The Wire's 100 Records That Set The World On Fire [When No One Was Listening] (1998)

voted for anything but Charles Ives cos i'm an idiot

here's a little sampler i threw together (no sequencing, no re-tagging, just music for any order you like):

http://www.sendspace.com/file/bgizq2 (part 1)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nietlx (part 2)

ps: oh god, the last exit stuff is SO GOOD.

i come back to this list every now and then when i thurst for something new to listen to but don't know where to turn. one of the greatest records this list turned me onto would be the iggy pop/james williamson record. what a gem.

p.s. thanks for all the samplers!

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire%E2%80%99s_%E2%80%9E100_Records_That_Set_the_World_on_Fire_(While_No_One_Was_Listening)%E2%80%9C

I've been working my way through the albums I haven't listened to. Last few nights: The United States of America, Dr John (well tose two were listened to a couple of weeks ago as I was on a '68 theme), Modern Lovers, Bad Brains, Lee Perry, Skip Spence and Cluster ending up as the best one. I've no idea how I missed it!

The Resident's Satisfacton is really bad (the end of 60s write-up doesn't scan to me at all), as is Comus - that's the one album I bailed out on about 2 mins in.

LOL poor old Comus.

the residents made no good records, prove me wrong

Totally understandable how Comus could initially put someone off. Try The Herald though as it's as beautiful as some of the other stuff is grotesque.

Just looked and Comus are from Bromley! xp = cool will do

also blimey lol my write-up of "dancing in yr head" in that list (which i had totally forgotten i ever wrote)

The Residents made no bad records (till some time in the 80s), I think you mean.

Couldn't really see what was the fuss was about Comus. It might be strange thing to say for an Incredible String Band fan, but stuff that's routinely described as psychedelic or progrssive folk rarely impresses me.

i know what i mean

I think I got "Dancing.." on the strenght of your write-up mark :) although I was almost certainly into Ornette by the time I got my hands on that issue.

Before this idea of mine (thank the lockdown) I had almost all of the jazz/improv and some of the 'rock'. If we add in what I've listened to it then leaves me with about half of the list so I'll do updates as I listen in batches of 10. I assume youtube won't have about 10 of these so you will have one less update to put up with.

xp = see I love Incredible String Band! I was re-listening to "Hangman's..." and its so good. I am not sure what put me off Comus. I do work through an item at around midnight so maybe I should give them another go. Am generally enjoying everything -- although I don't need to hear Modern Lovers ever again.

Lee Perry is the one guy I really want to work through (and maybe a couple more Cluster albs)

Just checking which Cluster album, and that's the best of their 'weird' albums.

The Monoton record highly impressed me when I first heard it. Certainly prescient and clever. I think this was the first place I read about it.

need to dig out that cathy lane piece i rep for also

I started listening to Sowiesoso, really enjoying their more melodic strand anyway but I knew I would dig in a hole for myself that would last a couple of weeks (once you take in Harmonia, Eno, etc.) at least so I paused it for now xxp

handy spotify playlist

^^^unused JBR screenname

Lol @ only having to write a single paragraph for each album and still managing to spend a decent chunk of the 'Joey Beltam - Places' review talking about his facial bone structure, the picture on the cover, and the fact that the song titles aren't about drug deals.

Comus sound like the ISB on a bad meditation trip with Family's Roger Chapman having a nervous breakdown in the corner of the room. What's not to love?

I'd rather listen to ISB doing ISB on a bad mediatation trip and Roger Chapman having a nervous breakdown in Family.

Comus go in way harder than any ISB I've heard. They bang. Surprised at the lack of love here.

I mean I like ISB but Comus are basically the world's first doom-folk prog band, and as far as I know never converted to Sc13nt0l0gy either.

just dropping in to say "another huge Comus fan here"

ISB I can take or leave honestly, although I have the 1st 4 LPs

Comus isn’t really my thing but I recognize that they are fucking awesome.

I heard Comus years ago because Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth was promoting them constantly in interviews. They were OK for a folk thing.

I looked up the list (surprised nobody just straight-up posted it in the thread) and I own or have heard about a quarter of it. There are a few other things that intrigue me, but not that many; I'm never gonna go on some quest to Hear It All.

Bat Chain Puller was actually released on CD in 2012 - probably how it wound up on the list. It's long out of print, though, and not on streaming services or anything.

yeah, that CD is one of the most valuable CDs I own now, kind of a bummer

It still gets posted here and there, once in a while. This thread is informative as hell, thanks---speaking of adventurous, jazz-wise power trios, I first heard Harriet Tubman on a Jazz Might In America round-up of musicians who had worked with Henry Threadgill: seemed apparent that some hadn't played with each other in a long time, or not very often--but HT subset was striking exception. They are: Brandon Ross - guitar
Melvin Gibbs - bass JT Lewis - drums---with Wadada Leo Smith on several tracks of my studio gateway https://harriettubman.bandcamp.com/album/araminta They're fairly prolific; bandcamp stash incl. tracks from several other albums.

Jazz *Night* In America---not always (but sometimes) a lot of Might on this well-meaning, wide-ranging NPR series (which has a number of downloadable shows on site).

"I looked up the list (surprised nobody just straight-up posted it in the thread) and I own or have heard about a quarter of it. There are a few other things that intrigue me, but not that many; I'm never gonna go on some quest to Hear It All."

I did? And it was posted by JBR back then but the link has died.

Its not a quest lol its just 100 records and most of the albs are ~40 mins -- some of which are in lots of genres I like bits of but never gone in deep. Really looking forward to the Al Green tonight.

The odd recording is single length. Satisfaction, Nesting Stones..

A few things on there taht I hadn't realised were.
Fingers inc Another Side which I'd like since having the vinyl and finally got a legit release about 4 years ago. I think th edouble vinyl may not have even been fully legit.
Family Fodder and the Fire engines are both bnds i really like and have loved isnce p[icking up things fro reviewws i early 80s NMEs a few years later.

Pierre Akendengué - Nandipo
Louis & Bebe Barron - Forbidden Planet OST
Joey Beltram - Places
Chrome - Half Machine Lip Moves
Fire Engines - Get Up and Use Me
Electric Eels - Agitated / Cyclotron
Fingers, Inc. - Another Side
Silver Apples - Contact
Mark Stewart & The Maffia - Learning to Cope with Cowardice
Steven Jesse Bernstein - Prison*

Nandipo is really good, quite a range of arrangments. The Forbidden Planet soundtrack is a really inspired choice, such an insane compilation of noises. Same for Silver Apples but I am not sure I liked the singing. Places is ok...Beltram has one idea and it was already wearing it self out by the end? Fingers Inc. is probably the album I spent most time with, its just such a gorgeous assembly of a cyborg that feels and sings!

Fire Engines, Chrome nd Electric Eels are all versions of something kinda raw that is fine and I'd rather see it live if anything.

Mark Stewart might be like a John Lydon record if he took his personality out of it.

* only a track or two on youtube...not enough to make a call.

Never heard any Chrome live recordings but I can't imagine it being the same thing without all the microphone and tape fuckery.

yeah they were studio-only until 1981, iirc that's one of the issues that broke up the "classic" lineup

This issue was early in my Wire-reading days and I was completely bought into the idea that there was this parallel universe of records that were only described in terms of other records I'd never heard. I dutifully wrote down half the list in a notebook and would annoy/baffle salespeople in record shops with "do you have DBL Live by Fushitsusha? Or anything by Blue Cheer?". A few of the records I did find changed my life: Sextant, Paris 1919, In Greenwich Village...

Was listening to Joe Meek last night and it's so so good, a one-time kind of madcap record.

Yeah it's an interesting list from a time of erm scarcity compared to today (obv there's always a ton of good available stuff to listen to anyway) and in fact even then...when I picked this issue up years later in a used magazine rack I was downloading all sorts on soulseek so I while I was aware that things sank until a reissue that most of the world was really available. Of course there was also more to navigate.

Otm @ that indie ideal of 'in a parallel world this would be no 1' behind it.

Very weird to work through this range of music again. It's easy enough but I feel old too.

This is good stuff, keep it up!

William S. Burroughs - Call Me Burroughs
Tony Conrad - Four Violins
Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different
The Bill Dixon Orchestra - Intents and Purposes
Esquivel and His Orchestra - Other Worlds Other Sounds
Fadela - N'sel Fik
Family Fodder - Monkey Banana Kitchen
4hero - Parallel Universe
Robert Fripp - Exposure
Stan Kenton Plays Bob Graettinger - City of Glass

I love Burroughs' voice: its just so like his writing, a really nasty drawl. To have both Tony Conrad and Lou Reed's MMM is over-egging it a bit? The former probably needed much more of a write-up back then, both have that 'smooth' go-to-sleep-to quality that a lot of these kind of records have. Hadn't heard the Bill Dixon before (although I've seen him live with Cecil Taylor) and I wonder why he slipped though because this is a terrific album (don't know how much he was written about really). Family Fodder is the post-punk album of the batch that was fine but I'll never listen to again. Betty Davis is a particular sound I like but don't get a lot out of repeats (not that I'm repeat listening a ton of these anyway). Exposure is fucking hilarious, Fripp trying to make a young person's record but he was always old, and that's ok. The singing is often better than a Crimson record, and the lyrics have to be (doesn't take a lot). Esquivel is that flirting with esoterica (?!) I need to do a bit more digging, it sorta flew by me really.

I couldn't tell whether N'sel Fik was a single or the album so I stuck with it as a single for now but its that particular addictive sound that masks a lot of stuff that again, needs digging into (Rai is lovely but what's next, what are they singing about etc.)

The two records that really got to me were the 4Hero, which I did know about but never got to hear. So much skill to the arrangements around the monstrous jungle beat that is massaged in all sorts of ways, you could spend several lives with those textures. The Stan Kenton/Robert Graettinger is like a side of modernism that I hadn't quite come across. I found it an incredibly abrasive record, ugly but not boring at all but I don't quite know why. Hardly used to the tone of it. The ILX thread (Kitsch in jazz (also Stan Kenton S/D)) is kinda funny.

late Bill Dixon is so so brilliant, Tapestries for Small Orchestra is one of my faves, amongst quite a few others.

I'm very jealous that you got to see Dixon with Taylor. The albums they made together (one with Tony Oxley and a more recently released collection of duets) are both amazing, because Dixon pulls Taylor closer to his soundworld - sparse, exploratory - than the other way around. And I love Dixon's whole catalog - the albums he made in the 80s and 90s on Black Saint/Soul Note have been gathered up into a 9CD box that's fantastic.

he didn't seem to lose his desire to make radical great music to the death, just zero complacency.

Will dig me some Bill Dixon later this year, thanks to both of ya.

Listening to the Kenton album on Spotify now - it's pretty fascinating stuff.

Comus - First Utterance
Michael Gibbs - Michael Gibbs
Al Green - The Belle Album
Kip Hanrahan - Desire Develops an Edge
Ram John Holder - Black London Blues
Son House - Father of Folk Blues
Ken Ishii - Garden of the Palm
Gottfried Michael Koenig - Terminus II / Funktion Grün
Monoton - Monotonprodukt 07

So got round to Comus and I gotta say folk jams I can take or leave (although not as impressive as the weird turns around a song that Incredible String Band can take, if we are gonna keep comparing) but the vocals on this are really not that good.

Koenig/Monoton/Ishii are all bobbins from different times and places - very much here for it. You could listen to those three and take stock, breathe in some history and culture and be impressed and all.

Michael Gibbs is an interesting sorta free jazz not quite record. Heard that about a week ago and would need another listen. I'm guessing there are improv people on the line-up and maybe that's why this made it onto the list?

Ram John Holder is hilarious (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_John_Holder) - its the fella from the Desmonds (have a just about memory of that show). Its a solid band to me, one track had some cool pedal effects. And its a very London album (if you check out the titles), so it has that charm.

Best of the batch was the Al Green, Kip Hanrahan and Son House. With Al I was sorta surprised at...what felt like restraint in the vocals and how much space there is for the instrumentals, and everything just seems so perfect and accomplished and bang on the money about it. The Kip has all sorts of bossa and light jazz arrangements, he seeme to have been an interesting arranger type figure who got all sorts of people involved in his records. Son House is...Son House...yeah. Even when he is much older and 're-discovered'. Showing who is the daddy.

Belle Album is just one of my all time favourite albums. That "restraint" is part of what I love about Al Green - voice of an angel but he has this inward-looking, meditative or reminiscing quality in his singing that he uses a lot - he's entirely capable of going full belt but he rarely does, and it creates this intimacy with the listener more than almost any other singer that I listen to.

Glad you liked Pierre Akendengue too, another favourite of mine and not much discussed as far as I know

Yeah, I've got two more lots of records to listen to from this list but then I think I will look at a few discographies. Akendengue and Al Green are on that list.

Just racing some through some albums yesterday and now...just gotta the powerful sound in Gön Bia Bia. Might be my favourite find.