Wire - Document Eyewitness (22 tracks) +Album Reviews

A live album with a difference

filterite | Dublin, Ireland | 11/09/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Live albums are usually nothing more than cheap giveaways that you already have heard in their studio life and are usually much better. Everybody knows that you'll get the same tracks with the crowds cheering the performer on for more more MORE. So why should you buy this? Well the fact of the matter is that it's everything a usual live album is NOT. Yes that's right - this is NOT your usual live album. First of all many of the tracks here are new. Secondly the band are practically hated mainly because there isn't 12XU which eventually comes up in fractured form ( not a bad thing ). Their MC is the one that helps the fans get what they want because it's his " request spot " despite being called a fat.....well you know - can't say it here for obvious reasons. And in the mix there's a few snippets of conversations from an interview. And at the end there's two studio tracks which are OK but dilute the whole experience of the concert(s) completelyI guess it's one for the diehards but everyone should try this live album for the chaos within because if not you'll be missing out. Oh and you can't resist the bottle being thrown in the middle of a song with the reply " Who's a clever boy then! ""

Dissapointing

Said Head | 03/25/1999

(2 out of 5 stars)

"I'd read so much about the "Electric Ballroom" gig before I ever heard it that I was very excited when I finally got this CD and popped it in my stereo. I wanted to hear what was it that made this gig really famous. I couldn't really hear anything at all, as it turns out. Seriously, I've heard 4th generation bootlegs that sound better than this, and I can't help asking myself "Why did they bother?". Not to rip on Wire or the individual members, mind you, as they are, quite simply, one the best bands that ever existed. This particular album, however, is for completists and/or masochists only."

Not recommendable

Nicholas S. Blakey | 08/04/1999

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Though I appreciate all of Wire's studio-albums from the late 70's to the early 90's, I never liked their live-performances. This is because they often turned their great pop-songs into a dissonant, chaotic goulash of sound. This CD-compilation, recorded at three various locations, Notre Dome Hall, Montreux and Electric Ballroom, is completely unlistenable for "normal" people. If any unknown band had served this, nobody would have noticed, but here the critics said:"Oh Wire, this is fabulous art-school-punk!" You may call the performances on this album "experimental", but I really don't know why this gig made such waves. I only give two points, because there are two good studio-recordings thrown in at the end, they're called "Our swimmer" and "Midnight Bahnhof Cafe". But they're not worth buying this album."

Essential live Wire album

Said Head | MN, USA | 09/01/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Aside from Wire's John Peel sessions, this is Wire's only release that includes a large amount of unique content. The latest live albums (On The Box, etc.) are really more what you would expect from such a release: more aggressive performance to accommodate the missing use of live electronic instrumentation, poorer sound quality, and so on. Well, the live performances on D&E are no exception to poor sound quality, but this time Wire keep a fair amount of electronic influence in their work; not just guitars and percussion here, which makes this all the more valuable in my opinion. This release, to me, is more suited to be considered the 4th Wire album over Newman's A-Z (for one Newman wrote nearly all the tracks on that album on his own, so why would they be referred to as Wire songs?)

I also don't understand what some people consider to be issues with this release. You do hear a lot of experimental work, which I love, and if you're a Wire fan so should you, but there are also a great deal of more conventional songs, like 'Go Ahead' and 'Relationship'. Basically, you get to hear at least a dozen tracks that haven't been recorded in the studio (some of these tracks were re-recorded by Newman for solo work, and I know that 'Underwater Experiences' was an earlier demo). One thing I don't get is why 'Heartbeat' is just thrown in with the mix, as it was from a different performance altogether; just doesn't fit well, despite its being a good track.

I don't want to spoil the atmosphere of the album by explaining much of the music, but I will comment that it crosses between more aggressive Chairs Missing-era and something not quite Wire (mainly because without having come from the studio it's hard to picture what the final production qualities would be like).

And yes the final two tracks are from their Our Swimmer EP (can't really call it a single because it wasn't promoting anything, it just was). These two tracks are quite different from what you hear on E&D, and for that matter, Wire's other albums. I would've really enjoyed getting to hear more than just these two songs from this new style that they developed.

But this album is still valuable even for people who aren't fans of live recordings (a lot of time the audience is just too noisy and compromises the music, but in this case the audience was so baffled by what they heard you really don't hear much of them.) I did take one star off because it isn't perfect, but still great."

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