Paid Attention: Johnny Dean Of Menswear's Favourite Albums | Page 13 of 14 | The Quietus

Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

12. WirePink Flag

The weird thing about the internet is that is turned everyone’s ability to form an opinion into an exercise in copy and paste. Things like, "Menswear were a one hit wonder" – well, we weren’t if you were around at the time, we had quite a few top 20 singles actually. The other one is this idea that we ripped off Elastica and… it’s the one thing that really gets on my tits because we were ripping off Wire! I used to go to Blow Up and we were quite friendly with Graham Coxon and because we lived in Southend he used to let us sleep on his front room floor. He’d get up the next day and play records to us and that’s when I first heard Wire. It’s a traditional band set-up but insanely tight, the tightest band I’ve ever heard in my life, which gives them a machine-like quality. It’s very robotic and the fact Colin Newman doesn’t really sing really fired my imagination. The two big songs on this for me are ‘Lowdown’ and ‘Strange’, which will come as no surprise if you like ‘Daydreamer’.

Selected in other Baker’s Dozens: Emma Anderson, Tim Booth, Mike Watt, Lloyd Cole
PreviousNext Record

The Quietus Digest

Sign up for our free Friday email newsletter.

Support The Quietus

Our journalism is funded by our readers. Become a subscriber today to help champion our writing, plus enjoy bonus essays, podcasts, playlists and music downloads.

Support & Subscribe Today