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Scottish Play
Bookends "On The Box": Wire phase 3: CD/DVD

The Scottish Play : 2004
Wire
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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General | Rock | Styles | Music

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General | Musicals & Performing Arts | Genres | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

The Wire: On the Box 1979

ASIN: B0007WQEAG

Tracks:

99.9
Germ Ship
Mr. Marx's Table
1st Fast
Read & Burn
Agfers of Kodack
Comet
In the Art of Stopping
Spent
I Don't Understand
Strange
106 Beats That
Surgeon's Girl
Pink Flag

Tracks:

[DVD]

Customer Reviews:

Scottish Play.......2005-11-18

These old dudes rip! The footage on the DVD is great and the art in the repetitive chaos that ensues is just fantastic. They blow about 90% of the bands of our generation out of the water, you don't need this you must have this to understand what has become the secret legacy know as "Wire".

Bookends "On The Box": Wire phase 3: CD/DVD.......2005-07-21

I believe, among superstitious actors, that "The Scottish Play" refers to the work that should not be pronounced which we know as "Macbeth." Typically erudite for our always sly Wire! I plucked this at a record store going out of business; I had no idea it was issued, even though I count myself a Wire fan. On Amazon, as it's filed only under DVDs, you may be confused about its contents. "The Scottish Play: 2004" bookends "On the Box: 1979" as the latest rather than the earlier Wire. It's a 53-minute Tom Gidley DVD concert film plus CD soundtrack for the Glasgow show. The songs are largely from the Read & Burn and Send period of Wire phase 3, with a more aggressive focus than their experimental-meets-dancefloor late 80's phase 2. A few songs at the end of the film hearken back to their late 70s art-punk. This is no posed passion, but a true act of "performance."

Much more watchable than the usual music film, Gidley tracks each member as if documenting a stage drama more than merely a camera set up in front of the band. It's amusing to see Bruce Gilbert play the stolid John Entwistle role. Intelligent lighting, expressive close-ups, and vocalization aspire to theatre (especially in the Barbican installation), not concert.

The tracks from Glasgow 30 April 2004: 99.9; Germ Ship; Mr. Marx's Table; 1st Fast; Read & Burn; Agfers of Kodack; Comet; In the Art of Stopping; Spent; I Don't Understand; Strange; 106 Beats That; Surgeon's Girl; 106 Beats That. A 13-minute bonus section, only on the DVD, with each band member filmed from a separate box as part of Es Devlin's installation from a London Barbican "Flag Burning" show, 26 April 2003: 1st Fast; Comet; Spent; I Don't Understand. A highlight: "Pink Flag" takes 9:43!

Compared to the Chicago show, 14 Sept. 2002, given as a bonus from Pink Flag to mail-order buyers of "Send," the intensity of these eagerly snappy versions is lessened. As the band plays them over two years, the later versions appear to dig deeper and a bit slower into the depth that lurks behind their initially more frenetic birth. Vocals appealingly wrap into the lyrics and burrow. Repetition locks the band into catharsis--depending upon an informed, mature, if no less raging, visceral relationship with what these four Londoners continue to refine and re-engineer as cutting-edge post-punk art, essence, distillation.

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an eclectic tribute

Whore: Various Artists Play Wire
Various Artists
Manufacturer: Wmo
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Alternative Rock | Styles | Music
ASIN: B00000B098
Release Date: 1998-11-16

Album Details

Features Scanner, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Main, Laika, Chris Connelly, Pretty Tyrants and More.

Customer Reviews:

an eclectic tribute.......2000-10-18

Whore- Various Artists Play Wire is a 21-song tribute to one of England's most idiosyncratic, cerebral, and influential rock bands.

Wire's music is often divided into 3 periods, the early records (1977-1980) being labelled "punk," the late 1980s material falling under somewhat more of a mainstream pop label, and the 1990s music is often called their "electronic phase."

Songs from each of these phases are covered, and the results are even more eclectic than the original cuts.

Obscure artists such as Scanner, Polar Bear, Kustomized, and Ex-Lion Tamers (named for a song by Wire) make up the majority of the 21 acts represented here. I personally only knew of 10 of the 21 acts before listening to Whore. The listener should not be deterred by the non-rockstar status of most of these groups.

Lush's "Mannequin" is probably the most straightforward rock cover, and it sparkles. Laika's version of "German Shepherds" strips away most of the poppish percussion to reveal a dreamy, trippy track. aMiniature's version of "A Serious of Snakes" is rockier than the Wire track (from 1986 or 1987), and I actually prefer it to the original. Kustomized (I had never heard of them) do a laugh-aloud hilarious version of "A Question of Degree," with the flat, quiet vocals displaced with a growling, thunderous vocal track.

A fascinating look at Wire, and fun to listen to as well.

Worthwhile for all Wire fans. Listeners unfamiliar with Wire would do well to pick up Wire's 154, or The A-List and Pink Flag, to get a good sampling of the band's material.

ken32

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A Warm, Inviting Album

Live at Biddy Mcgraw's

Manufacturer: Peterson Entertainment
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Jazz | Styles | Music
ASIN: B000CAGNYU
Release Date: 2004-01-20

Customer Reviews:

A Warm, Inviting Album.......2006-10-13

I really like this CD. It's a live recording, and it not only sounds intimate but also feels intimate. Noah Peterson's sax sounds so warm, so smooth...it just puts me right in the crowd. A better-sounding sax I haven't heard in a long time. I highly recommend this album.