Wire

And then really it was probably into the punk stuff, I guess.

And that was Wire, probably Wire at the Marquee.

I think that was on the Silver Jubilee.

So that would have been 77.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then Wire, the pop group.

Pop group I absolutely loved.

Perfect.

Brad Marino, Gene the Werewolf, and Wire.

Find us at 1000greatestmisses.buzzsprout.com or your podcast app of choice.

I'm Paul Hines, along with Christopher Gray, the music-obsessed record store guy with way too many songs stuck in his head.

The CD can be found for six bucks.

And that is streaming.

For our last song today, we're going to head over to London with the band Wire and their song Mannequin.

You're a width of space No natural grace You're so blind and thin You don't even begin To interest me Not even curiosity It's not animosity Just an interest me Well, you're an energy poet We'll be right back.

Youth of America.

Colin Newman from Wire has a solo record called Provisionally Entitled to Singing Fish.

That's about a big math Billy Bass.

And there's a P Model record called Potpourri.

Welcome to the History of Punk Rock podcast.

Today we’re diving into Wire’s groundbreaking Pink Flag, a minimalist tour de force that reshaped punk and post-punk.

And now let’s trace the sound, personalities, clubs, labels, and history behind today’s story.

So here’s a record that still feels like it ripped the whole punk thing into a glass and turned it over in a blender.

Wire’s Pink Flag, released at the tail end of seventy-seven under Harvest, but recorded just before Christmas in Advision Studios.

It is an album of twenty-one tracks that together run barely half an hour, which makes every minute feel like you’re on the edge of a cliff you’re about to jump off.

And yet all of that comes from bands that were still clutching at the last edges of the rawness coming out of New York clubs.

Take No, No, No, the opening track.

Red Krayola demonstrated that punk could accommodate complex theoretical frameworks while keeping DIY aesthetics intact.

In London, the band Wire pushed punk into intellectual territory with their nineteen seventy-nine debut Pink Flag.

Lead singer Colin Newman wrote cryptic lyrics that echoed political pamphlets more than catchy slogans.

Their guitarist, Bruce Gilbert, employed feedback loops and tape manipulation to create abstract sonic textures.

Wire's minimal yet cerebral approach convinced many that punk could be an art form in its own right.

Manchester's Factory became a crucible for artists who blended punk's ferocity with avant-garde aesthetics.

Artists like Peter Hook used bass lines that echoed minimalist compositions instead of traditional hooks.

and then playing it live.

So we did this, and we did it with me and Fred, Tully Potter on bass, and Adam Dahlquist on drums, who is the current, this is the band that's Vic Bondi and his issues, but originally we were the first Shat band, and Seattle album, Seattle Hardcore Album Tribute, or Shat, the first Shat performance was of Pink Flag by Wire, and the four of us did it, and it was really, uh, kind of magical and Redshift was winding down and I had a bunch of new songs that I wanted to record.

So I thought to myself, well, I'll just pull this band into the studio.

And so we did the new album or the new LP, uh, EP, sorry.

yeah absolutely smashing bloke called Tim sitting to my side and after about 20 minutes of him very casually mentioning music stuff not trying to drop it like clangers he went to the bathroom and I turned to my friend Massimo and was like Who's this guy? Turns out he's a member of Hawkwind Spiritualised, who else Phil? Coil.

Coil, and he's played with someone else as well, who is it? Wire.

Wire, of course, Wire, bloody Wire.

But I mean, Dipo Sandra's the kind of trajectory, I mean, I think that they're still, they're hanging on to Danny Hyde, and they're working very heavily with Drew McDowell and I think Drew is bringing after the time machines kind of concept Drew's bringing the drone and they're hanging on a wee bit to Danny Hyde in terms of the beats and loops so it's it's that that's the membership at that point and then it becomes sorry then it becomes kind of then Thaipos Danny Hyde kind of disappears and Thaipos Sandra enters so what changes I think it all gets a bit more proggy Yeah, so is that what changes in this record? Yeah, that's part of where you start to see the kind of shift.

Now, full disclosure, it's named after a cassette track from way back that Boyd Rice did called Black Light District.

And, uh, the singer of that band, David Callahan, later went on to start Moonshake, and now he is the frontman of the reunited Swell Maps, uh, with original member Jow Head, and does a pretty awesome job as well.

Uh, we heard Wire with Mannequin, and you might've caught the, uh, the intro riff similarity.

But The Wolfhounds can get away with it, unlike, uh, Elastica, who, uh, plundered nine [laughs] Wire songs, literally, literally begging for a lawsuit.

I could see how you, you know, you might mix up some of those punk chords from Pink Flag, but they were, like, ripping off Kidney Bingos and everything, so they got, they got slapped hard, that Elastica.

Behind Wire, we heard Prolapse and a brand-new collection of their Marianne Hobbs BBC sessions from 1997 and 1998, from which we heard TCR and Killing the Bland.

And, uh, they have a album out from last year, and were here on the show as well, uh, sometime last year.

But that's a brand-new release out of their BBC sessions.