We setup our second shared hosting server in Europe last week in Digital Ocean’s London-based data center. Originally it was in response to the poor performance we were having with our Kraftwerk server in Frankfurt. As fate would have it, Kraftwerk is running better than ever since we set this new server up, but we are still ready and willing to take any request to be moved off Kraftwerk onto, wait for it …. the Wire server.
Our own correspondent is sorry to tell
Of an uneasy time that all is not well
On the borders there’s movement
In the hills there is trouble
From “Reuters”
Named after London’s punk pioneers that were eluded by mainstream success of bands like The Clash, Sex Pistols, and The Ramones, but had arguably as great an influence on everything from hardcore to post-punk to alternative music of the 80s, 90s and beyond. Their debut album Pink Flag has become a classic, and to steal a quote from the Wikipedia article:
Steve Huey of AllMusic opined that Pink Flag was “perhaps the most original debut album to come out of the first wave of British punk”
That’s something. It’s worth listening to all 22 songs, the shape and form of the album displays obvious influence on The Minutemen‘s Double Nickels on the Dime. It defies an simple definition of punk, hence its wide influence, and in many ways captures the spirit of musical exploration around the idea of punk before that word morphs into a genre-defining set of characteristics that come to dictate the form in the 1980s. My first exposure to Wire was through Minor Threat’s cover of their song “12XU:”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAMVGvCuV3I
I remember listening to them based on the cover and thinking they’re not punk. That might provide a small, solipsistic sense of how alien they could seem only 8 or 9 years after releasing their debut album. But listening to them 30 years later they’re fresher than ever. So, in honor of timeless British punk, Europe’ second shared hosting server, and the UK’s first,* is named in their honor.
Special thanks to Anne-Marie Scott who was willing to help us make sure this one worked by allowing us to migrate her sites before the announcement, and we can confirm no blog posts were lost during the transfer 🙂
*Might be worth noting this is not our first server in Digital Ocean’s London data center, we also host Coventry University’s instance of Domain of One’s Own through this data center, but given that is not a shared hosting server it is fair to say Wire is the UK’s first shared hosting server.
