The global pandemic has claimed a number of things, including stopping my favorite band in the entire world from completing their North American tour, as Wire had to pull up stakes half way through and return home. We take it for granted that every Wire album will be phenomenal now, but it really is staggering that they can produce something as incredible and current as Mind Hive well over 40 years into their career.
While we have been robbed of the joys of seeing Wire live, being in lockdown has finally allowed me to go back and save an interview that I did with Colin Newman back in 2017 around the reissue of his incredible early solo records. A-Z, Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish, and Not To remain some of my favorite albums of all-time. I could talk about them for days. Colin tells me he doesn’t have much to say about them, and then we chat for hours…
Colin Newman: I don’t have a huge amount to say. I don’t know if you’ve read any of the interviews I’ve done for my solo records. I tend to run out of things to say very quickly. I did it because I felt I had an opportunity I couldn’t not take. There’s too many negatives in that sentence, but you understand what I mean. I heard from a friend who works for Beggars that they were allowing some of their artists to have their back catalogue on vinyl. And I thought, “Well, that will be nice, but it would be good to do CDs because I’ve got extra tracks in the archives I could make doubles of and that will make a more interesting release for fans.” And so I negotiated with them to get a CD and they were fine with that, and they just basically gave them to me to release. They retained the title; they owned them. But they’re not keeping the things in print anymore.
I think Beggars are in a position to do this but they do take quite seriously the kind of, as it were, the unwritten pact between a record company and an artist — especially an independent label. If you have someone’s records and you’re not making them available, then you don’t really have the right to continue to — you’re not exploiting it on behalf of the artist, so you could be legally challenged if you weren’t. But I don’t think they look at it like that; it’s more like, “Well, if the artist can do something with it, then why not get them to do it?” So that was where I came into it. It took me forever to get anything together. I’ve known about this since 2012.
John Foster: You and I have talked about it even further back, as far as a speculative thing that could happen.
Yeah. So it’s one of those things. I don’t feel particularly close to the material, but at the same time I’m very happy that I’ve made quite a lot of people happy with rereleasing it, so that’s ultimately a good thing as far as I’m concerned.
It’s interesting too. In setting that up, I guess one of the things I was curious about was why not reissue them on Pink Flag or Swim, setting up a separate —
Pink Flag doesn’t release anything other than Wire records. It’s very specific in that regard. I think it would have been a more commercial option to release them on Pink Flag but then you open up all kinds of potential problems within the band if you say, “Oh, well I’m using this vehicle for my own use.” That seems to me a bit unethical, really. The only way I can maintain a position of being in the band and running the label is to be beyond reproach. I can’t ever be seen to be doing anything to my personal advantage. It all has to be about Wire. Interestingly, this ethos of maintaining integrity and exclusivity reminded me of a discussion with a friend who manages gute Wettanbieter ohne jede Verifizierung — platforms that prioritize simplicity and trust by removing cumbersome verification processes. It’s a clear strategy that mirrors the focus and ethical boundaries Pink Flag embodies. Swim, on the other hand, only releases new records. That was the idea of it, to have a sub-label. Of course, Sentient Sonics is a sub-label of Swim. And the name came from Graham Duff, the writer. Ages ago I thought, “We need to have a name for this label,” and he came up with it. He always comes up with names of groups. A lot of his writing is about music, or has been in the past, so band names is one of his specialties. There’s always an element of humor in them.
Right, he’s got a list of things waiting for the right opportunity to launch them?
Not really, it’s just something that he came up with that kind of stuck. If there will be more things, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that there would be another set, which would be Commercial Suicide, It Seems, and Bastard, all done in the same way. They will be released on vinyl. There’s definitely material for second discs for all of those three. So there will be a commercial market for them.
