Released through their own Pink Flag label, On the Box finds Wire on the German performance program RockPalast and at the height of the group's impenetrable powers. Running through a majority of Chairs Missing and 154 (which hadn't even been released yet, much to the chagrin of the befuddled German audience) with venomous precision, front man/guitarist Colin Newman jerks like a puppet and essentially lays down a blueprint for the likes of Thom Yorke a decade later; Lewis plays his still-inventive bass hooks with weathered aloofness; guitarist Bruce Gilbert is an ice block adding accents to Newman's lead; drummer Robert "The Human Metronome" Gotobed clicks and pounds with sticks as scalpels.
This is not a posthumous show. The Wire seen on this DVD may be no more, but the elegant pop group that re-formed in the '80s and the noisy unit of angry robots assembled post-millennium feature the same members, and if the sounds don't match, one thing does: They still don't do requests.
