Various Artists
You can’t hear your favorite song too many times. But what if you start listening to that song the way somebody else hears it? If you share your affection for a classic tune with lots of other admirers, you’ve probably had to suffer through some ill-advised cover versions–well-known songs invite all kinds of laziness from their interpreters, good intentions notwithstanding. Some bands wander far afield, relying on listeners to carry the original in their heads and superimpose it over a threadbare remake (like the Scissor Sisters’ glittery disco makeover of “Comfortably Numb”). Other artists stick too close to the original, as though hoping to extract nourishment from it parasitically (Michael Bolton’s baby-barf rendition of “When a Man Loves a Woman” leaps to mind, thanks to a recent visit to Dominick’s).
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The chief difference between the Wire compilations and, say, a tribute to “Louie, Louie” is that a canonical song like “Louie, Louie” has acquired a layer of significance beyond the content of its lyrics (such as they are). A song like that is about consensus–the original is so ubiquitous, so endemic to rock culture, that all a cover artist is ever able to do is reference it. At a certain level, playing “Louie, Louie” indifferently but competently is the same as playing it like it changed your life or playing it like you want to tear it a new asshole. The song’s strange immunity to passion was why the Stooges and Black Flag used it to torture hostile audiences: it was a reliable way to drive home the point that everyone in the room sucked, including the band onstage.
Nineteen versions of “Louie, Louie” is probably 18 too many, but you can sit through 19 versions of “Outdoor Miner” without losing your mind (or even hitting the skip button). A Houseguest’s Wish is cohesive, of course, given its premise, but it also feels remarkably varied, in part because the original recording doesn’t have such a heavy footprint. What could have been just another goofy curio documenting Wire’s ongoing influence on modern rock turns out to be a surprisingly listenable album.
Toward the end of 1978, when Wire had been signed to EMI subsidiary Harvest for about 18 months, execs at the label took the unusual step of asking the band to lengthen “Outdoor Miner” for a single release. Labels usually commission shorter, more radio-friendly mixes of songs they see as potential hits, but the album version of “Outdoor Miner” was only a few seconds longer than the shortest number one single of all time, Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs’ “Stay” (1:37).
An afterlife for a silverfish
