Wire’s initial three albums have long been favorites of mine, especially the first and the third. The debut album, Pink Flag, employed punk minimalism and acidity with a slyly absurd literal-ism, while completely throwing out punk’s reliance on traditional rock n’ roll song structure. It’s fast and fun and leaves you off kilter in a way you don’t quite get at first. The third album, 154, is to me the consummate post-punk album, more so than say the usual suggestions of something by the Gang of Four, Joy Division or Pere Ubu. It’s polished and often desolate art rock (cold synths, existentialism, ambient sound) punctuated with aching, expansive melody. There is also something positively medieval about the proceedings that I dig. But it doesn’t feel like something different than punk, or a reaction against it either. It has all the naive purity and earnestness intact (yes, punk is actually very earnest music). Punk Floyd I’ve heard it called. (Also, somehow music like this was making the top 40 in Britain, which basically shows you what a failure public broadcasting is in this country.)

Right, so I regard the music very highly. In fact I had given it to my wife last weekend to listen to on her journey to and from NoVA for a Calligraphy workshop. She had requested that I wow her with some albums she wasn’t overly familiar with, but were in her wheelhouse. Alongside Mercury Rev, the Boo Radleys, 808 State and others I can’t remember, I included Wire’s 154. She liked it okay, although I probably got a stronger reaction from their second, Chairs Missing.

Those selections remained in the car during the week, and none really seemed to draw their usual charge. No joy. Except for 154 – especially for yesterday, Maunday Thursday, and today, Good Friday – it was clearly the only acceptable choice in the car. On Thursday the opening track, I Should Have Known Better (which was the radio single, I believe), seemed too bitter to hear, and I skipped around, mainly settling in with the “pop” numbers the 15th and Map Ref. 41 °N 93°W and the majestic A Touching Display. But today, though it’s not of my favorite tracks, only I Should Have Known Better was right. The other songs were wrong. I listened to it once and a half on my way to the noon Good Friday Service.

Good Friday is a special service for me (I know, for you too right?). Six years ago I had a moment at the liturgy when I felt my longing for Jesus shift from raw need to belief. I felt the full weight of my burden, all my pain and sin, and then suddenly I felt the collective weight of the congregation’s. I started to suffocate and choke, knowing how futile it all was, just for these 200 people in this one church. On the periphery was the world and before I was crushed, it all was lifted and there was emptiness and then release. I understood perfectly the need for Jesus, and then actually felt him there with me, us.

Anyway, today’s service progressed with no great emotion. I was antsy to get back to work. The Assistant Rector was preaching today. He’s a pretty mellow soul, and his sermons show great kindness and empathy. He’s famous for interpolating song lyrics into the sermons, usually 70’s stuff like Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, and the Eagles, or maybe dipping into 80’s U2. I like it best when he weaves in Bruce Springsteen. Solid 70s and 80s AM radio staples, you dig? The crux of the sermon was the “could of, should of, would ofs” that haunt our lives. A song was offered for each. I don’t remember the examples of “could” or “should”, busy as I was scrapping myself off the floor from the the “should have” example. Which was Wire’s I Should Have Known Better! When I heard him recite the lyrics from the pulpit, my eyes grew wet and my heart loud.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V64zYKvDo2g&w=600]

You have to understand, for music geeks or punkers, Wire’s I Should Have Known Better is by no means a “deep cut.” And in the UK, if you are of a certain age, you’d have heard it on the radio a bit, I guess in, 1979. But I think maybe he and I and maybe, just maybe, one or two others were the only people in church this Holy Week that have ever heard the song. And I’ve never heard the preacher reference anything remotely punk or from college radio, the “80’s underground” or anything like that (not that it matters, although him being a Wire fan certainly adds a new layer!). And c’mon, even if I was listening to Emmylou Harris on repeat before the service, and he dropped a reference, I would still be pretty amazed. But I Should Have Known Better?! There is no language in my lungs!

I think he was using to song to illustrate the disappointment of relationships gone awry. The bitterness and desolation that the “should haves” leave us with.

On the way out, I mumbled my disbelief to the preacher, and he gave me a hug. Our Rector, listening and somewhat amazed, then told me he had a dream about me the night before. I was driving us in a car in through the snow, all the while looking at my mobile device. He was terrified of an accident, but I apparently got us to the destination perfectly safe. I mumbled something lame about being an excellent driver and stumbled out onto the sidewalk were the light was too bright. Of course, I immediately went to the car and listened to song several times. Shell-shocked and upon home, I asked my wife to help me understand what God was saying to me. I get really confused by things like this. It become apparent to us that the song must be a dialogue between myself and Christ.

I think its like this: part of me still thinks I need to be punished for my past, and that God should damn me. Or at least “the world” should. I want it actually, sometimes; a leveling. But God honors that vengeance I deserve upon Christ. And He in turn has redefined the meaning of vendetta: he has it out for me, yes, but to save, not to punish. That is the redefinition.

This first verse reflects the disordered love God shows to me, to us — disordered in that it is against his own law and holiness. I’m not sure if I am questioning God’s love foolishly, or if he is seeing the one-way nature of his love set against my doubtfulness and hopelessness…  Clearly though, the observation is God’s: My “bite,” my is far worse than God’s aggression. I hear the philosopher and aphorist Emil Cioran in this line, who says, “When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves”. I think of my periodic insomnia, my brain beating out its tattoo of “doomed, doomed, doomed.” Yet what I believe my punishment should be is not what He has in mind. The truth for us all, but a message I sorely need to hear.

Going back to the beginning of the song… I think I am speaking in the first verse. I am here in church as an act of contrition, yet I am not ready or willing to really hear God’s word for me. I feel like my state is beyond God’s help, my feelings are a paroxysm and real, but am mostly in confusion. Perhaps God is speaking of his failure to find a way in which I/we will actually listen to his law! He has tried everything, both putative and rewarding, and we are as stone. Or maybe I am speaking from my “lost years” about my utter disappointment in my life. In any case, I come to God knowing I am beyond him, and cannot account for myself.

“I should have known better…”, this is my life, the endless litany of my thoughts of the past. Cleaving closely to the sermon’s and Wire’s meaning I think. I come to church, to His dwelling place, but I can’t feel his Spirit. Again, in my vanity, I want to argue with God, to negotiate and argue over my salvation. Finally, I have to believe the last verse is God’s, delivered in wry humor.

In some ways belief in all the terrible things I see lurking in the future, in my ruin, gives me the semblance of power. Like I know how it really is. God, of course, has other plans. He knows me as his beloved creation and puts aside my doubt and depression and self-recrimination. Judas cries out in Jesus Christ Superstar, “Please don’t say I’m damned for all time!,” but of course his death wish is splatted all over his crime. We find comfort in our desolation, in the surety of our “damnedness.” In some way, we actually want our sin to cover us and not Jesus’ blood. We cry out for justice against ourselves, but Jesus has dropped the charges! He has satisfied God’s and even our own need for retribution, and indeed, really has it out for us.

And I think the random dream has a meaning that really speaks to this too: I might begin to place more trust in my decisions, my judgement and my navigation. Not fully, of course, but also without the constant need to second-guess whether God is there behind the scenes, patiently guiding me, even in the midst of my distraction and horror. If I listen I can hear him on the dash speakers, not despite of the skronky guitar noise, but through it. Hallelujah!

Now if only I could figure out what this song means:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OrxQ5cKaOQ&w=600]

COMMENTS

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8 responses to “Through the Wire: A Reading From the Post-Punk Gospel”

1. SMF says:

   04/01/2013 at 4:07 pm

   Amen! What an encouraging and true piece. Thanks for sharing this. xo

   Reply
2. David Zahl says:

   04/01/2013 at 9:45 pm

   Good Lord! Thank you for this unbelievably honest and profound post, James. Such a cool story about such a cool song – mind-blowing is not too strong a word. I may have to steal “Vendetta Redefined” for the title of my autobiography.

   Reply
3. Ross Byrd says:

   04/02/2013 at 12:08 am

   Whoa. What a voice God has given you to speak meaning and longing out of brokenness…it is truly unlike anyone else’s. I don’t quite know what to say…thank you. Praise God.

   Reply
4. John Zahl says:

   04/02/2013 at 10:02 am

   What a great post, James! So transparent and insightful, plus a really incredible series of events. But more about Wire, you’ve given me major impetus to go back to my Wire catalog.

   My very favorite Wire tracks are (probably boring to the serious fan) The 15th, which is such a killer, amazing track –> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV9MIQGgTEo

   and Outdoor Miner –> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83fpEaEET7k

   …but my Wire guilty pleasure track is Kidney Bingos. p.s., have you heard Colin Newman’s solo stuff? Alone is pretty rad.

   Thank you for this. I want to make a post-punk mix now. 😉

   Reply
   • James Fishwick says:

     04/02/2013 at 10:51 am

     Not at all boring, John! My fav tracks on this album, until last Friday, have always been the 15th and Map Ref. 41 °N 93°W, and in that vein, I also really love Outdoor Miner and Used To from Chairs Missing. I think Wire is often most effective in their “pop” mode, and the albums don’t work without these changes in mood and mode.

     And Kidney Bingos could be their most inscrutable, “art” song of all time! Love it and had to throw it in at the end of my post. Honestly, A Bell is a Cup… is pretty much the only post-154 album I ever listen to.

     Alone was on Silence of the Lambs, right? Its a really cool track. I also recommend the ’86 album Commercial Suicide— it somehow splits the difference between the emergent 4AD sound and the coming of Britpop. Share the mix!

     Reply
5. msjuliejulie says:

   04/03/2013 at 1:23 am

   James! This is so rad! I would have also found myself on the floor had my pastor quoted that song.
   I’m going to get to see Wire this summer in Chicago for the Pitchfork Festival.
   Last time I saw them was in a very crowded Metro circa 2000 – and they played everything twice as fast. 🙂

   ps. “The A List” is a decent comp of post-154 gems. “Ambitious” was an anthem of sorts at the Kinko’s I managed lifetimes ago. Go figure.

   Reply
6. Allie says:

   04/03/2013 at 12:37 pm

   Wire! Yes! I loved this post. Makes me want to clean out my car to find my Fall, Mission of Burma, Wire, etc. Must do and hope for post-Easter transmissions from Above

   Reply