Pink Flag (Dig) [Original recording remastered]

Wire | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 11, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 1977
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Pink Flag
• ASIN: B000ENC7KY
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,599 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #17 in Music > Alternative Rock > British Alternative > British Punk
  • #54 in Music > Alternative Rock > New Wave & Post-Punk > Post-Punk
  • #86 in Music > Alternative Rock > Hardcore & Punk > General AAS

Track Listings

1. Reuters

2. Field Day for the Sundays

3. Three Girl Rhumba

4. Ex Lion Tamer

5. Lowdown

6. Start to Move

7. Brazil

8. It's So Obvious

9. Surgeon's Girl

10. Pink Flag

11. The Commercial

12. Straight Line

13. 106 Beats That

14. Mr Suit

15. Strange

16. Fragile

17. Mannequin

18. Different to Me

19. Champs

20. Feeling Called Love

See all 21 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

There are myriad details that illustrate why Wire's 1977 debut is bulletproof--or at least wildly compelling. There's the count of tracks--21 to be exact--the snare-cracked pulsing roll of "Reuters," which sports one of punk's greatest first lines: "Our own correspondent is sorry to tell of an uneasy time, that all is not well." There's the six songs that last under a minute (and at least that many more that last under a minute and a half), all of them urgently poised on Colin Newman's deadpan urgency--a laconic riposte to the shouting that in '77 was already central to punk. There's album closer "12XU," which Minor Threat would make anthemic in their short hardcore-forging career. Pink Flag was made after Wire had played a mere 15 gigs, honing their sound in the atelier of the Clash, Sex Pistols, Ramones, etc. without sounding a smidge like anyone else. Importantly, it's the band itself that got rights to remaster this flawless gem, in a cool gatefold digipak with a fascinating liner essay. That's something you don't see many punks do. --Andrew Bartlett

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a seminal band for a reason, and it all started with this album, April 15, 2006

By 

Aquarius Records (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pink Flag (Dig) (Audio CD)

Really, what more can I say about Wire's Pink Flag that hasn't already been said? The album is so good, so burned in the retina of my brain (even though I still cannot for the life of us unscramble Graham Lewis' lyrics), so nearly perfect that it's sort of hard to write about. In a perfect world, whatever nonsense I may have to say about the record would be moot, as you should already own this record (along with Chairs Missing and 154, Wire's second and third albums respectively). But for those of you who may be enraptured by the recent flurry of post-punk revivalists who continue to make quite a stir, let the reissue campaign of the first three records introduce you to the band that Interpol, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, and Bloc Party only wish they could be.

Recorded in 1977, Pink Flag is an immaculately concise punk record, even as Wire recognized that punk was becoming a self-parody and willed themselves to develop through experimentation with structure, technology, and process. Pink Flag's 21 songs cover a mere 35 minutes, many of them clocking in around 90 seconds or "when they ran out of words" as bassist / vocalist Graham Lewis once quipped. Energetic and volatile, each of the songs on Pink Flag thrash through the repetoire of reductivist power-pop riffs as immediately catchy and aggressive as anything by the Damned, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. But even on their first album, Wire demonstrated an uncanny ability with chord changes and melodic shifts that by '70s standards were much artier than their punk bretheren. Of course, in the aftermath of math-rock's acrobatic twists and turns, Wire's Pink Flag hardly sounds unpredictable... but if it weren't for Wire would we really have Laddio Bollocko, for example? Probably not.

The album's opening track "Reuters" is an anxious introduction to Wire's provocation with lead vocalist Colin Newman over-annunciating a polemic against government's abuse of propaganda (sound familiar?) on top of an increasingly agitated metronomic blast of bass, twin guitar, and drums. Elsewhere near perfect pop songs develop out of the angular punk slashing, as heard on "Ex Liontamers" and "Mannequin." Wire ends the album with the monotone anthem "12 X U" which many have declared their "Anarchy In The UK." With a motorik rhythm punctured by concise punk riff, the track simultaneously decries homophobia and censorship with the song's entire lyrics "I saw you in the mag kissing the man / 1 2 X U!"

So yeah, Wire are a seminal band for a reason, and it all started with this album. If you don't have it, please do yourself a favor and buy this album. You won't regret it!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite LP of the 1970s Punk Era, May 6, 2007

By 

Roy Apple (California) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pink Flag (Dig) (Audio CD)

Everyone's heard of the Iggy Pop, The Clash, Ramones, Damned and Sex Pistols, but many of you have probably not heard of Wire. I was very into the punk scene in the 1970s and I loved it all back then. But of all the punk albums that came out between 1976 and 1980, Wire's "Pink Flag" (1977) holds up best for me 30 years on. This album is very raw with a minimum of production, but with some key elements of production here and there. It's been referred to elsewhere as minimalist and taking a deconstructive approach to rock music. Both are true, and Wire does it with intelligence on "Pink Flag". I think they set a standard for what can be done with a few chords that no one else has achieved. The lyrics on "Pink Flag" are mostly imaginative and timeless, certainly better than most of what was written back then. If I had to recommend a few albums that best represent the era, I would include this one. This re-mastered version of "Pink Flag" sounds every bit as good on CD as my original-pressing vinyl LP, maybe even better. I highly recommend it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ten of the Most Dangerous Albums Ever Made (Entry #1), February 21, 2008

By 

Dr. Geek - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pink Flag (Dig) (Audio CD)

Every decade sees thousands of albums released, each barely making its mark in the world. But there are those albums that are so revolutionary, filled with an urgency and a potency to shatter our preconceived notions of music, that they deserve attention. Dangerous is not Judas Priest, NWA, Slayer, or any rap album from the last fifteen years. Those artists and albums were simply selling an image. In this sense, dangerous refers to that music which punctured and tore the musical zeitgeist. And so begins our list, beginning with entry number one:

Pink Flag - Wire

1977 saw the birth of punk, and with it the death of standard rock and roll as it had been known up until that year. Seminal bands emerged and used punk as a method of shattering all the fat and excess from rock and roll, a purification of an over-sexed and commercialized sound. Thus, punk presented rock and roll in its simplest form: three chords, verse-chorus-verse.

But an English quartet would quickly and radically change punk in 1977. The band? Wire.

The songs contained within their debut album, Pink Flag, stripped punk down to its core essential. If a verse were not needed, Wire would discard it. If that additional chord did not need to be strummed, Wire would not strum it. If a song only need be twenty eight seconds long, Wire would only play the song for twenty eight seconds. Most songs clock in at under two minutes, filled with an urgency that not even the newest punk band could match. This is the sound of punk's bare bones.

With this album, Wire grabbed punk by the throat and held it at the edge of the musical precipice, threatening to destroy punk while showing all that it was and could ever be.

(nine more entries to follow)