Flex wrote: ↑29 Jan 2024, 11:20pm
Dr. Medulla wrote: ↑29 Jan 2024, 8:25pm
That's a little unfair, I think. About a decade ago, Wire initiated their "legal bootleg" program, where they issued live recordings from various points in their career. And he has said on their own board that Wire is a better live act than people give them credit (that is, they aren't studio rats). Still, he's a pretty quality-control kind of guy. Graham and Bruce were the "happy accidents" guys, while Colin was the guy who came to the studio with a plan.
Ah, I definitely don't mean it as unfair - as I said, it's not a criticism - but I was going based on this:
Like most bands, Wire are not really that interested in all that kind of stuff. Live recordings, not even slightly. Anything like radio recordings, Peel Sessions and stuff like that... The band's really not that interested. They're more interested in the version that was - as it were - the final version, or the gig that's in front of them tomorrow. But I'd say that's in common with anyone in any band that I've ever spoken to. I mean, it's not like anyone's ignoring it, it's just the thinking is very much band thinking rather than fan thinking.
I don't follow Wire too closely, so I hadn't recalled the Legal Bootleg series. I just sort of contrast it to the artist I'm most familiar with - Bob Dylan - who basically has a pretty blase attitude about the studio and pretty much bangs stuff off on the fly in a few takes and then keeps reworking the arrangements (and lyrics, sometimes) to his songs pretty much endlessly. I don't know if he cares about fans hearing live versions or whatever, but he doesn't really seem to operate on the idea there's a "final version" of a song.
I think you're misinterpreting what he means here. Wire have always been very forward-looking, resistant to "playing the old stuff." Even at the start, once an album was done they played new songs, developing them on-stage, almost exclusively. When they started up again in 2000, they reversed course on that, but still treat live performance as a means of reinterpreting old work. So he's talking about the band not being so concerned about all that old stuff because the next version is the more interesting one. He must be speaking as an artist there, tho, because Wire has done a shitload of curating their old catalogue, re-releases, compilations, all that.
The other is his comment about Joe Rogan, which was a toss-off, and again not really a criticism of Colin really, but it made me think about how there was this controversy some years ago about how you could find some white power/racist bands on Spotify and most of them got taken down. Which, you know, good to deplatform that shit. But now Spotify pays for and promotes one of America's main sources of disinformation, anti-vaccine/anti-science nonsense, qanon gateway shit, and alt right/white power voices to be whitewashed and disseminated into mainstream culture. I mean, it's reactionary and insane on its face and Spotify is actually rewarded monetarily and with increased use for doing it. And while I'm not about to counsel artists to, like, boycott Spotify since it's such the biggest game in town, I guess I wouldn't have minded Colin speaking to the ethical complications of Spotify rather than kinda laughing off that reporters want to discuss it. I think his views on it, especially given how astute he is about the industry, would be interesting.
I agree. He and the band have always treated "politics" in a wry, arms-length way—
we're artists—but there is some room for more pointed ethical critique when a band controls so much of their own material. You can't say, "Well, Sony owns it and we have no choice." You don't need to be a hectoring Biafra to make a clear point.
"Ain't no party like an S Club party!'" - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft