I can’t pimp this band hard enough. I was just telling a friend one of the greatest live shows I ever saw was Wire back in the heady punk/new wave years (late 70s early 80s). I actually saw them two nights back to back at different venues with different mitigating circumstances. The first night was at some old theater that a local NYC radio station got a hold of to do live broadcast with the band. It was obvious by the bands antics that they were clueless as to why they were there. In fact just minutes before the broadcast was scheduled to go out live-someone from the station whispered something in singer Colin Newman’s ear. He quickly signaled to the band and it was just awesome how the power fell over them and the audience. They were totally riveting-this was still the period of their 1st or 2nd releases which were still in the Ramones 1minute 2 minute plus song length pogo marathon for a half hour or 45 minutes until everybody just dropped from exhaustion. The main difference was while the Ramones tended to channel Mad Magazine/Don Martin Wire was more in the William Burroughs vein.

The good news is that for those of you who are curious you can check out their site here and sample some free mp3 as well. The 2nd show I saw them at was at CBGB’s and as you can imagine that too was the stuff of legend. Great band that ciontinually takes risks and reinvents themselves remaining very musically aware all the time.