Day After Day #240: Ex Lion Tamer

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Ex Lion Tamer (1977)

There are plenty of bands throughout the history of rock music that haven't received the appropriate amount of credit. Wire is one of those bands. They emerged in 1977 during the first wave of British punk, but they were already so different from all the bands around them, evolving into one of the premier post-punk acts. They influenced a lot of artists who came after them, even as they experimented and returned from multiple breaks.

Wire was formed in 1976 in London by Colin Newman (vocals, guitar), Graham Lewis (bass, vocals), Bruce Gilbert and George Gill (guitar) and Robert "Gotobed" Grey (drums). 

On their 1977 debut album Pink Flag, the band defied convention with 21 songs of varying lengths, pushing the envelope about what punk should sound like. Only six of the album's songs are longer than 2 minutes, opting for brevity and punch even as the band works in a variety of ideas and styles that would inspire post-punk, alt-rock, hardcore and many other genres.

"Ex Lion Tamer" is a raw ripper that satirizes a generation stuck inside watching action shows on TV while their lives waste away.

"There's great danger/For the loneliest ranger in town/No silver bullets/Tonto's split the scene/Next week will solve your problems/But now/Fish fingers all in a line/The milk bottles stand empty/Stay glued to your TV set."

Guilty as charged, although the irony was as much time as my generation spent watching TV as kids, it pales in comparison to the screen time (TV and otherwise) that pretty much all generations rack up nowadays. 

"There's great danger/At hand, most caped crusader of all/No cloak of justice/Robin's quit the scene/Next week will solve your problems/But now/Fish fingers all in a line/The milk bottles stand empty/Stay glued to your TV set."

Pink Flag was critically lauded at the time and has made many best album lists, even though it didn't sell much at the time. On their second album, 1978's Chairs Missing, Wire went with longer, more experimental songs, adding more synthesizers. Their third album, 1979's 154, took that sound even farther and hit #39 on the U.K. Albums Chart, but Wire's unusual promotional ideas (videos, weeklong residencies at theaters, TV ads) led to their label EMI eventually dropping the band in 1980.

Wire returned in 1985, announcing they would no longer play their old songs, instead hiring a Wire cover band called the Ex-Lion Tamers as their opening act, while Wire played newer material. They released an album each year through 1991 before splitting again (after a year of going as "Wir" after Grey left the band). The band reformed again in 1999, with Grey back in the fold and released two EPs in 2002. Wire has continued on in various formations since then, releasing seven albums. 

But those first three albums remain unimpeachable. The band influenced acts including Minor Threat, Black Flag, Boss Hog, Soundgarden, Manic Street Preachers, Husker Du, Quicksand, Mary Timony, Mission of Burma, Big Black, R.E.M. (who covered "Strange"), Low, New Bomb Turks and, of course, Elastica. The similarities between Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba" and Elastica's "Connection" famously led to an out-of-court settlement. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but sometimes too much flattery can get expensive.