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I was a huge DM fan in my youth. Still enjoy some of the 80s stuff. I can still appreciate Violator, although at times it is bit too emotionally overwrought.
Revisiting the 80s stuff now, and discounting A Broken Frame as an album too trifling (aside from its beautiful cover art), it seems that Black Celebration has not aged as well as I thought it would. The title track, "Stripped", and "Fly on the Windscreen" still sound good to me, but much of the rest is just embarrassing. I used to think that was the best DM album. Now I'm of the mind that Construction Time Again, Some Great Reward, and Music for the Masses are the essentials.
Everything from Ultra and thereafter was just rubbish...sorry! I'll give this new one a listen-to, though.
Also, as a record, 101 is terrible. As a movie, it's pretty fun. And I was actually there at the Rose Bowl show! I was about 100 rows back surrounded by screaming girls. My older cousins took me along, figuring I'd be so stoked. But just a few weeks before, I had seen my very first live show....a backyard pool-party event with Savage Republic which was so sublime and incredible. I was really excited that Wire opened the Rose Bowl show, but no one seemed to care. It didn't matter that Wire were only playing songs from their last two (pretty bad) albums and nothing from the great first three albums...I was still bummed that no one seemed to show any respect. This may have contributed as much as anything to my Northern California supremacist attitude about Angelenos.
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