Where haaave you been hiding this, life?! Uhh, Behind The Curtain. Heh heh.
Believe it or not, we had no idea this lil’ corker existed until the other night, when after already extending the gentlemanly gesture of giving us a lift, our buddy lays this one on us for the ride home. Sand In My Joints! Map Ref 41 N 93 W? Underwater Experiences, and a bunch of other songs we’d never heard?!?! Driver, you really know how to talk to a girl.
Behind The Curtain, it turns out, is a collection of demos, live, and, unreleased Wire material from 1977-78 – i.e., songs that would wind up on Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154, a near-flawless triumvirate of albums if ever there was one. Rawer, and even more urgent than their album versions, some of these takes may actually get a leg up on their better-produced counterparts. While some of this stuff has surfaced here and there over the years, there is a lot of material that hasn’t, with 13 tracks unreleased in any form. Even this compilation seems to be in short supply, having only seen release in the UK, and languishing in out-of-print purgatory for years.
Collections like these often serve little purpose beyond the label’s ongoing compulsion to get more product into the market. With Wire though, it’s an essential document (and eyewitness) of a band’s all-too-brief formative stages. Unlike many of their peers, Wire’s progression from the trappings of punk into a bolder, more experimental sound occurred at a staggering clip. It’s mind-boggling to think that this band went from the 1-2-XU, barely-holding-it-together snottiness of the early live tracks here to the stark and nuanced ambient mood pieces of “A Touching Display” in a span of 18 months. Which makes this material all the more crucial. After Pink Flag, one of the more cohesive statements to come out of punk, Wire would tear up the map, never to return for the most part. Behind The Curtain puts this in perspective, connecting the dots for those that care to follow. This is how it started, and how they got to where they were going. —Jonathan
