Portland’s Wipers never really made a dent in the music scene and maybe that was precisely their intention. When the band formed in 1977, vocalist/guitarist Greg Sage was adamant they were to remain a studio project, dismissing the conventional path of touring and self-promotion in the hope that the mystique would generate wider interest. This bold and somewhat courageous approach didn’t last, and the three-piece spent the last year of the ’70s building their live reputation.
The trio's debut album, Is This Real?, was released on Park Avenue Records in January, 1980. The album didn’t receive much attention in the press - though The Village Voice's esteemed critic Robert Christgau praised Sage's "hard-edged vocals" and the "economical one-hook construction" of his songs - and went relatively unnoticed outside the Pacific Northwest. But Is This Real? was a savage debut and five decades later, it’s considered a classic in the punk rock genre despite being so neglected at the time.
