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Re: (TV) Re: wire



-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Powell <nick@powelln.freeserve.co.uk>
To: tv@obbard.com <tv@obbard.com>
Date: 04 January 2000 22:06
Subject: Re: (TV) Re: wire


>Oh fantastic. Everything they did before their first split was great. My
>favourite? Has to be the 'I Am The Fly' single. 3 or 4 of us in school
>always used to get it played at school discos--it was great  cos it didn't
>just annoy the teachers....it also irritated the rest of the schoolkids--I
>suppose we were being childishly elitist but what the hell--great memories.
>EVERYONE should own this record(sorry to be a bit fascist about it).

Talking of 'I Am The Fly' and discos... When I was a teenager in Birmingham
during the punk years THE place to go was Barbarella's night club. This was
also the time of the wonderful kids' programme Tiswas which was popularising
a magnificent piece of mass hysteria called 'The Dying Fly'. This involved
everyone in the TV studio - presenters, audience and even technicians -
diving onto their backs and madly waving their limbs in the air.
Barbarella's adopted this 'dance' especially for 'I Am The Fly', which was
played regularly before and after gigs. Whenever I hear that manic, grinding
introduction I immediately see a couple of hundred punks in leather jackets
and bondage trousers lying on a club floor flinging their arms and legs
wildly around them in their 'death throes'.
I saw Wire on their 'Pink Flag' tour (I think there were about thirty of us
in the audience) and supporting them was The Cure, who had just released
'Killing an Arab' and had a very skeletal but intense sound at the time. I
must say I like some of Wire's later stuff, too (I'd particularly recommend
'A Bell is a Cup'). One of the best live shows I've seen was when they
played at the Astoria in London (I think the gig was used for part of their
live album 'It's Beginning to and Back Again') - the version of 'Drill' that
night was the closest thing to the Velvets performing 'Sister Ray' that I've
ever heard.


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