters, as I would have paid through the nose to have seen them but missed out when they came here.

In that case, rather than make you even more jealous, I won't even mention that Niagara removed her shiny black mac mid-set to reveal - oh no! - she'd totally accidentally left her skirt back in the dressing room (again)! Entire audience were absolutely mortified on her behalf. Ron Asheton's guitar was amped up LOUD, very, very torture LOUD! Niagara couldn't really sing, the "songs" were all the same filthy Stooges riff - you bet they were brilliant! Not so the support band, Zal. As name suggests, this was Zal Cleminson's short-lived, post-Sensational Alex Harvey Band outfit, featuring some ex-nutter from The Tubes on vocals who spent the entire set writhing around on and beneath a polythene sheet. It just didn't work, somehow.

Have now found out the DAM gig was on 12th October 1979. Wire's was late October the previous year. Why ain't I dead yet?

Jul 7, 2015 18:45:29 GMT pulphack said:

I still find it odd that he had a decorating business in Texas with Jimmy Carl Black from the Mothers Of Invention - imagine them turning up to paint your lounge!

That would be brilliant! Pity they didn't recruit Genesis P. Orridge as part of the operation. "I've come to look at your plumbing..." Always felt a bit sorry for Jimmy Carl Black as I could imagine him being pestered everywhere he went with decrepit hippies asking him to say it, say "Hi! I'm Jimmy Carl Black and I'm the Indian of the group!," until he either complied just to get rid of the jerks or (preferably) killed them.

Back to Wire. As surly as they were to their record company and (some) music journo's, they must be one of the most approachable bands of all time, particularly supportive of the fanzines and fledgling bands. I've heard only good from people who came into their orbit, and your experience clearly bears this out.

[valdemar]

Many, many years ago, whilst wandering aimlessly through London, I met Genesis P. Orridge, and chatted with him for a few minutes. Like most people that the press say are 'The Destroyers Of Civilisation' [an epithet given to Throbbing Gristle/COUM Transmissions by the press a few years earlier], he was nothing of the sort, of course. I found him to be a charming, intelligent bloke. A true original, and, of course, a great British eccentric. Somebody that could never be described as 'dull'.

[franklinmarsh]

Wire - West End Centre, Aldershot.

Couldn't get in the car park so had to retreat to Tescos. Support came from a bearded tattooed Jason with a laptop (like Pete Shelley's) and a guitar. "You hate me because you think I'm a hipster. I'm not. I've looked like this for 15 years. Don't hate me because you think I'm a hipster." To which a wag in the audience quipped "That's not the only reason..." He ended up going down quite well with such tunes as A Stranger Is An Enemy You Haven't Made Yet and This Is What A Band Looks Like When You Don't Mix Well With People.
As a complete contrast to Arthur's flamboyance and rock theatre a fortnight ago, Wire just got on with it. A formidable sonic wall with minimalist stage banter (It took two songs for Colin Newman to mutter 'Good evening') they were a force to be reckoned with. The vocals were a tad low but I did recognise Blogging and In Manchester from the new album. A few despairing cries of '1-2-X-U' and 'I Am The Fly' were of course ignored. I heard a disconsolate 'Well, they could have done a couple of the old ones' by someone obviously unaware of the 'Our career is a one-way ticket' philosophy of the band as I left.