Smashbomb

"I think there is an argument to be made for Wire being one of the greatest ever bands to come out of the UK. They have become a band to namedrop over the last 20 years and rightly so. In 1977 or 1978, me and my mates were wagging school and listening to whatever new records were out at the time, and that would be invariably punk records. A couple of my friends were into The Stranglers, which never really did it for me. I was listening to The Only Ones and Generation X and things like that. When [punk compilation] The Roxy London WC2 came out you had to have it and spend your hard-earned pocket money on it, but it was a disappointing, shouty affair. It was badly recorded with a number of bands who didn't do much for me. However, it had 'Lowdown' by Wire on it and the song stood out by a million miles. There was brains and originality behind the song. When 154 came out it was so startling as it was so ahead of its time. Well, it was of the time but broke away from the norm, which was very much still rooted in an aggressive rock & roll heartland. Wire really stretched sounds and included keyboards on their records, which at the time was a very brave move. I am trying my hardest not to use the word 'arty' but in this case, they owned that word. I had left school at that time and moved away from my parents and was living on my own. That period was key for me as a person and Wire's approach to guitar was just something I couldn't ignore. It was a real pointer away from the blues-based guitar playing which dominated pop music - including punk - since rock music had started. As a young guitar player, discovering 154 showed me a world that was an alternative way of looking at the instrument. It has stuck with me all the way through my career."

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Kudos

Lee Ronaldo recommended This Year's Model by Elvis Costello / Elvis Costello & The Attractions in Music (curated)

"I chose the second Elvis Costello record because it had the whole band and I saw those guys so many times in that period. The band was so excellent and the songwriting and the lyrics were so excellent, Elvis Costello was a singular talent in that period. Both Elvis and David Byrne were coming across with these songs that were so amazing – they were nodding backwards towards classic pop and yet they were doing new and innovative things with it, and the lyrics were so inspiring. They were both such inspiring lyric writers. In different ways both writing about alienation in modern society: Elvis is this vitriolic way and David Byrne in this meek Clark Kent kind of thing, but they were both railing against what society was becoming and what it was trying to make of its citizens and they were both of their ways very punk."

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Homegrown: Austin Music Posters 1967 to 1982

Alan Schaefer, Joe Nick Patoski and Nels Jacobson

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Book

Before Austin became the "live music capital of the world" and attracted tens of thousands of music...

Chris Stein/Negative: Me, Blondie and the Advent of Punk

Glenn O'Brien, Deborah Harry and Shepard Fairey

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Book

For the duration of the 1970s - from his days as a student at the School of Visual Arts through the...

New York Dolls by New York Dolls

8.3 (3 Ratings) Rate It

Album

New York Dolls is the debut album by the American hard rock band New York Dolls. It was released on...

Multi-Task by Omni

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Album Watch

RIYL: Preoccupations, Orange Juice, Josef K, Fire Engines, Franz Ferdinand, Parquet Courts, Spoon,...

alternative rock

Slapstick Modernism: Chaplin to Kerouac to Iggy Pop

William Solomon

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Book

Slapstick comedy landed like a pie in the face of twentieth-century culture. Pratfalls and...

Colin Newman recommended Tabula Rasa by Arvo Part in Music (curated)

Tabula Rasa by Arvo Part

1984 | Classical, Experimental

10.0

(1 Ratings)

Album Favorite

"People who didn’t live through that period or weren’t old enough to know what was going on somehow imagine that there was this fantastic post-punk thing going on. That’s all made up in hindsight. Really, everything was pop of the most plastic kind. And a lot of it was quite terrible. Though I did like Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” which came out in 1984. There was a real thing in the early-to-mid ’80s about modern classical music; there was a lot of that stuff around, and those were the more interesting things. If you know Tabula Rasa and know anything about the music that I’ve been involved with, you might struggle to find how I would connect with that kind of music. But it’s not really experimental music. It’s very emotional. It doesn’t have the form of a song but it’s not far from the world that Eno was exploring with his Ambient series."

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