Pink Flag

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Pink Flag
Wire studio album

Publication
(s)

December 1977

Label (s) Harvest Records

Format (s)

LP , CD , MC

Genre (s)

Punk , art-punk , post-punk

Title (number)

21st

running time

35:37

occupation
  • Graham Lewis - bass

production

Mike Thorne

Studio (s)

Advision Studios, London

chronology
- Pink Flag Chairs Missing
(1978)
Single release
November 1977 mannequin

Pink Flag is the debut album by British rock band Wire . It was released in December 1977 through the Harvest Records label.

background

Pink Flag is the first album by the London band Wire, which was founded in 1976 by the art students Colin Newman, Graham Lewis, Bruce Gilbert, Robert Gray and George Gill (until August 1976) and after first appearances in April 1977 by the EMI subsidiary Harvest Records was signed. The recordings took place from September to October 1977 in the Advision Studios in London, producer was Mike Thorne. Guest musician Kate Lukas plays the flute on the song Strange .

The debut album consists of 21, mostly short songs, six of which last less than a minute. Since the pieces sometimes end abruptly, the band deviated from conventional song structures and pursued a minimalist approach. Pink Flag is an example of Art-Punk , an experimental style within punk music.

The record sleeve was designed by band members Gilbert and Lewis. The photo on the front was taken by Annette Green, who also wrote the song Different to Me .

reception

source rating
Allmusic
Pitchfork
Spin
Music Express
Laut.de

Pink Flag was received very positively by the trade press and is one of the milestones of the punk genre. The music magazine Rolling Stone ranks the album at number 412 of the 500 best albums of all time , at number 69 of the 100 best debut albums and at number 6 of the 40 best punk albums. According to the magazine, Pink Flag is one of the "most influential indie rock albums of all time". The New Musical Express voted the album at number 378 of the 500 best albums of all time. In the selection of the 100 best albums of the 1970s by Pitchfork occupied Pink Flag Square 22. The album was in the The 1001 album You Must Hear Before You added.

“From the minimalist cover to every single one of the 21 striking pieces, this record was a clear and radiant masterpiece. The songs were short, because when the lyrics were over, they stopped. "

- Glenn Law

"Perhaps the most original debut album to come out of the first wave of British punk, Wire's Pink Flag plays like The Ramones Go to Art School - song after song careens past in a glorious, stripped-down rush."

- Steve Huey

“ Pink Flag pushes punk rock templates to even greater extremes. 21 songs occur in 35 minutes. Few follow traditional verse / chorus patterns, as the band stops playing when they have performed the lyrics once or are tired of repeating a riff. The resulting sound was much colder and more brutal than anything else that could be heard at the time - a minimalist approach that is already signaled by the pink flag on the cover. "

- Chris Shade

" Pink Flag is one of rock's all-time great reimaginings, 21 tracks whizzing by in 37 minutes, every one blindingly fresh in its expansion of rock's parameters and utterly familiar in its tunefulness. Produced with a deft hand by Mike Thorne, who oversaw the band's first three, groundbreaking albums, Wire reduces every song it touches to a streamlined, minimalist essence, moving from war-torn drama (the utterly harrowing and sadly ever-relevant “Reuters” ) to triumphant pop (“Ex Lion Tamer”) to shots at squaresville (“Mr. Suit”, “Mannequin”) to surprisingly direct love songs (“Fragile”). Pink Flag is the explosive sound of brainiacs tossing off staggering musical insights like so much bread to birds. "

- Joe Gross

“Punk was almost always radical, but seldom as radically reduced as on the debut of these four compromise refusals from London. This aesthetic decision left no room for filling moments, but for many ideas: 21 songs, compressed to 36 minutes, from brutal and noisy to groovy. Pink Flag has remained a source of inspiration for generations of guitar bands. "

- Florian Koelsch

"The simultaneous rawness and detachment of this debut LP returns rock and roll irony to the (native) land of Mick Jagger , where it belongs. From a formal strategy almost identical to the Ramones , this band deducts most melody to arrive at music much grimmer and more frightening: Wire would sooner revamp “The Fat Lady of Limbourg” or “Some Kinda Love” than “Let's Dance” or “Surfin 'Bird. " Not that any of the twenty-one titles here have been heard before - that would ruin the overall effect of a punk suite comprising parts so singular that you can hardly imagine them in some other order. Inspirational Prose: "This is your correspondent, running out of tape, gunfire's increasing, looting, burning, rape."

- Robert Christgau

"If you like Punk Rock, Independent or Post Punk music, you really need to listen to Pink Flag . Also, and this is really important, you need to listen to Pink Flag . "

- Henry Rollins

" Pink Flag is a perfect record. There are few records you could listen to at any point since the advent of rock music and not necessarily be able to hang them on a certain era and find them rewarding in the same way they were when they came out. Pink Flag ’s one of these records. If I could make records that sounded that good, I'd be happy. From the sound of their instruments to the economy of their presentation of the willingness to go beyond the expected forms and content, there's literally no part of Wire that I didn't want to rip off at one point or another. "

- Steve Albini

The album influenced subsequent rock bands such as Big Black , My Bloody Valentine , Sonic Youth , Blur , Black Flag , Minor Threat , Joy Division and REM Songs by Pink Flag were covered by REM, Lee Ranaldo , firehose , Elastica and Spoon , among others .

Track list

Singer Colin Newman 2011

All songs except Different to Me were written by Colin Newman, Graham Lewis, Bruce Gilbert and Robert Gray.

Page 1:

  1. Reuters - 3:03
  2. Field Day For The Sundays - 0:28
  3. Three Girl Rhumba - 1:23
  4. Ex Lion Tamer - 2:19
  5. Lowdown - 2:26
  6. Start to Move - 1:13
  7. Brazil - 0:41
  8. It's So Obvious - 0:53
  9. Surgeon's Girl - 1:17
  10. Pink Flag - 3:45

Page 2:

  2. The Commercial - 0:49
  3. Straight Line - 0:44
  4. 106 Beats That - 1:12
  5. Mr. Suit - 1:25
  6. Strange - 3:59
  7. Fragile - 1:18
  8. Mannequin - 2:37
  9. Different to Me (Annette Green) - 0:43
  10. Champs - 1:46
  11. Feeling Called Love - 1:28
  12. 12XU - 1:57

CD bonus tracks (1989/1994):

  1. Dot Dash - 2:25
  2. Options R - 1:36

Special Edition (2018)

  1. The Commercial (First Demo Session) - 0:51
  2. Mr Suit (First Demo Session) - 1:32
  3. Pink Flag (First Demo Session) - 2:34
  4. Surgeon's Girl (Second Demo Session) - 1:38
  5. Field Day for the Sundays (Second Demo Session) - 0:32
  6. 106 Beats That (Second Demo Session) - 1:15
  7. Fragile (Second Demo Session) - 1:14
  8. Reuters (Third Demo Session) - 2:23
  9. Different to Me (Third Demo Session) - 0:45
  10. Ex Lion Tamer (Third Demo Session) - 2:09
  11. Mannequin (Third Demo Session) - 3:03
  12. Champs (Third Demo Session) - 1:57
  13. Start to Move (Third Demo Session) - 1:14
  14. Three Girl Rhumba (Alternative Mix) - 1:23
  15. Ex Lion Tamer (Alternative Mix) - 2:05
  16. 12XU (Mono Mix) - 1:47
  17. Mannequin (Mono Mix) - 2:36
  18. It's So Obvious (Alternative Mix) - 0:51

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Pink Flag: Band biography on pinkflag.com, accessed September 4, 2017
  2. ^ Larkin, Colin (eds.): The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006, p. 669.
  3. ↑ a b Review by Steve Huey on allmusic.com (accessed September 4, 2017)
  4. ↑ Review by Joe Tangari on pitchfork.com (accessed September 4, 2017)
  5. ^ Review by Jon Dolan, in: Spin 8/2006, p. 86.
  6. ↑ Review by Michael Sailer on musikexpress.de (archive article, accessed on September 30, 2017)
  7. ↑ Review by Christian Kollasch on laut.de (accessed April 2, 2020)
  8. ↑ a b 500 Greatest Albums of All Time on rollingstone.com, accessed September 4, 2017
  9. ↑ 100 Best Debut Albums of All Time on rollingstone.com, accessed September 4, 2017
  10. ↑ 40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time on rollingstone.com, accessed January 19, 2020
  11. ↑ The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time on nme.com, accessed September 4, 2017
  12. ↑ Top 100 Albums of the 1970s on pitchfork.com, accessed September 4, 2017
  13. ^ Buckley, Peter (ed.): Rock Rough Guide, 2nd edition, Verlag JB Metzler Stuttgart / Weimar 2004, p. 902.
  14. ↑ Dimery, Robert (ed.): 1001 albums - music you should hear before life is over, 8th edition, Edition Olms Zurich 2015, p. 381.
  15. ↑ Brackett, Nathan et al. Hoard, Christian (Ed.): The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, 4th edition, Simon & Schuster New York 2004, p. 883.
  16. ↑ The 50 best punk (rock) albums from then until now. In: Musikexpress, edition 11/2017, No. 743, p. 41.
  17. ↑ Consumer Guide Album: Pink Flag on robertchristgau.com (accessed April 18, 2018)
  18. ↑ Henry Rollins: Some Essential Punk Records on thesoundofvinyl.com (accessed April 8, 2019)
  19. ^ Wilson Neate: Pink Flag (33 ⅓) , London: Bloomsbury Academic 2009, p. 85.
  20. ↑ Wire Covers and Samples on WhoSampled.com