I’m currently reading Read and Burn: A Book About Wire, by Wilson Neate, an entertaining and very comprehensive history of the band’s work. As Wire are not a particularly press-friendly group, much of this story is new to me (I had no idea that much of the band’s existence was a power struggle between Colin Newman and Bruce Gilbert, until the latter left Wire in 2004).
Map Ref is a beautiful song, an ode to travel that musically reflects the experience as good as any song on the subject I’ve heard (the title is a map coordinate - where, I have no idea). That chorus, in particular, is sublime. According to Neate, it was written and delivered to EMI Records as the “pop hit” as the label wanted a return on their investment with Wire’s third LP (154) in 1979. Only in an alternate reality, as it turns out. The writer demonstrates that Wire were often their own worst enemy at finding lasting commercial success and a profile higher than cult status.
In spite of that, this song is Wire at their most melodic and beautiful. Those are two adjectives not often applied to a group as committed to experimentation and conceptual art as Wire, but they should be (Neate also reveals that beyond the band’s pale public image, privately they know how to enjoy themselves and have great senses of humor).
My Bloody Valentine also recorded an equally wonderful version of the song (their last recording before going silent for 22 years).
Because I am a dork, one of the first things I did when I discovered Google maps was to enter these coordinates. The fact that I don’t remember where it led (somewhere over the USA?) supports my notion that the song is not about the destination so much as what you are thinking about when you travel— the green bits in an outdated map that could be anywhere and nowhere at all, the view from your airplane window, those multi-hued rectangles and lines, remembering.
(Source: Spotify)
