Wire

No, not The Wire, the celebrated TV show about... what is it about, anyway? Cop show, isn't it? I don't know, I don't watch TV anymore. It's supposed to be brilliant, by all accounts, so it can go on my "Essential TV DVD boxsets what I must buy before I die" list. Other shows on the list include Deadwood, Dexter and the last couple of seasons of The Sopranos. I'm sure there is other great stuff I should consider but I can't remember what they are.

No, the "Wire" to which I refer is this lot:

Yes, that Wire, the post-punk pioneers from them days. I was only two years old when their debut album Pink Flag came out. They have a new disc out called Object 47 and it ain't half bad, I tell thee. And this isn't some reunion tour cash-in that seems to be in vogue at the moment because, barring the occasional three to four year break, they never truly disbanded and continued to produce albums throughout the eighties, nineties and naughties after the magnificent triumvirate of Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 in the late seventies.

The question is do they still have it or are they a bunch of sad middle-aged geezers desperately trying to hold on to their youth? Answer: they still kick arse. They got up there and spent an hour and a half making the biggest, crunchiest ear-offending racket I have heard for quite some time and pissed all over today's so-called nu-post-punk wannabes from a very great height.

Having said that, I would have liked to have heard more of there downbeat experimental stuff such as Practice Makes Perfect or In A Heartbeat. Can't complain, though, with a gig that ended with a ludicrously fast and loud rendition of 12XU that makes Minor Threat's cover version sound like Celine Dion. (Hmm, Celine Dion performing Minor Threat classics - there's a thought.)

In summary, then: bloody great show! And it only took me half an hour to get home afterwards. Sweet.

Future gigs pencilled into the calender include Killing Joke, Roots Manuva and the Scottish national Orchestra performing Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring. Marvellous.