When informed of Wire’s plans to reissue Document and Eyewitness Geoff Travis, known the world over as the man who started Rough Trade (the label and the shops) retorted that the group was “completely mad.” This wouldn’t be especially significant except it was Travis who put up pounds to release the damned thing in the first place. This small anecdote is a big tipoff that Wire’s 1981 live LP, notorious to many and beloved by a few, is really quite special. On August 18th Pink Flag’s expanded multi-format edition will again illuminate the range and polarization of opinion.
I retain a fluctuating level of esteem for the live record, but as worthy captured performances continue to occasionally hit the racks it’s hard to deny that the form’s best days are basically behind it. To my ear the neck-and-neck contenders for the finest non-jazz live set ever waxed came relatively soon after the format’s invention, taped in ’62 and ’64 respectively; James Brown’s Live at the Apollo and Jerry Lee Lewis’ Live at the Star Club, Hamburg.
These aren’t controversial choices of course, but they do amplify what’s missing from the vast majority of live records and why most are little more than artistic victory laps/obligatory pop and rock star rites of passage/bones tossed into the salivating yawp of easily satisfied fans. Surely many early live discs were to varying levels studio-massaged sleight of hand, but in the cases of Brown and Lewis it was their abilities as performers that ultimately made those albums so massive. Plus, each slab possesses further crucial qualities in abundance; danger, uncertainty, surprise, and a legit sense of vérité.
Document and Eyewitness is one of the only records I can recall a paid store employee vociferously steering me away from buying, said occasion circa-’88, with the extent of my Wire knowledge then consisting of “12XU” and a Peel Session. Based on that slim exposure I was eager for more, doubly so since Wire’s Harvest-EMI stuff was pretty scarce in my neck of the woods.
Still, the cashier managed to convince me to put the LP back in the bin. Shortly thereafter I caught up with Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154, albums released by Wire in a roughly three-year period beginning in December of ’77 that shape-up one of the great succinct studio runs in rock’s history, with the first an art-punk user manual frequently plundered to this day. Frankly, I felt like tracking that register jockey down and giving him a good what for.
I finally heard Document and Eyewitness in the early ’90s on a used compact disc, and once absorbed I had no difficulty understanding the reasoning of that clerk and by extension the CD’s secondhand status. At least somewhat; I add the qualifier due to Mute subsidiary label The Grey Area’s ’91 reissue switching the running order in a considerable fashion, possibly in hopes of lessening the befuddling impenetrability.
K.S. Eden’s notes for the disc are amongst the most dispassionate, if succinctly informative, I can remember reading, though unmentioned was the CD’s first eight selections, 1-7 recorded at the Notre Dame Hall in July ’79 and 8 at Montreux opening for Roxy Music in March of the same year actually comprising the original bonus 12-inch paired with the LP.
The July material is a restless batch of unpolished then mostly new tunes finding opener “Go Ahead” intertwined with squiggling synth that’s potentially off-putting, sounding at times like a short-wave radio; the cumulative effect is still tangibly like Wire, and their influence upon numerous US post-hardcore entities is readily apparent. The solitary track culled from the Montreux warm-up, Chairs Missing’s “Heartbeat,” finds them at their most agreeable (if not necessarily accessible or professional) and it manages to largely mollify a fidgety crowd aching for the suaveness of Ferry.
The CD’s sequencing moves from an aura of ruggedness into a brief moment of near normalcy that’s essentially just prologue to what initially seems like a band falling apart, eventually connecting as a possible act of deliberate provocation, the mess/antagonism capped by two extra cuts, “Our Swimmer” and “Midnight Bahnhof Café,” both recorded at London’s Magritte Studio and previously released by Rough Trade as a single.
That pair of tunes only served to intensify the extremity of the February 29th 1980 Electric Ballroom show as represented by tracks 9-20, an event growing out of a performance art-based residency at the Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre. It’s representation on Document and Eyewitness is adorned with added titling underscoring the happening as a sort of “Dadaist cabaret.”
Cynics will decry that a surefire way to mask an impoverishment of ideas is to cloak oneself in Art. To wit, actions that accompanied Wire’s extremely loose set: a 6 x 12 sheet rotating around the stage, manager Mick Collins serving as MC, a woman (Angela Conway aka AC Marias, also a contributor to Wire-related project Dome) pulling two tethered men and an inflatable jet across the floor, an individual attacking a gas cooker with a hammer, 12 percussionists in newspaper headdresses, an illuminated goose; bluntly, all are instigators of audience aggression; at least one bottle was thrown that night.
Additionally, the taping was marred by an incorrectly rigged-up eight-track machine producing a distorted two-track recording, and it was prepared for issue with integrated elements of commentary by two longtime Wire fans, namely Adrian Garston and Russell Mills. And by now it should be clear that Document and Eyewitness is far from the typical live record.
It does include the danger, uncertainty, surprise and reality, though the outcome is utterly different from James or Jerry Lee. Pink Flag’s 2LP/2CD restores the original assembly and therefore it’s results (the vinyl is apparently extended to incorporate the Rough Trade 45); it starts in a mode that must’ve played like a combination shambles and premeditated fuck you upon appearance in ’81, only to in due course take recognizable if jagged shape and in its final stages briefly inhabit prior form.
Some of the Electric Ballroom’s pieces turned up in Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis’ Dome, Colin Newman’s ’82 solo rec Not To and on last year’s Wire LP Change Becomes Us, all emphasizing Document and Eyewitness as more than fitfully antagonistic screwing-off, though the opening minimalism of “5/10” can definitely give the impression of an outfit sabotaging their momentum and taking the piss.
However, the entirety develops meticulously if subtly and in a manner not that far removed from Pink Flag’s “Reuters,” if longer and more muddled. Much of this release’s lingering fascination details a band that had reached a breakdown of communication with EMI as well as a creative breaking point, and “12XU (Fragment),” a surly and legitimately-Dadaist dismantling of what probably remains their most well-known composition, sums this up excellently.
It’s there in the attitude of Collins’ MC, a mixture of comedy and menace greatly enhanced by the enduring humor found in hearing him seemingly mock the spoken intro to the original “12XU.” Instead of the giving the listener what they want (transferring the frustration permeating the rowdy Electric Ballroom into the comforts of home), it offers a splice and then a non-sequitur.
“I don’t need to go to the Arctic to know it’s cold,” utters one commenter, a dearth of emotion in his voice. The song then erupts into the midst of execution, the compromised audio deepening the rawness and thickening the atmosphere of dissatisfaction. From there Document and Eyewitness adds horn splatter to a decidedly No Wave detour; if 154 was Wire’s progression into Eno territory, “Underwater Experiences” shows them following him into the foreboding regions of No New York.
“Everything is Going to Be Nice” features a short discussion on memory and the specifics of that night; it leads into “Piano Tuner (Keep Strumming Those Guitars),” a lengthier cut reminding me a bit of Swell Maps. It and the simultaneously wobbly and precise “We Meet Under Tables,” help to refute claims of the unlistenable, though accusations of unconventional are impossible to rebuff.
Indeed; “Zegk Hoqp” utilizes those dozen paper lid wearing percussionists, contains chanting halfway between gibberish and a recitation of random letters of the alphabet and brandishes horns imitating squeak toys. If it lacks a visual component to bring it all together it’s still a blast to imagine exactly what this spectacle looked like. “Eastern Standard” sees Collins momentarily back in the mix, and the knotty but well-ordered music that follows is again prescient of indie rock to come.
“Instrumental (Thrown Bottle)” highlights Wire’s impact on the UK DIY movement, while “Eels Sang Lino” conjures a sound reminiscent of Fast Product and pumps it full of horn squawk; those familiar with the version from Change Becomes Us will discover quite a contrast. If Document and Eyewitness has something comparable to a single it’s “Revealing Trade Secrets,” a tune not just methodical but moderately catchy (as the low fidelity works wonders on the cymbals). “And Then…Coda” delivers on its title with caustic, shambolic moodiness.
Wire brought into the Electric Ballroom from the Cochrane residency aspects of conceptual art inspiring the bemusement of most, the horror of some, and the joy of very few. Once more, that thrown bottle speaks to hostility stirred by confusion and/or the suspicion of getting bilked; at the end of “Underwater Experiences” a fan points out the hazards emanating from the audience as the evening unfolded.
Carrying on in the face of anger and misunderstanding is a substantial part of why this record merits reissue. But really, Document and Eyewitness is just a big messy collision of art and noise, irritations and expectations, and with twelve more bonus tracks, it’s become a mess that’s a tad unwieldy. The digital download includes the icing on the cake; full unedited recordings of the shows are part of the band’s Legal Bootleg Series. Don’t tell Geoff Travis, though. He might try to have them committed.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
