Wire Live 1979 DVD + CD

WIRE ON THE BOX – DVD + Audio CD (PF7TV)

AVAILABLE VERY SOON

Since the dawn of the video age rock bands of almost any note are liable to have every minutiae of their career documented. Videos, TV & radio appearances, broadcast concerts, embarrassing jams with Jools etc etc. However it was not always thus. Before the 80’s, outside of the confines of the odd whistle test appearance it was very unusual to see any broadcast footage of bands, however influential and however much lauded by the music press, who had no chart track record. Thus it was with Wire. Beyond a few seconds of snatched performance and a micro interview on Tony Wilson’s precursor to “so it goes” and couple of mime alongs on Belgian TV there is no footage of 70’s Wire beyond one item. Luckily that one item has been preserved.

Although British viewers never got to see a live performance of Wire on their TV’s, one Brit abroad saw their tele-visual potential and got into a position to make it happen. Alan Bangs had the late night show on British Forces radio in Germany. Although his show was broadcast in English his mid 70’s shows were increasingly crossing over to a young German audience eager for earfood that their National broadcasters were not providing. With his impeccable German it also was inevitable that he himself would cross over to German speaking media so by early 1979 he had become a presenter of RockPalast an hour long studio concert slot on WDR which had already established itself as Germany’s most important “serious” rock music show. Wire were old sparring partners of Alan, appearing on his radio show every time they were anywhere near Cologne and even hanging out with him at Düsseldorf’s infamous “Rattingerhof” on the evening before the concert taping. So it was perhaps inevitable that Wire were one of the very few members of their musical generation that Alan managed to squeeze into the show.

Although 15th generation VHS copies of the screened parts of this performance have been doing the bootleg rounds for many years. This DVD is the first time that the complete performance and the never screened interview have been brought together. The combination of video digitally cloned from the broadcast master and freshly mastered audio give the item a directness and completeness that so eclipse the bootleg as to take it into another realm altogether.

Wire’s RockPalast appearance, dated Valentine’s day 1979, finds the band with a confidence born of a knowledge that their place in rock history is assured yet still possessing a freshness and willingness to push ahead as evinced by the fact that at least half the material is from the yet to be recorded "154". With the 20/20 hindsight the quality of this performance is such that it is able to simultaneously explode various Wire myths and perhaps create some new ones..

Wire have often described their 70’s performances of being of variable quality, yet on this showing (and we have no others available to us) they execute their material with consummate skill, simultaneously exploding a second myth that Wire’s sound was all created in the studio. Material from Wire’s more technically accomplished “Chairs Missing” and “154” albums is immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with those releases and yes, that really is them playing it! Equally myth creating is the juxtaposition of the band against an audience of latter day German hippies who look vaguely bemused by the onstage goings on. Wire seem to be simultaneously from another planet and the future!

Not only is this the only recorded complete audio visual representation of 70’s Wire but to this date there has also not been a live album released of 70’s Wire so in a move sure to make every Wire fan happy Pinkflag have packaged this product as a DVD plus a CD of the audio performance only.

This release is currently in production and will be a available very soon -priced at £15.00 - exclusively through PostEverything in a double digipack until it receives general release later this year.

Please check back often as this item will not be added as a product to the PostEverything website until it is physically in stock. Please do not write to PostEverything about this as it will be available to buy just as soon as there is stock.