The Wipers are hands down the best 'punk' band ever. The Wipers are actually melodically intelligent and interesting... I don't hear that in a lot of punk bands.

i think that Sage made his own pedals. at least i think i recall reading that some where.

yeah they are one of my favorite bands if anyone couldn't tell already.

I recommend their album Silver Sail.

I have Is This Real, Youth of America, and Over The Edge.

Also Wipers are among the few shirts that I own.

that's the established 'must own' trilogy, and is very reasonably priced from zeno records (sage's own label).

i really really like _Straight Ahead_, his first solo record. it's a tough one to find, though.

best punk band ever...

They're a very fun band I must say, thanks for getting me into them Eric. Oh, they have their LP at Cheap Thrills too :)

If you haven't got it, you can go fuck yourself. And then get it.

"Over the Edge" is the shit.

I think they did a good punk "trilogy" with their three albums but I would say Wire did better with their punk "trilogy": "Pink Flag", "Chairs Missing" and "154".

Nah but I love agent orange

the first three records mark for me the most perfect trilogy in punk rock.

my hard core friend hates them but i think the first three wipers albums are just too good. just the right mixture of anger and emotion. i'm listening to "is this real" right now and it's just too great to be true. and when you're at it, get some flipper stuff also. combine those two with the melvins and you have nirvana.and concerning wire: yes, the best trilogy EVER.PERIOD.

Wire and the Wipers are surely close to each other on record stacks, and they both started out with three great albums which they could never again match, but beyond that, why is anyone here comparing them as if they were part of some competition?

Yes, those first three albums are surely 99th-percentile all-time great LPs, and they are not only available on the 3CD "Boxed Set" on Greg Sage's Zeno Records for cheap (along with other unreleased tracks on each disc), they are also recently available on vinyl from Jackpot Records outta Portland and definitely worth picking up on that format, too.

But the Boxed Set doesn't contain everything that's essential.

There's a couple of boots out there, including an LP with a paste-up sleeve called Complete Discography 1978-90, which is, of course, a terrible misnomer. But it's got the first 7" which Greg released on his own Trap Records label, plus compilation tracks from the Portland Punk Live at Earth: 10-29-79 LP (which as a compilation of all bands from one city that was recorded all at one place on the same night stands alone as the greatest record of its kind) and the Trap Sampler. The B-side is pretty iffy, but that early stuff is otherwise extremely rare and very expensive on the collector market.

The Wipers are definitely one of the four or five most-revisited bands around my house.

Straight Ahead--Greg's solo LP that was mentioned here--is also pretty good. There was also a live LP that came out around that time which is pretty good as well, as it covers mostly songs from the early catalog. But after that, things are not as recommendable to most fans or anyone expecting the Wipers to be some kinda pinnacle of punk rock. Greg Sage started to get in touch with his inner Hendrix, but pointing more toward the burned-out, wallowy direction that Jimi's music was taking before he died. There's some moments of beauty and power on those late 80s albums (and into the 90s), but I'm afraid that too much of the early albums' edge is lost, and what edge is left is squandered by a very contemporary-sounding set of studio production values. The drum sound makes me cringe.

best wipers cover ive heard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDWWvjVBArw

The first time I took a whole hit of acid was at a Wipers / U-men show back in 1985. As DJ Rick says, they had already hit their peak record-wise, but of course it was a phenomenal live experience.

I could listen to Youth of America for weeks on end and not get bored of it, even though it's in many ways totally primitive. Sage kind of suffered from learning to play guitar the same way Reed did in his mid-solo career.

I think Land Of The Lost and Follow Blind are but yeah the drumsound isn't much on them.

And Satan hitted the right cover.