Your iconic summer

TRIBE CALLED QUEST | JOÃO GILBERTO | BUTTHOLE SURFERS | B-52’S
STEELY DAN | ALAN AND RICHARD BISHOP | GEORGE MICHAEL | “KIDD” JORDAN
WIRE | TEENAGE JESUS & THE JERKS | THE FEELIES | CHARLIE HADEN | YAZ
THE EX WITH GÉTATCHÈW MÈKURYA | RHYS CHATHAM | JUDAS PRIEST

Photograph: Adam Scott

Wire

South Street Seaport; May 30 FREE

Landmark achievement: In its salad days at the end of the ’70s, the London art-punk band unleashed a classic triptych of albums—Pink Flag, Chairs Missing and 154—charting a swift and unforgiving progression that would be impossible in today’s more rigid climate.

Why see them now: The resurrected Wire is no nostalgia act: Its recent material—an excellent string of EPs and an album on its own Pink Flag label—is savage, dark and political. The band, which will release the full-length Object 47 later in the summer, remains a force to be reckoned with onstage.

Photograph: Imogen Brown

I’m officially obsessed
Will Griggs, 22, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; record label cofounder

“The one record my dad would actually let me borrow was this cassette compilation called The Rare Stuff. I became obsessed with all the tracks without really knowing who the artists were. It had two of Wire’s early songs on it: ‘Dot Dash’ and ‘Options R.’ I have a lot of great memories involving driving around in our Dodge Caravan and listening to that tape when I was six or seven.”

Listen to "Dot Dash"