A punk-poppy classic taken from Wire’s debut album Pink Flag. Form a guitar point of view this is fairly beginner-friendly and an excellent barre chord workout.
Post-Punk
Mercy by Wire
Number two in my series of Wire lessons. This track is taken from their second album Chairs Missing.
Tab for this one is on the Patreon page.
West Germany by Minutemen
In this lesson I’m taking a look at the guitar style of the mighty D Boon of California punk(?) band Minutemen.
Here’s the live clip I mention in the video. Love the way D Boon moves on stage!
And here’s Nels Cline taking about his favourite riffs. West Germany is towards the end. Far be it from me to criticise the mighty Nels, but I think he gets it a bit wrong…sorry!
Three Girl Rhumba by Wire
Wire lesson number 3. Probably their best known song. Easy to play, but still great.
Tab is on the Patreon page. But to be honest it’s easy enough to learn without the tab.
Making Plans For Nigel by XTC
In this lesson I’m looking at XTC’s glorious 1979 single, Making Plans for Nigel. Here’s what the original sounds like (with some great vintage Top of the Pops footage):
Three Gang Of Four Riffs
In this lesson I’m taking a look at 3 of my favourite riffs from Gang of Four’s Andy Gill. Tab/music can be found below. For a high-quality, downloadable PDF click here.
Get The Sound
According to my research Andy Gill’s famously abrasive guitar sound on Entertainment was achieved by plugging a Fender Strat into a solid state Peavey Classic amp. As usual, in my video I’m just trying to get reasonably close to the right sound with the gear I have. So I’m using my 52 Reissue Tele into an 80s Fender Super Champ. Distortion comes from a Mooer Black Secret distortion pedal, set quite bright with a medium level of gain. A lot of the sound comes from your your hands and fingers though, so give it some attitude and play hard!