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Wire

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Buzzcocks/X-Ray Spex/Wire etc.: Running with the Ratpack

Live Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 16 April 1977

ROXY RATPACK, Saturday nite. Find a friend and stick close: sink or swim. Tony and Julie were right: a club full of 'Wild Boys' outtakes ...

Audio interviews

Wire (1987)

Interview by Martin Aston, Rock's Backpages audio, March 1987

The proto-postpunks go through their history: Graham Lewis, Colin Newman and Bruce Gilbert on making debut album Pink Flag; on their development over the subsequent Chairs Missing and 154; on touring with the Tubes and Roxy Music; on their difficulties with EMI; and on re-emerging with new album The Ideal Copy. Graham Lewis (left) answers first, followed by Colin Newman (in shades) and finally Bruce Gilbert (second from left)…

File format: mp3; file size: 44mb, interview length: 45' 47" sound quality: ***

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Various artists: The Roxy, London, W.C.2 (Harvest SHSP 4069)

Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, September 1977

BACK IN nineteen-sixty-something, when an earlier new wave was proudly unfurling, several Live at the Star Club LPs appeared, scooping up some of the bands ...

Wire: Men Behind the Wire

Interview by Ian Birch, Melody Maker, 10 December 1977

HAVE YOU noticed how a new category is being synthesised in the press? It had to happen, now that disillusion with new wave/punk mark one ...

Wire

Interview by Kris Needs, ZigZag, March 1978

WHEN WIRE came out of the Punk No-man's-land with their strikingly different debut album Pink Flag they seemed one of the hottest hopes for lifting ...

XTC, Wire, the Secret: Lyceum, London

Live Review by Geoff Barton, Sounds, 4 March 1978

Shock as Soundsman writes non-metallic rave ...

Wire: Pink Flag

Review by Ira Robbins, Trouser Press, April 1978

AS THE FALLOUT from new wave continues to turn up on plastic, a few gangs of rockers have chosen (wisely I suppose) to see how ...

Wire: Pink Flag (Harvest ST-11757)

Review by Gary Lucas, Crawdaddy!, May 1978

"If you are a 'romantic,' you have not lived if you have not been present at a battle... The likelihood that you will get your ...

Wire: Limit Club, Sheffield

Live Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 13 May 1978

TO USE an alimentary analogy, punk can be seen as a kind of musical laxative, clearing away all that stodgy stuff that was blocking the ...

Sounded for Wire

Interview by Jim Green, Trouser Press, July 1978

YOU CAN: tie up your plastic garbage bag with a wire, send a message on a wire, connect broken bones with a wire, strangle your ...

Wire: News on the Wire

Interview by Richard Grabel, New York Rocker, July 1978

WIRE. THE name denotes something tight, something along which electricity buzzes and communication passes. In an English music scene full of brash, jokey band names (Sex ...

Wire: But Obviously It Isn't

Interview by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 16 September 1978

"Well it's alright just listenCan't wait for 78God those r.p.m.Can't wait for themDon't just watchHours happenGet in there kidAnd snap them."– Wire, 'It's So Obvious' ...

Wire: The Venue, London

Live Review by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 25 November 1978

I LIKE Wire a lot and sometimes I dislike them. ...

Wire: Barbed Wire

Interview by Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 9 December 1978

"We don't need nude tarts to sell records. Thus spake Wire, the most ruggedly uncompromising band HARRY DOHERTY has met for, oh, at least a ...

Wire: Chairs Missing (Harvest SHSP 4093)

Review by Jim Green, Trouser Press, January 1979

WIRE ARE disconcerting, laconic yet eloquent in fragmented visions, jarring even at their most accessible. They disdain cliché, pushing out the limits of rock; the ...

Reluctant Rock Stars: A Nation In Crisis

Interview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 7 July 1979

PAUL RAMBALI looks at the young people the Social Services have failed. The kids who must face the ever-present threat of Fame, the horror of ...

Wire: 154 (Harvest SHSP 4105)

Review by Hugh Fielder, Sounds, 22 September 1979

And keeping it there ...

Wire: 154 (Harvest)

Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 22 September 1979

WIRE WERE from the very outset a conceptually intriguing collective, even though they bristled with a potential that was all too often offset by niggling ...

Wire: 154 (Harvest)

Review by Jon Savage, Melody Maker, 29 September 1979

WRAPPED IN an abstract minimal geo-deco sleeve (all straight lines and waves, pastel shades), with its own label and a "free" 45, the third Wire ...

Wire: Wider Vision

Interview by Chris Bohn, Melody Maker, 13 October 1979

Wire don't sit comfortably in the publicity man's gullet. They're not easily categorised, seemingly spurning the hype-market. But they do conform in one way; they ...

Re: Wire

Interview by J.D. Considine, New York Rocker, March 1980

TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS are not my favorite means of communication, but in the case of Wire (to be specific, bassist Graham Lewis), it's either that or ...

Colin Newman

Interview by Jim Green, Trouser Press, June 1981

"YOU CAN'T forcibly solve contradictions; you've got to allow them to work themselves out," says Colin Newman. What's a Colin Newman? Good question; he himself ...

Wire: Document And Eyewitness At Notre Dame Hall And The Electric Ballroom (Rough Trade)

Review by Chris Bohn, New Musical Express, 1 August 1981

OUT OF SHEER perversity, it would seem, Wire stopped functioning 18 months ago. Going by their chronology of events we shouldn't have been surprised, as ...

Wire, James: Bloomsbury Theatre, London

Live Review by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 3 August 1985

SPARKLY JAMES HARVEST ...

Wire: The Ideal Copy

Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 2 May 1987

WIRE are pure luxury. Here are a bunch of superior sound technicians with an immaculate grasp of the sculptural and architectural possibilities of rock, who ...

Wire: The Ideal Copy (Mute)

Review by The Legend!, New Musical Express, 2 May 1987

THE QUESTION is: should there really be a question at all? Many people hold no truck with reformations; more often than not they tarnish precious ...

Wire: Victims of Time

Interview by Jack Barron, Sounds, 6 June 1987

Or timeless as ever? Only time will tell, say WIRE, back with An Ideal Copy and not a hint of retrogression anywhere. Seconds clocked by ...

Wire: State-of-the-Art Return to Action

Profile and Interview by Howard Wuelfing, Musician, July 1987

WIRE IS back. After a "sabbatical" of some seven years, the British group released a four-song EP of new material titled Snakedrill, and The Ideal ...

Siouxsie And The Banshees/The Fall/Wire: Finsbury Park, London

Live Review by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 1 August 1987

AND DARKNESS fell over all the earth. Well, only a teensyweensy bit of it actually, but it turned into the arse-end of Pandemonium. A plethora ...

Wire ...Of The Tastiest Kind

Interview by Richard Grabel, Creem, September 1987

COLIN NEWMAN and Graham Lewis, of the nearly living legendary beat combo Wire, are amiable, approachable guys who nonetheless make no attempt to hide their ...

Wire: A Stitch in Time… Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Interview by Robin Gibson, Sounds, 4 June 1988

In the oddball world of unlikely pop stars WIRE — where vital organs are won playing bingo — social comment and absurdity walk hand in ...

Depeche Mode, Wire, Thomas Dolby, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark: Rose Bowl, Pasadena CA

Live Review by Paul Mathur, Melody Maker, 16 July 1988

WIRE HAVE probably not played to 100,000 people in total as they've skimmed their precious stones across the edges of a strange pop history. And ...

Wire: Manscape (Mute)

Review by Dave Simpson, Melody Maker, 12 May 1990

THE FLIES in the ointment return. Formed at the onset of punk, Wire's art school background was far removed from the council estate mentalities of ...

Wire: Three Men & a beat

Interview by Mark Sinker, The Wire, November 1991

Wire's reputation — as the foremost quartet of art-formalists to have come out of punk — has shrouded them in enigma. Now a three-piece, with ...

Wire Reissues

Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 1994

Pink Flag (Harvest/EMI)Chairs Missing (Harvest/EMI)154 (Harvest/EMI) ...

Wire: Flies in the ointment

Interview by Ian Penman, The Wire, March 2000

23 years after their art attack first outpaced punk audiences, Wire have sprung back into action. Ian Penman meets the group in rehearsal and finds ...

Invisible Jukebox: Colin Newman

Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, April 2003

Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...

Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up and Start Again – Post-Punk 1978-84 (Faber)

Book Review by Andy Beckett, London Review of Books, September 2005

IN JANUARY 1978, the Sex Pistols, then and now the most famous punk band in the world, split up. Johnny Rotten, the band's singer, most ...

Wire: Tense, Nervous, Headache

Retrospective and Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, April 2006

Combining art school sensibilities and musical inability, Wire rejected punk's pub-rock posturings for driving minimalism, fewer chords and no guitar solos. With the reissue of ...

Wire: Pretty in Pink

Retrospective and Interview by Fred Mills, Harp, June 2006

APRIL 1, 1977, LONDON: Onstage at punk venue the Roxy is a young quartet nearing the end of its 17-song set – which, in a ...

Wire: Not About to Die

Retrospective by Fred Mills, Harp, July 2006

IT'S SOMETIME in late '77 or early '78 and yours truly is toiling away at the distribution center for North Carolina record store chain the ...

Wire: Academy 2, Manchester

Live Review by Dave Simpson, The Guardian, 9 May 2008

BANDS GENERALLY BREAK UP then reform some years later to trot out the hits to fill up their pension funds, but Wire have never played ...

Wire: The Making Of 'I Am The Fly'

Interview by Nick Hasted, Uncut, February 2011

1978's deathlessly spiteful singalong, from a quartet of art-punk outsiders "desperate to get on Tiswas"... ...

see also Colin Newman

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