Every great band has its one notorious fiasco of a concert, whether it’s Suicide’s famously disastrous Brussels show opening for Elvis Costello, or Kings Of Leon getting a taste of pigeon feces in St. Louis. Half of Wire’s Document & Eyewitness comprises what may well be the band’s most legendary gig, which was part Dadaist cabaret (including a moving sheet, behind which the band performed), and part confrontational performance art. A goose was involved in it, somehow; per the liner notes: “Vocalist accompanied and lit by illuminated goose.” It certainly sounds — at a distance — like one hell of a spectacle, which probably accounts for how poorly it was received by the crowd. The group plays only one song from its first three albums — “12XU,” which appears as a truncated tease, likely included for the sake of antagonizing the audience. The heckling, however, is kept for posterity, though we don’t get to witness the bottles being thrown at the band.

Unfortunately, the visual spectacle doesn’t translate, and the sound of the album is actually quite poor, as the eight-track recorder that captured it wasn’t set up correctly. So the first half of Document & Eyewitness is mostly a jumbled mess, with the band abandoning their best material in favor of more wildly experimental stuff, which admittedly works more often than not, like the dizzying “We Meet Under Tables,” the no-wave skronk of “Eels Sang Lino,” or the unexpectedly melodic “Revealing Trade Secrets.” But at their weirdest moments, like “ZEGK HOQP,” it’s a little more like Throbbing Gristle’s unsettling The Second Annual Report.

The second half of Document & Eyewitness, by comparison, more closely resembles the classic Wire of Chairs Missing or 154. These are punk songs, by and large, and excellent ones at that — including a couple songs that the audience had probably heard before, like 154’s “Two People In A Room.” This half was recorded at Notre Dame Hall and Montreux in 1979, and it’s basically a different band. Where the Wire on Sides A and B were undergoing a kind of nervous breakdown onstage, Sides C and D showcase the band at their peak. It’s hard to square the two with each other — especially knowing that the performances were recorded only eight months apart. If you listen to Document & Eyewitness in reverse order, you end up with what sounds like a band falling apart right in front of you.