I’ve always wanted to ask you since I read this in the Voice back in the day – but when you ended with that JL Godard dis, had you ever seen a Godard movie? Because your descriptions of PINK FLAG and CHAIRS MISSING (excellent, excellent, excellent by the way!) could easily describe the same spirit/feel to any of the first 8 or 9 of his films.
Chuck Eddy
That’s a great question, Stanley, and honestly? I have no idea. I do know I’m probably way more likely to have watched something by Godard *before* writing that Wire review (like, in my early 20s in the early ’80s say) than at any time since. Oddly though, this morning (before I read your note) I happened to read Greil Marcus’s blurb about Chairs Missing in his discography appendix in the back of Stranded — I’d inadvertently left Chairs Missing off my 150 Best Albums of 1978 post, but included Pink Flag, which in the UK was a ’77 album, and I was trying to remember what Uncle Greil had written about the then-import-only former. Here’s his last sentence: “This band, which hid melodies in almost impenetrable lyrics about dislocation, pleasure, and doom, probably owed more to Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave than to that of anyone else.” So, 34 years on, I’ll take a wild guess that my ending sentence was a thinly veiled reference, tribute and/or rejoinder to his — whether I was personally familiar with Godard’s films or not. To what extent Marcus inspired anything else in the review is another great question. Also can’t hurt that the second song on Chairs Missing — which I’m listening to right now, first time in ages — is called “French Film Blurred.”
As Stefon on SNL would say, “This review has EVERYTHING” that I love about Chuck Eddy reviews. Did you ever review that Yes album? 🙂
Sara Quell
Bought ‘Ideal Copy’ because “Ambitious” was playing in the store and it sounded like something it would be cool to tell people I bought. Still like the first two tracks, haven’t played remainder since I got it and never intend to play it again https://youtu.be/Faze7pIthuM
Peter Stenhouse
I still love those Sly & Robbie and Prince and Royal Crescent Mob albums, if they’re the ones I’m thinking of.
Chuck Eddy
I’m almost positive I haven’t heard a note of Royal Crescent Mob music since the ’80s.
David Allen Jones
Saw the RC Mob in.. 1991? I forget the year. Touring the album they thought would break them, Midnight Rose’s. Pretty good show, I thought but they just couldn’t get over the hump career wise… if that Sly and Robbie album is Rhythm Killers, that’s a longtime favorite of mine, darn near perfect in my book.
Chuck Eddy
Yeah, that’d be the one, for sure.
Peter Gorman
1985-1990: The A List is a very fine “best of” for the post-154 Wire. All the songs chosen by fans.
William Boyd
It might be nice if you can transcribe some of your stuff; it’s too difficult to read on my screen.
Chuck Eddy
I have transcribed some, and scanned some. Seems to work on plenty of screens, if not all. Sorry I don’t have time to transcribe all of them.
Zac Harmon
Sigue Sigue Sputnik were gay identified?!
Chuck Eddy
No idea. But I’d assume, at very least, Erasure and Frankie Goes to Hollywood were.
Sara Quell
The weirdest thing I discovered about England was how all the fan-identifying stereotypes were switched around. Carcass/Napalm Death fans were gentle, scholarly Gandalf types, Frankie/Erasureheads were yobs and hooligans (Depeche Mode = jail time. Spandau/Culture Club = get out, Bond villain alert). Sigue Sigue Sputnik was for “dumb American (yeah that was part of the insult) rock fans’ like me (nickname remained ‘Bon Jovi’ years after total hair loss), and predictably enough ‘Flaunt It’ is my favorite 80s.
Sara Quell is right, the flasher the band the more their fans resembled something horrible Thatcher dug up, unless they were as critically despised as say Sigue Sigue Sputnik and only for the kids
Seems to be a lot of action happening on FB - hope staying away from there and commenting hereabouts doesn't foul up your "system" in some way...
Anyway, I enjoyed this review without really agreeing with much of it (is that even a thing, really? Don't see too many people responding to a critique favorably if it doesn't align precisely with their personal POV, but then again, who wants to put in the work to find out?), but that may be because THE IDEAL COPY (actually, the Enigma cassette with that on one side and the SNAKEDRILL EP and the non-LP tracks from the "Ahead" 12-inch on the other) was my first Wire album; I knew not a note they recorded pre-'86 for a good year after that, after which I plunked down the ducats for an import copy of CHAIRS MISSING, at which point I "got" what all the naysayers were on about w/r/t WIRE Mach II. Of course, once I filled in the remaining gaps in my collection to that point, it was clear that their evolution was so swift and so constant that no one should have been that surprised that late-80s Wire barely resembled late-70s Wire (which is a moot point if the issue is "I don't like these sounds" rather than "I don't like that these sounds don't sound like THOSE sounds," which seemed like the reaction a good number of critics had at the time [could be mistaken]). And while TIC was (and remains) an enjoyable listen, those early records were pure cranial gelignite. Nothing compares, though I get plenty of pleasure from all phases of the band. So, yes, agreed that 70s Wire is peak Wire, but not scaling Everest doesn't mean you can't appreciate the view from base camp. Or some other, less clunky metaphor to that effect.
Also, according to READ & BURN, the band themselves don't think much of TIC, so that should feel somewhat vindicating.
Also also - don't know about you, but Wire playing "Drill" VERY LOUDLY and interacting with a game but bewildered Suzanne Somers on Fox TV's LATE SHOW around this time? That's MY Beatles-on-Sullivan moment.
Age of Chance mention! Loved their two albums, especially the first.
Chuck Eddy
Indie purist (!?) that I was, I wound up liking their EP and debut LP okay, but not nearly as much as the beatnik noisemaking that preceded those. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQrRyC0MAmk
Doug Brod
That’s cool. Never heard it before. I’m partial to their bike messenger-chic days.
Sundar Subramanian
I support the right to mock synthpop.
Chuck Eddy
I support the right to mock any kind of music ever, but to be honest I like way more synthpop now than I did when I was 26 years old.
Jaz Jacobi
Several questions:
1] Is “Jean-Luc Goddard” an honest typo, or an Adam Ant in-joke?
2] Do you still like that 1987 Bryan Adams album that everyone forgets exists?
3] Is this the only time you mentioned the Undertones [one of my top ten bands ever, as people who insist I have no taste will remind you]?
Chuck Eddy
1) Honest. 2) Probably not. 3) Probably not, but almost.
Chuck Eddy
Pretty sure “Teenage Kicks” was in that Top 40 of ’70s and ’80s bubblegum piece I did for Creem in the mid ’80s, then later got reprinted in the Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth book, whatever year that was?
Jaz Jacobi
That was the very first thing I ever read by you!
Jaz Jacobi
I remember telling some girl who bullied me in junior high school, but now wore Skinny Puppy shirts in high school and was “goth,” that you had called the Jesus and Mary Chain “bubblegum” in that CREEM article, and her simply replying, “shut up.”
Jaz Jacobi
As a longtime card-carrying “alternative rock” maven, over time I’ve come to realize that quite a bit of “postpunk”/college radio music is really just as “art rock,” and frequently more dreary, than the ELP and Yes and Rush figureheads that supposedly make punk “necessary”–Fugazi, Guided By Voices, Archers of Loaf, Mission of Burma etc. But sometimes, this realization has taught me, indie art rock can be giggly fun when it’s no-big-deal/small potatoes/low stakes college town nightclub goofing [I still enjoy no-name dollar-bin fodder like Polvo and the Swirlies more than might seem wise, perhaps in part because such bands don’t have huge devoted fanbases jumping down my throat every time I’m caught “trolling” the Pixies by implying they’re kind of trivial or minor]. This Wire piece sums up some of the reasons this sub-subcategory of music really CAN be grand and complex and fascinating, though [bits of the Wire/PiL/Gang of Four/Pere Ubu catalogues, more of the Fall catalog than seems statistically likely].
Jaz Jacobi
It wasn’t until years later that I was aware that at least 3 of my 6 or 7 favorite bands from when I was in my early twenties had gay singer-songwriters, and I became a tad self-conscious when I recently found myself tossing large parts of the catalogues of a couple of those artists into my get-rid-of pile–like, might it seem valid if someone confronted me about whether their non-gender-specific love songs used to seem meaningful in a different way within the presumptions of my younger, less informed self? But then I realized that A] I knew the rumors before I knew the facts about their orientations the whole time anyway and this didn’t make any difference to my manic fandom back then, and B] I’m only willing to part ways with this music now because my older self finds it isn’t always consistently very GOOD, which is a whole ‘nuther factor!
Sara Quell
I love this. Sort of how mid-80s Rush would’ve sounded had the Fall been the North American Led Zep instead of the Police: https://youtu.be/2GbhMxw4Hlo
Chuck You seem to enjoy a lot of 90s/2000s music inspired by synthpop, but appear indifferent to the actual early 80s kind. Any reason?
Chuck Eddy
Not true, at all! As a matter of fact, I’d say I consistently prefer the ’80s kind (just like in, uh, pretty much any other genre.) Instead of going by a Wire review I wrote when I was a young snot, maybe check these lists?
Patrick Hould
😅 Like I haven’t been studying your lists with Talmudic fervor! It’s actually your response to a comment by Sundar Subramanian posted on your blog that reminded me to ask you that, not the Wire article itself. But let me look back at the relevant lists.
Chuck Eddy
Oh I see what you’re talking about. But the synthpop in “I like way more synthpop now than I did when I was 26” mostly is from the ’80s!
Chuck Eddy
Replicas and Pleasure Principle and Computer World (and Yellow Magic Orchestra and Telex and M and Soft Cell and Chas Jankel and Fad Gadget and DAF and sundry other Germans ) aren’t in there?? You might want to check again. Speak and Spell maybe too? I’d have to check that one; might have been borderline. And a couple years after 1984, there’s the Pet Shop Boys (Oh wait, you said top 20s though, duh. That’s kind of….limiting!)
Patrick Hould
Yup, just looking at the big favorites. Chas Jankel was top 20, but I decided that he fit in better with funk, at least on that one album. All the other ones you name I agree are synthpop.
Actually maybe the Seize The Beat comp should count… so then I’d probably have to throw in Was (Not Was) and A Christmas Record (which I haven’t heard) as well.
Chuck Eddy
I mean, I like funky synthpop better than unfunky synthpop. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Also, Gino Soccio should definitely count.
Patrick Hould
It’s been a while, but I remember Outline being straight-up disco, even if it’s mostly/all electronic. S-Beat I remember being more rock-ish (new wavish?) so maybe! I need to listen to it again. His 1984 single “Turn It Around” got a fair bit of airplay in Montreal and that was totally synthpop – not sure if there ever was an album to go with it.
Brian MacDonald
As someone who loved and still loves 70s disco, and loved and still kinda loves mid-to-late 80s synth pop, I totally get the fatigue of having the style permeate every nook and cranny of a current musical zeitgeist. Style fatigue doesn’t solely imply synth-phobia or homophobia. My only issue with early music reviews is the term “pretentious” used as a negative: if I love or hate it, the snobbery or pretense behind it doesn’t matter (unless that artist has wronged me personally, haha)
Nate Patrin
This sparked recollection of an idea that’s been lingering in my critic-brain. There are two context-dependent definitions of “pretentious” I like to think about: one is “these people are trying to be clever and, speaking as someone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, they’re failing,” which is the textbook definition, and the other is “I don’t like this attempt at cleverness because it makes me feel stupid,” which is the position widely held by anti-art populists. Guess which one’s gotten more pervasive.
Chuck Eddy
Wait, do I use “pretentious” in that review? Don’t feel like straining my eyes (actually, I tried), but I wouldn’t put it past me at that point. Not long after, pretty sure I decided “pretentious” (or at least “ambitious” — less pejorative, but basically the same) was at least way better than “humble”. If I did use it as an insult there, I doubt I have in the past third of a century.
Brian MacDonald
It appears once in a comedic line: “and anybody who could withstand the quarter-hour of poetried interstellar piano-pomp on 1981’s
‘Crazy About Love’ 12-inch has more patience for pretentious hippies than I do”
Brian MacDonald
Nate I honestly don’t know! Now that anyone can fire up GarageBand, it might be the former! I expect the answer is the latter, although apparently I’ve gotten really good at filtering out bad writers, as I haven’t seen the P word used in quite a while, like years.
Again, “pretentious” is just a minor bugaboo for me that can be deployed strategically and sparingly, IMHO. It just has been used sooo much as a negative way to say “arty” in every other music review in the 20th century and a bit into the 2000s.
Chuck Eddy
“Pretentious” implies something’s being pretended, which is just…weird. (And yeah, in that line, I was apparently trying desperately to be funny.)
Chris Estey
Nate Oooh, nice
Kembrew McLeod
I still don’t think I’ve ever sat through an entire Wire 2.0 80s album, and I like synths!
David Strauss
Record was huge for me, so I read everything on it, including your piece. If I recall, didn’t Christgau comment on it in passing in something he ran shortly after?
Chuck Eddy
Not that I remember! But I’ve forgotten quite a bit, so who knows?
David Williams
Back later, still recovering from the Royal Crescent Mob flashbacks
Sean Ross
I knew but really only became of Wire with the next two projects, which yielded one good single (“Kidney Bingos”) and then a great one (“Eardrum Buzz”), especially if judged with no prior context. I understood them the way I did Scritti Politti or even early Human League–provocateurs who decided to make some hits. If I’d had to compare the hit version to any other bands in 1988-89, I probably would have put those two songs somewhere between Psych Furs and Squeeze.
Chuck Eddy
Except….Unlike Scritti or Human League (or Squeeze or Psych Furs for that matter), Wire didn’t actually have hits. At least not in the US; maybe they did somewhere. (Not a deal-breaker, of course; just saying.)
Sean Ross
When you think about it that way, it’s interesting that they put out at least three of those more mainstream albums. Usually “selling out” once and not even getting a hit can be enough to break up a band.
Scott Seward
big black’s 1987 cover of “heartbeat” is better than the original. speaking of 1987. i like your descriptions of the first two albums a lot! commercial suicide is AWESOME. talk about underrated. the album after that too. i love all 80s colin newman pretty much. 5 good to great albums. “ahead” will always rule hard. i never listen to the album though. if all 80s wire sounded like “ahead” and “kidney bingos” i would listen to it more. but there is probably stuff i wasn’t thrilled by back then that i would like more now.
Nate Patrin
I do what I can to be accepting of outside-convention music opinions but “big black’s 1987 cover of “heartbeat” is better than the original” is, and I say this without judgment, the kind of thing that seems impossible both artistically and scientifically to me but then again I think the Doc Severinsen-conducted version of “In the Court of the Crimson King” is a remarkable thing worthy of study and appreciation so it’s a big world full of possibilities
Scott Seward
doc’s version is hot. i just love the big black version a ton. it makes sense that meantime was the album i played the most 5 years later. (i think i have played meantime…..500 times? who knows? some demented number like that.) helmet should have covered heartbeat too. everyone should cover heartbeat.
elastica should have covered heartbeat. green day should have tacked a cover of heartbeat to the end of the only green day song i like: brain stew.
Chuck Eddy
Big Black also covered who — James Brown, Kraftwerk, Cheap Trick, ??? I used to have that Colin Newman album A-Z; liked it at the time but haven’t listened to it in four decades. Pretty sure I never heard any other ones.
Scott Seward
154 is BY FAR my fave wire album. so great.
Chuck Eddy
Might be mine too, if I’m being totally honest.
Brian MacDonald
I’ll give 154 this: every song foreshadows a unique future good-to-great band. It sounds like a compilation of Wire side projects, and I love when albums do that. (Based on the Read & Burn book, there was a clear Gilbert/Lewis vs. Newman/Grey/Thorne divide when making 154 anyway)
That’s funny–I was trying to figure out the connection, made clear by the comments (I have to practically put my head against the monitor to see Godard’s name in the scanned review).
Chuck Eddy
Yeah, I need to re-scan a few of these more microscopic clips on my blog, now that I finally know how. First step is to remember which ones.
Kevin Bozelka
You would not dig Godard even though I find him rock/punk as fuck.
Patrick Hould
if movies were music, I’d be a U2 fan who buys 3 CDs a year. But I did like the 2 Godard movies I’ve seen. Well, in the case of Weekend, I’m not sure “like” is the correct word. Maybe, uh, “stunned” is more like it?
(I once aspired to movie geekdom, but that stuff takes time, yo! So many things I could be doing with those 2 hours. And I can’t even wash dishes while I’m doing it! Also Tampa is not a movie city – I could see a much wider range of US movies in Montreal than I can here)
Kevin Bozelka
if you watch ANY TV series, I will…..gently berate you…..
Patrick Hould
Good point, actually! Does it help if I say that, unlike my Drag Race-loving wife, none of the shows I watch last much more than an hour per episode (hopes Kevin doesn’t ask about Stranger Things)?
(possibly relevant: RuPaul aside, she and I tend to agree a lot more on TV shows than movies – these days, going out to see a non-Marvel, non-sequel/reboot flick = victory)
Kevin Bozelka
it does help indeed. Half-hour-long episodes and limited series forever!
Chuck Eddy
Ha, I watched those movie-length Stranger Things episodes in installments. Fourth season was WAY worse than the previous three — The monster horror was always the show’s most boring part, and now it’s taken over.
Kevin Bozelka
thanks for reaffirming my decision not to watch.
Chuck Eddy
First three seasons were a blast, though. Just watch those!
Kevin Bozelka
if I do, it’ll be on fast-forward.
Graham Ashmore
First season especially. Haven’t heard a good thing about the fourth.
Patrick Hould
Everything about the 4th season could have been faster-paced – monster stuff, Russia stuff, Eleven in the bunker (#titleofyoursextape), but I enjoyed the whole thing regardless.
Chuck Eddy
I didn’t even like the Russia stuff and Eleven in the bunker stuff very much! They’re better off sticking to Hawkins (including upside down.) I mean, at least the early-season monsters had some coherent reason for existing.
Brad Luen
As far as works that are overstuffed with arcane references to moldy old culture that no sane person will recognize more than a fraction of and that are glued together with moralizing pseudo-intellectual excuses for narrative that crumble upon a moment of reflection and a Wikipedia check but that admittedly look and sound real purty in ways that push both technological and artistic frontiers go, Stranger Things 4 is better than the black-and-white part of In Praise of Love but worse than the color part of In Praise of Love
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Stanley Whyte
I’ve always wanted to ask you since I read this in the Voice back in the day – but when you ended with that JL Godard dis, had you ever seen a Godard movie? Because your descriptions of PINK FLAG and CHAIRS MISSING (excellent, excellent, excellent by the way!) could easily describe the same spirit/feel to any of the first 8 or 9 of his films.
Chuck Eddy
That’s a great question, Stanley, and honestly? I have no idea. I do know I’m probably way more likely to have watched something by Godard *before* writing that Wire review (like, in my early 20s in the early ’80s say) than at any time since. Oddly though, this morning (before I read your note) I happened to read Greil Marcus’s blurb about Chairs Missing in his discography appendix in the back of Stranded — I’d inadvertently left Chairs Missing off my 150 Best Albums of 1978 post, but included Pink Flag, which in the UK was a ’77 album, and I was trying to remember what Uncle Greil had written about the then-import-only former. Here’s his last sentence: “This band, which hid melodies in almost impenetrable lyrics about dislocation, pleasure, and doom, probably owed more to Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave than to that of anyone else.” So, 34 years on, I’ll take a wild guess that my ending sentence was a thinly veiled reference, tribute and/or rejoinder to his — whether I was personally familiar with Godard’s films or not. To what extent Marcus inspired anything else in the review is another great question. Also can’t hurt that the second song on Chairs Missing — which I’m listening to right now, first time in ages — is called “French Film Blurred.”
Chuck Eddy (September 13, 2022)
Rest In Peace Jean-Luc Godard.
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Steve Alter
As Stefon on SNL would say, “This review has EVERYTHING” that I love about Chuck Eddy reviews. Did you ever review that Yes album? 🙂
Sara Quell
Bought ‘Ideal Copy’ because “Ambitious” was playing in the store and it sounded like something it would be cool to tell people I bought. Still like the first two tracks, haven’t played remainder since I got it and never intend to play it again https://youtu.be/Faze7pIthuM
Peter Stenhouse
I still love those Sly & Robbie and Prince and Royal Crescent Mob albums, if they’re the ones I’m thinking of.
Chuck Eddy
I’m almost positive I haven’t heard a note of Royal Crescent Mob music since the ’80s.
David Allen Jones
Saw the RC Mob in.. 1991? I forget the year. Touring the album they thought would break them, Midnight Rose’s. Pretty good show, I thought but they just couldn’t get over the hump career wise… if that Sly and Robbie album is Rhythm Killers, that’s a longtime favorite of mine, darn near perfect in my book.
Chuck Eddy
Yeah, that’d be the one, for sure.
Peter Gorman
1985-1990: The A List is a very fine “best of” for the post-154 Wire. All the songs chosen by fans.
William Boyd
It might be nice if you can transcribe some of your stuff; it’s too difficult to read on my screen.
Chuck Eddy
I have transcribed some, and scanned some. Seems to work on plenty of screens, if not all. Sorry I don’t have time to transcribe all of them.
Zac Harmon
Sigue Sigue Sputnik were gay identified?!
Chuck Eddy
No idea. But I’d assume, at very least, Erasure and Frankie Goes to Hollywood were.
Sara Quell
The weirdest thing I discovered about England was how all the fan-identifying stereotypes were switched around. Carcass/Napalm Death fans were gentle, scholarly Gandalf types, Frankie/Erasureheads were yobs and hooligans (Depeche Mode = jail time. Spandau/Culture Club = get out, Bond villain alert). Sigue Sigue Sputnik was for “dumb American (yeah that was part of the insult) rock fans’ like me (nickname remained ‘Bon Jovi’ years after total hair loss), and predictably enough ‘Flaunt It’ is my favorite 80s.
Sara Quell is right, the flasher the band the more their fans resembled something horrible Thatcher dug up, unless they were as critically despised as say Sigue Sigue Sputnik and only for the kids
Sarah Quell is wrong! 😂 The Ideal Copy is terrific through and through.
Seems to be a lot of action happening on FB - hope staying away from there and commenting hereabouts doesn't foul up your "system" in some way...
Anyway, I enjoyed this review without really agreeing with much of it (is that even a thing, really? Don't see too many people responding to a critique favorably if it doesn't align precisely with their personal POV, but then again, who wants to put in the work to find out?), but that may be because THE IDEAL COPY (actually, the Enigma cassette with that on one side and the SNAKEDRILL EP and the non-LP tracks from the "Ahead" 12-inch on the other) was my first Wire album; I knew not a note they recorded pre-'86 for a good year after that, after which I plunked down the ducats for an import copy of CHAIRS MISSING, at which point I "got" what all the naysayers were on about w/r/t WIRE Mach II. Of course, once I filled in the remaining gaps in my collection to that point, it was clear that their evolution was so swift and so constant that no one should have been that surprised that late-80s Wire barely resembled late-70s Wire (which is a moot point if the issue is "I don't like these sounds" rather than "I don't like that these sounds don't sound like THOSE sounds," which seemed like the reaction a good number of critics had at the time [could be mistaken]). And while TIC was (and remains) an enjoyable listen, those early records were pure cranial gelignite. Nothing compares, though I get plenty of pleasure from all phases of the band. So, yes, agreed that 70s Wire is peak Wire, but not scaling Everest doesn't mean you can't appreciate the view from base camp. Or some other, less clunky metaphor to that effect.
Also, according to READ & BURN, the band themselves don't think much of TIC, so that should feel somewhat vindicating.
Also also - don't know about you, but Wire playing "Drill" VERY LOUDLY and interacting with a game but bewildered Suzanne Somers on Fox TV's LATE SHOW around this time? That's MY Beatles-on-Sullivan moment.
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Doug Brod
Age of Chance mention! Loved their two albums, especially the first.
Chuck Eddy
Indie purist (!?) that I was, I wound up liking their EP and debut LP okay, but not nearly as much as the beatnik noisemaking that preceded those. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQrRyC0MAmk
Doug Brod
That’s cool. Never heard it before. I’m partial to their bike messenger-chic days.
Sundar Subramanian
I support the right to mock synthpop.
Chuck Eddy
I support the right to mock any kind of music ever, but to be honest I like way more synthpop now than I did when I was 26 years old.
Jaz Jacobi
Several questions:
1] Is “Jean-Luc Goddard” an honest typo, or an Adam Ant in-joke?
2] Do you still like that 1987 Bryan Adams album that everyone forgets exists?
3] Is this the only time you mentioned the Undertones [one of my top ten bands ever, as people who insist I have no taste will remind you]?
Chuck Eddy
1) Honest. 2) Probably not. 3) Probably not, but almost.
Chuck Eddy
Pretty sure “Teenage Kicks” was in that Top 40 of ’70s and ’80s bubblegum piece I did for Creem in the mid ’80s, then later got reprinted in the Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth book, whatever year that was?
Jaz Jacobi
That was the very first thing I ever read by you!
Jaz Jacobi
I remember telling some girl who bullied me in junior high school, but now wore Skinny Puppy shirts in high school and was “goth,” that you had called the Jesus and Mary Chain “bubblegum” in that CREEM article, and her simply replying, “shut up.”
Jaz Jacobi
As a longtime card-carrying “alternative rock” maven, over time I’ve come to realize that quite a bit of “postpunk”/college radio music is really just as “art rock,” and frequently more dreary, than the ELP and Yes and Rush figureheads that supposedly make punk “necessary”–Fugazi, Guided By Voices, Archers of Loaf, Mission of Burma etc. But sometimes, this realization has taught me, indie art rock can be giggly fun when it’s no-big-deal/small potatoes/low stakes college town nightclub goofing [I still enjoy no-name dollar-bin fodder like Polvo and the Swirlies more than might seem wise, perhaps in part because such bands don’t have huge devoted fanbases jumping down my throat every time I’m caught “trolling” the Pixies by implying they’re kind of trivial or minor]. This Wire piece sums up some of the reasons this sub-subcategory of music really CAN be grand and complex and fascinating, though [bits of the Wire/PiL/Gang of Four/Pere Ubu catalogues, more of the Fall catalog than seems statistically likely].
Jaz Jacobi
It wasn’t until years later that I was aware that at least 3 of my 6 or 7 favorite bands from when I was in my early twenties had gay singer-songwriters, and I became a tad self-conscious when I recently found myself tossing large parts of the catalogues of a couple of those artists into my get-rid-of pile–like, might it seem valid if someone confronted me about whether their non-gender-specific love songs used to seem meaningful in a different way within the presumptions of my younger, less informed self? But then I realized that A] I knew the rumors before I knew the facts about their orientations the whole time anyway and this didn’t make any difference to my manic fandom back then, and B] I’m only willing to part ways with this music now because my older self finds it isn’t always consistently very GOOD, which is a whole ‘nuther factor!
Sara Quell
I love this. Sort of how mid-80s Rush would’ve sounded had the Fall been the North American Led Zep instead of the Police: https://youtu.be/2GbhMxw4Hlo
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Patrick Hould
Chuck You seem to enjoy a lot of 90s/2000s music inspired by synthpop, but appear indifferent to the actual early 80s kind. Any reason?
Chuck Eddy
Not true, at all! As a matter of fact, I’d say I consistently prefer the ’80s kind (just like in, uh, pretty much any other genre.) Instead of going by a Wire review I wrote when I was a young snot, maybe check these lists?
Patrick Hould
😅 Like I haven’t been studying your lists with Talmudic fervor! It’s actually your response to a comment by Sundar Subramanian posted on your blog that reminded me to ask you that, not the Wire article itself. But let me look back at the relevant lists.
Chuck Eddy
Oh I see what you’re talking about. But the synthpop in “I like way more synthpop now than I did when I was 26” mostly is from the ’80s!
Chuck Eddy
Replicas and Pleasure Principle and Computer World (and Yellow Magic Orchestra and Telex and M and Soft Cell and Chas Jankel and Fad Gadget and DAF and sundry other Germans ) aren’t in there?? You might want to check again. Speak and Spell maybe too? I’d have to check that one; might have been borderline. And a couple years after 1984, there’s the Pet Shop Boys (Oh wait, you said top 20s though, duh. That’s kind of….limiting!)
Patrick Hould
Yup, just looking at the big favorites. Chas Jankel was top 20, but I decided that he fit in better with funk, at least on that one album. All the other ones you name I agree are synthpop.
Actually maybe the Seize The Beat comp should count… so then I’d probably have to throw in Was (Not Was) and A Christmas Record (which I haven’t heard) as well.
Chuck Eddy
I mean, I like funky synthpop better than unfunky synthpop. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Also, Gino Soccio should definitely count.
Patrick Hould
It’s been a while, but I remember Outline being straight-up disco, even if it’s mostly/all electronic. S-Beat I remember being more rock-ish (new wavish?) so maybe! I need to listen to it again. His 1984 single “Turn It Around” got a fair bit of airplay in Montreal and that was totally synthpop – not sure if there ever was an album to go with it.
Brian MacDonald
As someone who loved and still loves 70s disco, and loved and still kinda loves mid-to-late 80s synth pop, I totally get the fatigue of having the style permeate every nook and cranny of a current musical zeitgeist. Style fatigue doesn’t solely imply synth-phobia or homophobia. My only issue with early music reviews is the term “pretentious” used as a negative: if I love or hate it, the snobbery or pretense behind it doesn’t matter (unless that artist has wronged me personally, haha)
Nate Patrin
This sparked recollection of an idea that’s been lingering in my critic-brain. There are two context-dependent definitions of “pretentious” I like to think about: one is “these people are trying to be clever and, speaking as someone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two, they’re failing,” which is the textbook definition, and the other is “I don’t like this attempt at cleverness because it makes me feel stupid,” which is the position widely held by anti-art populists. Guess which one’s gotten more pervasive.
Chuck Eddy
Wait, do I use “pretentious” in that review? Don’t feel like straining my eyes (actually, I tried), but I wouldn’t put it past me at that point. Not long after, pretty sure I decided “pretentious” (or at least “ambitious” — less pejorative, but basically the same) was at least way better than “humble”. If I did use it as an insult there, I doubt I have in the past third of a century.
Brian MacDonald
It appears once in a comedic line: “and anybody who could withstand the quarter-hour of poetried interstellar piano-pomp on 1981’s
‘Crazy About Love’ 12-inch has more patience for pretentious hippies than I do”
Brian MacDonald
Nate I honestly don’t know! Now that anyone can fire up GarageBand, it might be the former! I expect the answer is the latter, although apparently I’ve gotten really good at filtering out bad writers, as I haven’t seen the P word used in quite a while, like years.
Again, “pretentious” is just a minor bugaboo for me that can be deployed strategically and sparingly, IMHO. It just has been used sooo much as a negative way to say “arty” in every other music review in the 20th century and a bit into the 2000s.
Chuck Eddy
“Pretentious” implies something’s being pretended, which is just…weird. (And yeah, in that line, I was apparently trying desperately to be funny.)
Chris Estey
Nate Oooh, nice
Kembrew McLeod
I still don’t think I’ve ever sat through an entire Wire 2.0 80s album, and I like synths!
David Strauss
Record was huge for me, so I read everything on it, including your piece. If I recall, didn’t Christgau comment on it in passing in something he ran shortly after?
Chuck Eddy
Not that I remember! But I’ve forgotten quite a bit, so who knows?
David Williams
Back later, still recovering from the Royal Crescent Mob flashbacks
Sean Ross
I knew but really only became of Wire with the next two projects, which yielded one good single (“Kidney Bingos”) and then a great one (“Eardrum Buzz”), especially if judged with no prior context. I understood them the way I did Scritti Politti or even early Human League–provocateurs who decided to make some hits. If I’d had to compare the hit version to any other bands in 1988-89, I probably would have put those two songs somewhere between Psych Furs and Squeeze.
Chuck Eddy
Except….Unlike Scritti or Human League (or Squeeze or Psych Furs for that matter), Wire didn’t actually have hits. At least not in the US; maybe they did somewhere. (Not a deal-breaker, of course; just saying.)
Sean Ross
When you think about it that way, it’s interesting that they put out at least three of those more mainstream albums. Usually “selling out” once and not even getting a hit can be enough to break up a band.
Scott Seward
big black’s 1987 cover of “heartbeat” is better than the original. speaking of 1987. i like your descriptions of the first two albums a lot! commercial suicide is AWESOME. talk about underrated. the album after that too. i love all 80s colin newman pretty much. 5 good to great albums. “ahead” will always rule hard. i never listen to the album though. if all 80s wire sounded like “ahead” and “kidney bingos” i would listen to it more. but there is probably stuff i wasn’t thrilled by back then that i would like more now.
Nate Patrin
I do what I can to be accepting of outside-convention music opinions but “big black’s 1987 cover of “heartbeat” is better than the original” is, and I say this without judgment, the kind of thing that seems impossible both artistically and scientifically to me but then again I think the Doc Severinsen-conducted version of “In the Court of the Crimson King” is a remarkable thing worthy of study and appreciation so it’s a big world full of possibilities
Scott Seward
doc’s version is hot. i just love the big black version a ton. it makes sense that meantime was the album i played the most 5 years later. (i think i have played meantime…..500 times? who knows? some demented number like that.) helmet should have covered heartbeat too. everyone should cover heartbeat.
elastica should have covered heartbeat. green day should have tacked a cover of heartbeat to the end of the only green day song i like: brain stew.
Chuck Eddy
Big Black also covered who — James Brown, Kraftwerk, Cheap Trick, ??? I used to have that Colin Newman album A-Z; liked it at the time but haven’t listened to it in four decades. Pretty sure I never heard any other ones.
Scott Seward
154 is BY FAR my fave wire album. so great.
Chuck Eddy
Might be mine too, if I’m being totally honest.
Brian MacDonald
I’ll give 154 this: every song foreshadows a unique future good-to-great band. It sounds like a compilation of Wire side projects, and I love when albums do that. (Based on the Read & Burn book, there was a clear Gilbert/Lewis vs. Newman/Grey/Thorne divide when making 154 anyway)
via facebook
Rodney Welch
I like your stuff Chuck.
Phil Dellio
That’s funny–I was trying to figure out the connection, made clear by the comments (I have to practically put my head against the monitor to see Godard’s name in the scanned review).
Chuck Eddy
Yeah, I need to re-scan a few of these more microscopic clips on my blog, now that I finally know how. First step is to remember which ones.
Kevin Bozelka
You would not dig Godard even though I find him rock/punk as fuck.
Patrick Hould
if movies were music, I’d be a U2 fan who buys 3 CDs a year. But I did like the 2 Godard movies I’ve seen. Well, in the case of Weekend, I’m not sure “like” is the correct word. Maybe, uh, “stunned” is more like it?
(I once aspired to movie geekdom, but that stuff takes time, yo! So many things I could be doing with those 2 hours. And I can’t even wash dishes while I’m doing it! Also Tampa is not a movie city – I could see a much wider range of US movies in Montreal than I can here)
Kevin Bozelka
if you watch ANY TV series, I will…..gently berate you…..
Patrick Hould
Good point, actually! Does it help if I say that, unlike my Drag Race-loving wife, none of the shows I watch last much more than an hour per episode (hopes Kevin doesn’t ask about Stranger Things)?
(possibly relevant: RuPaul aside, she and I tend to agree a lot more on TV shows than movies – these days, going out to see a non-Marvel, non-sequel/reboot flick = victory)
Kevin Bozelka
it does help indeed. Half-hour-long episodes and limited series forever!
Chuck Eddy
Ha, I watched those movie-length Stranger Things episodes in installments. Fourth season was WAY worse than the previous three — The monster horror was always the show’s most boring part, and now it’s taken over.
Kevin Bozelka
thanks for reaffirming my decision not to watch.
Chuck Eddy
First three seasons were a blast, though. Just watch those!
Kevin Bozelka
if I do, it’ll be on fast-forward.
Graham Ashmore
First season especially. Haven’t heard a good thing about the fourth.
Patrick Hould
Everything about the 4th season could have been faster-paced – monster stuff, Russia stuff, Eleven in the bunker (#titleofyoursextape), but I enjoyed the whole thing regardless.
Chuck Eddy
I didn’t even like the Russia stuff and Eleven in the bunker stuff very much! They’re better off sticking to Hawkins (including upside down.) I mean, at least the early-season monsters had some coherent reason for existing.
Brad Luen
As far as works that are overstuffed with arcane references to moldy old culture that no sane person will recognize more than a fraction of and that are glued together with moralizing pseudo-intellectual excuses for narrative that crumble upon a moment of reflection and a Wikipedia check but that admittedly look and sound real purty in ways that push both technological and artistic frontiers go, Stranger Things 4 is better than the black-and-white part of In Praise of Love but worse than the color part of In Praise of Love