Wire will re-release their first iconic LPs Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154 along with special edition CD books. They will include a number of previously unreleased songs as well as an 80-page hardback book of rare photos. The band actually recorded a total of 26 demos for their ‘Chairs Missing’ album which includes this raw version of their track ‘French Film Blurred’. Having recorded the song in 1977, the tune got re-written in 1978. Classic post punk in all its glory, this is taken from Chairs Missing, which is out May 18th. A standard edition of the albums will land June 22nd via Wire’s label Pinkflag.

Touching on the song, Colin Newman said:

“I liked the text so I gave it a new, more thoughtful, slightly off kilter, tune. There was a palpable sense of progress. It was as if the new material, as it increased in volume & ambition, was literally pushing anything that sounded backwards looking (and by April 1978 that meant anything that sounded like it belonged on ‘Pink Flag’) out the door. Thus the story of version 1 of ‘French Film Blurred’ carries a strong element of the story of Wire. Progress is all. There’s nothing wrong with the tune. It’s a perfectly acceptable piece of music that does sound like a development from the material on ‘Pink Flag’ and is in it’s own way quite charming but is then utterly eclipsed, in terms of style & sophistication, by the version that eventually turned up on Chairs Missing.”