A Year of Blind Spots: Pink Flag

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

Pink Flag

Wire

1977

An interesting thing about punk band Wire is that they have on more than one occasion denied that they are a punk band. "Wire really never were a punk band... we happened to be there at the same time." That's frontman Colin Newman, and I take his words seriously. But I don't know if I necessarily agree. This feels like a punk band. "We broke every single rule of punk." I would only struggle with such a claim because I feel like maybe I don't know what these so-called "rules" of punk are. To me, this feels like one of those situations in which concept trumps language. You can say that, in 1977, Wire was "not punk," but over time, the very idea of "punk" shifts toward what Wire did. And so: punk. Definitely punk.

Look, I'm a little out of my element when discussing music genres. I can say instinctively "this is punk," just due to listening to hundreds of thousands of hours of music in my lifetime and doing the bare minimum to classify all of it into specific categories in my head, but if you asked me "what is punk music?" I don't know if I'd be able to give you a straight answer. So when I further say that "this is post-punk," then you know not to take me too seriously. I know this is post-punk. Shit, the entire fucking subgenre of post-punk might have been born due to the conflict that I spoke about in the preceding paragraph. But I couldn't really tell you what "post-punk" is with any sort of clarity. I just know it when I hear it.

I could also just go to RateYourMusic.com, which is my go-to for questions on this subject. The site has detailed descriptions of basically any genre you could possibly think of (and some you could not possibly think of). Here's your basic two-ish-sentence explanation, from what I just read about punk and post-punk. Punk focused on stripping away excess in rock music, e.g. the whole two-chord guitar thing, and shout-along lyrics. Think Ramones. And then post-punk stays with that lack of excess, but uses the simplicity to create atmosphere, as well as being open to roping in other genres while you're at it.

So when Wire claims to be "breaking the rules of punk," I'm assuming that this just means they were following—or, more likely, establishing—the rules of post-punk. If punk says that you can't be dark and moody and feature occasionally monotone vocals and morbid lyrics, then post-punk says sure ya can.

None of this matters. I'm just filling space here. I can stumble through genre descriptions all I want, but if you click on the embedded album in the YouTube box below, you'll immediately recognize it for the punk music that it is. And for the record, I love this shit. The "atmosphere" that post-punk requires is here is full-force. The steady rhythms and the repetition in the lyrics and the gradual layering of non-punk sounds, it's all quite powerful. I'm not surprised that so many of the bands that I know and love today show up in the "influenced by Wire" section of the Wikipedia page.

What's interesting, then, is that Pink Flag is definitely an album that I could've slotted into that blog post from last week, the one about albums that I tried when I was a lot younger and couldn't get into and eventually expelled from my iPod. I don't remember much about it, but I know almost for certain that Santa Claus gifted me this album, and I didn't do much with it. The post-punk sounded indecipherable to me! Not to beat my point to death here, but it really is cool to have these sort of markers over the years where I can say "I didn't get it then, but now I do." It's an easy way to show growth.

I still struggle with how I could've missed the mark on Pink Flag though. Like, why did I fall so effortlessly into loving Bloc Party (as just one post-punk-influenced example), but couldn't get into Wire? I suppose it's some variation of the Elvis Theory, where some that is quantifiably more primitive than the shit you grew up with is going to be a tough sell. But I liked the album this week, so maybe this says that the Elvis Theory is a curable malady. It says that working backward, though difficult, is still possible. Wire feels like a "ground zero" for a whole class of music, and here I am.