"The Wire" on HBO

jhoshea u my hero xpost

wait does s5 not start until next october?? did i miss that?

oh duh, january. sorry. !!! can not wait

they just took hbo offa my stolen cable

haha - ours, too. we're having a bit of a crisis over this.

i knoooow - channel 65 where u go wtf i miss u dan marino!

eh those shits are too big for sendspace - what site allows 300mb+ files?

megaupload.com. Thanks very much for even trying! It's not the end of the world if I have to wait for a DVD though, so don't waste hours over it. tvt0rr3nts has it, but it wants to bust my balls before I download anything.

I've been sitting on this news for 2 months and it's been torture to have to keep it under wraps, but the official announcement is finally here:

Greetings, Wire Fans...

After years of anticipation, The Wire Soundtrack will finally be
released on January 8th, 2008, on Nonesuch Records. We are currently
in the very final stages of production of the record, and I can say
without reservation that the project is everything I always hoped it
would be. It turns out David Bither and Bob Hurwitz at Nonesuch are
huge Wire fans, and they have given us incredible support and creative
freedom to do the record the right way. It includes many of the
show's most important musical signatures, including several versions
of Way Down In The Hole, all of the season-end montage songs, a great
selection of Baltimore club and hip-hop, The Pogues, Stelios
Kazantzidis, a selection of dialog scenes from the show, and the theme
music "The Fall" which I composed and so many have asked for over the
years. It also includes a gigantic deluxe booklet stuffed with
photographs, and liner notes by David Simon, George Pelecanos and Jeff
Chang.

I will post more details and a full track list in the near future on
my blog, The Ten Thousand Things. Until then there's a bit more info
at the Nonesuch blog here:

http://journal.nonesuch.com/journal/2007/11/nonesuch-to-rel.html

I wanted to send this out directly, as so many people have asked me
for information about the music over the last few years. And in case
you were wondering, Season 5 is finished and continues the tradition
we have all come to expect from The Wire; the season premiere will be
Sunday January 6th.

Here's looking forward to January!

Cheers,

Blake Leyh
Music Supervisor, The Wire

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
bl✧✧✧@blakel✧✧✧.c✧✧
www.blakeleyh.com
www.tenthousand.org

And here is the announcement on the Nonesuch site:

Nonesuch to Release Music from Five Years of "The Wire"

Nonesuch is pleased to announce the January 8, 2008, release of the first soundtrack from the critically acclaimed, Peabody Award–winning HBO series The Wire. That's two days after the series kicks off its fifth season. It also marks the first time music from the David Simon–created show has ever been collected and released as an album.

The Wire: " ... and all the pieces matter" will include several versions of the show’s opening theme song—Tom Waits’s “Way Down in the Hole”—as performed by The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Neville Brothers, and DoMaJe, a group of Baltimore teenagers. To listen to DoMaJe's take on the song, click here.

The disc will also feature a number of tracks from the Baltimore club and hip-hop scene that have never appeared on a major label release, including Rod Lee’s “Dance My Pain Away,” Tyree Colion’s “Projects,” Diablo’s “Jail Flick,” Mullyman’s “The Life, the Hood, the Streetz,” and “What You Know About Baltimore?” by Ogun featuring Phathead.

Other songs include “Oh My God” by Michael Franti, “I Walk on Gilded Splinters” by Paul Weller, “The Body of an American” by The Pogues, “I Feel Alright” by Steve Earle (who also has an acting role on the series), Solomon Burke’s “Fast Train,” and the show’s closing theme, “The Fall,” composed by The Wire music supervisor Blake Leyh.

Some of the most memorable dialog from the program’s five years will also be included on the record. The CD booklet will feature essays by the author and series writer George Pelecanos and the noted hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang.

Over the course of four seasons, The Wire has developed a portrait of Baltimore through the themes of education, the war on drugs, the decline of the working class, and the role of political leadership in addressing urban problems. The Wire will use its fifth and final season to examine mass media’s impact on the city.

Slate has had this to say about the series:

... surely the best TV show ever broadcast in America ... No other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature.

The first three seasons of The Wire are currently available on DVD; the fourth season will be available beginning December 4, 2007—a month before the fifth and final season’s premiere on HBO. You can pre-order Season Four now at the Shop at HBO.com.

For more information on the series, visit HBO.com.

Oh awesome. I might buy season 4 even though it's already on my hard drive, watched and rewatched. (This is the part where I would usually say that it's my favorite season, but I will refrain.)

I'm waiting for the inevitable complete series boxset.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/theatre/news/story/0,,2209888,00.html

^ profile of bunk as he puts on "waiting for godot" in the 9th ward

five new promos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVB-d7tWIII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPflEzVBSq0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uMd2HCcQ_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIsYWcHbwLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwhryZsvU6E

- *Barack Obama* tells *TV Guide* that his favorite TV character of
all time is *"SpongeBob SquarePants, because SpongeBob is the show I
watch with my daughters." ** *His favorite TV shows of all time are *
M*A*S*H* and *The Wire.*

if it wasnt already clear that we neeeeeeed this man to be president, well there it is.

man, that makes me smile for real.

LET MCNULTY BE MCNULTY

oh this season is gonna run deep

(lol mcnulty leaning on the pay phone talking on his cell)

omar explosions

I just started watching season 3 on HBO on demand. Never seen it before. Two episodes in and I'm sold. I'm also pretty lost, but getting the hang of it. HBO's running seaon 4 on demand starting in december, so, oh shit, I guess I won't be able to watch all of season 3 by then!

knuckle down -- it can be done.

wau @ obama wire shoutout

it can be done. easily.
i just rewatched the first season, for the hell of it, in a matter of days. i fucking love this show.

last I checked S3 will be On Demand until December 10th (at least from my cable provider). i'm in the middle of rewatching S2 via Netflix, and will probably just rent S3 next too, since I want to hear the commentaries and other DVD stuff you can't get On Demand. i doubt i'll squeeze in the first four seasons before S5 starts, but i might try.

can't do it! I'm working today, working all day tomorrow. Even if I start watching at 7pm fri, I could only get 3 or 4 episdoes further before they switch to season 4! MAYBE just maybe it'll be on demand a bit into december. I have to say, the recap at the beginning of season 3 was hilarious, so confusing.

i watched 1-4 in about a month so you can definitely do all of 3 before 4 starts on demand, dan! i believe in you!

dan - are you planning on sleeping??? that's your problem, right there!

the real problem here is: i don't have cable, much less hbo. how am i going to watch season 5!?

dan: dvds
tehresa: torrents

and dan u should really start from the beginning - so much more rewarding

not to mention that if you get through season 3 you'll see some stuff that you wont want to have seen when watching season 1

that's true, but at the same time, if you were going to pick up on the show at any point other than the beginning, S3 is probably the best place to start.

haha, carcetti, you know he's about to do something really heinous

am i the only one who's sick of the constant 'mcnulty is a drunk asshole' stuff? that is by far my least favorite part of the show

otm i was psyched when mcnulty went away last season f mcnulty

Having Mcnulty around is worth is for the once-per-season utterance of "What? What the fuck did I do?"

yeah i think i actually fast-forwarded through parts of season 2 that were all about him, and maybe season 3 as well, i mean, string, d'angelo were so much more interesting and then they keep spending time on mcnulty, drunk, AGAIN (and usually without bunk to at least make it funny)

the time when he crashed his car twice was kinda funny tho

that was great

drunk assholes are very irritating but also true to life.

yah i guess he is supposed to be a douche and he is a douche soo...

but i get the impression that the writers find him charming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgacB9NeQDE

warning warning first minute or two spoil the Omar promo up there

B-b-but the brothel bust! "Spot on it!" OMGz!

Season 4 out next week!!

I got a letter last night saying mine had been mailed. TAKE THAT NOCKOES!

u guys all mad, mcnulty rules though i do wish they'd cut back on the too-frequent MCNUTTY BE DRUNK & FUCKIN AGIN sequences. def hope nutty isn't out completely in s4 (which i haven't seen yet!)

less McNulty than ever in S4, but there's at least some nice character development to his eternal fuckup archetype. i can see people liking him less than other characters or thinking he's too trad/cliche compared to the rest of the show, but fast-forwarding through all his scenes? what the fuck.

that's truly bizarre.

http://www.amazon.com/Wire-Complete-Fourth-Season/dp/B000QXDJLI

three short "prequel videos"

season 4 out on dvd...today?

FYI for those that don't want to mess with torrents, I've been using a site called Tape It Off the Internet. They archive links to where shit is available for streaming online. I'm slowly getting through all of S4 that way.

It's actually pretty cool. The gf has a Wii, and I have it connected to our wireless network, and there's a browser on the Wii. So I just pull up TIOTI on the Wii browser and full-screen it, and voila, it's like having a slightly grainy DVD of my favorite show.

I've only had time to watch like, one more episode of Season 3. I'm thinking of giving up and just starting w/ a DVD of season 1, maybe find it used or something, I don't belong to a vid store. Maybe somebody will lend to me.

start @ beginning 100x enjoyment video store memberships are free homie the world is yrs

three short "prequel videos"

I hated the Prop Joe one, and to a lesser degree the Omar one. I'm sure there are traces of Prop Joe's future in his childhood, but I don't buy him as a hard-bargaining 10-yo business man, and I don't buy Omar as an infant high-moralled bad-ass.

That's what I liked so much about S4 ... it didn't make each kid's trajectory seem so inevitable. Just a twist here and a twist there and maybe things turn out differently for each of them.