The Way Life Is

Boys cuddle over Christmas.


X has a camera!


Strike a pose, vogue.


X gives Luke a kiss before setting off.


The wind took a great big bite out of my roof when the speeds went up to 70mph last month.


We got accosted by cocks.


We pose on the train


Boy in the box.


Tube philosophy
- posted by Mark @ 10:40 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
JESUS JONES / JIMBOB - London Islington Academy - 28 January 2012


“Welcome to the museum of modern music”, Mike Edwards announces, before Jesus Jones kick into another of their multitude of lesser known international bright young nineties pop hits, in this strange venue – a converted shop inside a shopping centre, opposite a clothes shop. Haberdashery, needles, spoons, and knives. Ground floor, shopper's paradise.

But first, the support act : JimBob, the acoustic version of Carter USM, has returned from a solo musical hibernation with new material and a bag of great songs that haven't been heard for a long time. Armed with just an acoustic guitar and a suit, JimBob plays songs new and old. There's no qualitative gap between the big songs of 1990-1995 and the smaller, more intimate ones : more that, without the muscle of a huge record company chartering jets and aiming for Number 1 albums, these records sell in the hundreds and not the hundreds of thousands. If anything, his songs – their deft use of language grounded in the minutae of British life – are a more specific brand of social commentary that shames Morrissey's finest moments, and shorn of the universal air of human self-pity. Or, another way, JimBob's closest peer would be a modern day Philip Larkin with a guitar. Songs well known - “Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere”, “Bloodsport For All”, “Do Re Me So Far So Good”, “The Only Living Boy In New Cross” nuzzle up to recent gems such as “The Tesco Riots”. It's a short half hour, with the crowd receiving the older songs with joy and the newer ones with curiousity, laying the groundwork for a continuing journey through life as songs. After four years of high profile Carter nostalgia shows, it is a refreshing experience to have the solo songs return to life and live again in front of your eyes.



Half an hour later (and, at 8.15 prompt), Jesus Jones take the stage. For no reason other than they can, every three or four years, Jesus Jones get together for a week or so and pretend to be pop stars again. It's nothing more, and nothing less, than a thoroughly enjoyable romp through an under-appreciated bands back catalogue.

And, what seems alien now, is that it is twenty one years since their biggest record, the slender but nourishing “Doubt”. And no, it isn't a play-the-album-in-full gig. Nothing dates faster than a vision of the future that never came to pass, after all. For a couple of brief summers, this band, and Pop Will Eat Itself, and EMF, all occupied roughly the same place, welding the possibilities of drum machines and guitars and big pop songs : all admittedly with varying degrees of success.



We can laugh at the fashions now : what on earth were you thinking with orange shorts and purple leggings and huge red hats with a thousand fake legs poking out of them? Then again, the big flares or 1990, or the rat-tail jumpers of 1992 were also equally loathsome. And the big white jumpers and floppy Beatle haircuts of 1996. You don't listen to music with your eyes, anyway.

I've now passed the point where I've seen this band more in their reunion years than in their glory. And, to be blunt, they are probably better now than they were then. There's no qualitative difference, at the very least. And, whilst the set is made of old songs, it is no tired nostalgia show. Some songs you might expect - “The Devil You Know”, “The Right Decision”, “The Next Big Thing” - are absent, and instead rarely-played songs - “Blissed”, “Get A Good Thing”, “What's Going On”, are present. You may lament the loss of these songs, but a band is not a jukebox and whilst some of these songs may have paid for their houses, it is not a debt that anyone has to carry. Besides which, haven't bands performed some songs enough? I could happily live the rest of my life without hearing “Wonderwall” again.



They open with “Who Where Why”, which is probably the most enjoyably brash existential crisis I will hear all night. Sometimes its difficult really to connect the impressionistic lyrics with anything in particular : I'm not sure what “Move Mountains” is about, if anything, after twenty one years. Whilst – and in the best sense of the phrase – Jesus Jones were the indie Def Leppard, this is no insult. Words were created and used in the context of phonetics for the earlier records, and sounds were an unholy combination of technology and buzzsaw guitars. And, for a moment, Jesus Jones were huge in the music world.

Those days were different : neither better, nor worse, just utterly different : on the cusp of the analog transition into digital, and the move of our worlds into that of connected bits and bytes. When the future arrived, when computers on every desk became commonplace, and when Oasis ruled the world, Jesus Jones became obselete. We changed, grew up, or grew away, depending on who you listened to, and moved to the next stage. For some people, this music was a fad, locked into a box and replaced with television, Downton Abbey, cooking and home renovations.



Remember when you were alive? When blood flowed? When we jumped and sang and took the night by the horns? What would you know?

You could only buy hits in record shops, on vinyl, cassette, 12” picture disc with an extra song, and CD single. The charts were published weekly in inky paper, and the conduit was the monopoly of print and broadcast media.

That girl, that boy, is still here. International Bright Young Thing, is just such a song. A literate combination of pop at what were then, the boundaries, combined with something deeper. “Caricature”, a b-side that – finally – appeared on an album 21 years after release, goes down better than any other non-hit-single. Were anyone to take their heads out of their collective backside and write a definitive list of “20 best B-sides of all time”, this would be in that list.



Thankfully, it isn't just a case of “PLAY THE HITS AND FUCK OFF”, as Iain Baker's shirt says. Songs are resurrected back to live performance after two decades in hibernation - “Get A Good Thing” was rarely, if ever played, and “Nothing To Hold Me” and “Blissed” haven't been seen since 1991. The first time I saw this band, they disappeared, one by one, to the ghostly chorus of that song, adrift in dry ice and blues and reds that went like a freight train through your mind at 1am.



It's no lazy greatest hits exercise, but it is refreshingly honest to see a band unafraid to tamper with the formula and not just trot out every big song.

There's new stuff too : “The Message” and “Culture Vulture” from the last decade, and songs not played often since 1989.

The main set comes to a close with a four punch of a long lost indie disco. “Zeroes And Ones” was undoubtedly, the band showing their techy stripes – and with “Perverse” taking the unusual mantle of being the first album to be recorded entirely digitally with every instrument recorded and re-sampled – and a compelling romp towards the finish line. After “Bring It On Down”, and the rough and tumble of “Info Freako”, the main set comes to a close with “Idiot Stare” which – to me at least – is one of their finest songs, utilising the much under-appreciated dynamic of tension and release, combined with sweeping string motifs, and deft use of rhythms to bring the night to a crescendo.



And it's not even 9.30 : when I saw Guns N Roses they were still an hour and a half from taking the stage. Two songs later – the full-front Italian piano bongo frenzy of “What Would You Know?” and the aforementioned “Blissed” and it's the end of the trip to the museum of modern music. Cast out into the shopping centre, and with babysitters. Life goes on, but sometimes, for a little while, we can be whoever we were again. It is a mutual moment : Mike Edwards described Jesus Jones existence as “Going on a holiday for a week as pop stars”, and for the audience, it's exactly the same – going on holiday for a night. Last orders is still an hour away, for even if we aren't, the night itself is young.

Set :
Who Where Why / Move Mountains / IBYT /. Caricature / Real Real Real / Nothing To Hold M e/ get A Good Thing / Never Enough / Culture Vulture / All The Answers / Welcome Back, Victoria / The Message ./ Right Here Right Now / What Would You know? / Zeroes And Ones / Bring It on Down / Info Freako / Idiot Stare / What's Going On / Blissed


- posted by Mark @ 7:57 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
It's More Fun To Compute

After last weeks two hour trawl with a dodgy UKASH virus, yesterday morning was.. all things considered, fairly shit. I closed the bonnet on the PC on Friday Night, opened it up the next morning, to find the blue boot screen was frozen. No log in, nothing. The system had hung whilst booting up, and I had no option but to hard reset and start again.

I know. Buy A Mac, it just works!

When the system rebooted, it became fairly clear that whilst booting up it got stuck on one particular element : the network registry was corrupt, and the audio drivers were failing to connect. In short - no Internet, and no sound. And even when I connected the hard DSL cable, the internet was not working. In the meantime, iTunes wasn't working correctly, Windows Explorer wasn't rendering correctly, and the webcam was also out of action. An hour or so later, and it was apparent I would have to format, reload, and reinstall the OS. Bums.

Yesterday largely involved error checking the contents and backing up the Hard Drive. I no doubt missed some files, but I don't know what they are. Today involved reloading, configuring and building the hard drive, then reinstalling all the non-OS programs. I have lost all my progress on Lego Star Wars, but I was only 2.4% in, so I'm not heartbroken yet.

In other news, Amazon provided new heaphones and a new vaccuum cleaner for review, so Sunday has recovered the utter shittness of Saturday and today is pretty ace. And I have a new coat. Small things make all the difference.

How are you doing, anyway?

yeah, yeah. Buy a Mac!
- posted by Mark @ 9:08 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
PET SHOP BOYS format


The sequel, of sorts, to 1995's “Alternative”, “Format” is best seen as perhaps part of a very much a dying breed : The B-sides album. Over their quarter century (is it that long? It doesn't seem so, but it obviously is), the Pet Shop Boys have seen the dominance of the format, the plushing of the vinyl single, the rise, and hasty death of cassette, and the entire lifespan of the CD single : “Always On My Mind” was the first Number One Christmas single available on CD in the UK.

38 songs at a very affordable price in a double set : near enough every Pet Shop Boys song that hasn't been on an album. Near enough.

Now, the b-side is an anarchronism : there are no b-sides anymore. Physical singles are practically extinct : HMV in Oxford Street – the biggest record shop in Europe – contains a two feet of rack space for the CD single. Everything is available on your virtual storefront.

Taking perhaps a strange role then, this record, or box set, of something like 40 songs is a lavish, exhaustive two and a half journey through Pet Shop Boys back pages. Running from 1996 to 2009, from the bands out-of-time “Bilingual” to the largely successful commercial reappraisal of “Yes”, , “Format” is, by definition incomplete – missing the b-sides to the last three singles – and doing what most b-side albums do, which is sound exactly like a collection of songs that don't quite fit well together recorded many years apart.

To their credit, the Pet Shop Boys still bother with b-sides. For many bands, the b-side is now nothing more than a digital bundle of extra leftovers pared off and thrown randomly across the internet through several retailer-only exclusives, or perhaps, even worse, akin to the Depeche Mode remix record from the summer, where 25 extra remixes were only available from 7 seperate digital sellers.

For this band – Britains best songwriting duo – there is no such as a b-side, just a song that doesn't make it onto the album. And here they are. Keen listeners will know first few songs from the 2001 remaster set of “Bilingual”, with others from the various limited double-disc formats of the albums at the time of their release. Others – such as “The former enfant terrible” have only ever been seen as downloads. Not that this necessarily matters, for “Format” collects almost every non-album song from the second fifteen years of their lives, and places them in chronological order . Until such time as an exhaustive set of remasters and reissues slip out for their last few records, “Format” is the place to be.

It starts with “The Truck Driver And His Mate”, which is fine, chunky homo-eroticism at its finest, which perhaps, for the better or the worse, delves right into most stereotypical element of the bands catalogue : they are a gay band, and the opening song is about a gay love triangle for truckers. Beyond this, the rest of this are some of the finest songs you've never heard – 12 songs alone from the “Bilingual” record, including the under-rated remix/amped up re-recording of “Discoteca” which takes a mid-paced ballad and becomes a andrenalised stomper.

“Disco potential” and the somewhat lyrically slight “The View From My Balcony” (which is exactly that), are not the greatest Pet Shop Boys ever.

1999's “Nightlife” was, at the time, semmingly shorn of, and out of step with the world.A brash disco album with tinges of regret, the b-sides were oft overlooked : the band were at this stage, touring to half-empty arenas with a bankrupt Harvey Goldsmith taking the proceeds, and whilst their commercial stock was challenged, the record gifted some of the finest songs they ever wrote – whilst “Je T'Aime” with Sam Taylor Wood is missing, we do get the under-appreciated tussle that is the Chris-Lowe led “Lies”. Sticking with the chronological aim of the record, CD1 ends with “Sexy Northerner”, which is amongst the greatest b-sides of all time : unforgettable, daft and funny in equal measure. The key to happy living is not taking yourself too seriously, after all.

The second CD opens with 8 or 9 songs from the 2002-3 period around the “Release” album, where the bands commercial stock was as low as it has ever been, the material was presented with a somewhat realistic, organic approach and – whilst the relative “back to basics” approach of touring with a regular band of guitars, drums, and so forth and minimalist staging had a certain effect, the overall result was one of a drift from the world of big hits. As was expected, a consolidating greatest hits record was issued : the b-sides from period are both good, average, and somewhat unexceptional. You can see why songs such as “Always” - a midpaced, unexceptional, fogettable song – never made the parent album. And, despite being covered by Robbie Williams, the song “We're The Pet Shop Boys” (itself a cover) is perhaps one of the finest, funniest, and most enjoyable hagiographies ever committed to tape. Later, songs such as “The Resurrectionist”, and a retooled with-Elton-John version of 1989's “In private” are welcome additions and proof, were any needed that after twenty years, the band still had and maintained a certain, unique personality. The kind that if it didn't exist, you would miss it, and wonder where such artists wwhere in the world. By the end of the album, and the prolific “Yes” period, the b-sides of the first two singles are present : but many songs – the b-sides to the German “Beautiful people” single, the Christmas EP, “Together” are all absent without leave, and – time restrictions of the format aside – missing.

“Format” is what it is, both a dying breed of the compilation of the now sadly endangered extra track and b-side, and a compendium of extra songs that supplement and expand the previous five studio records with several additional songs each. Some of them are the finest songs the band have recorded : some of them not so. Some of them are songs that you will hold in your ears with a wonder as to where they have been all your life. Others not so. And, unless you bought a digital download from one specific website, others will be songs you probably didn't know existed. Designed for the casual, this weighty, popstuffed package is a value for money delivery mechanism for 38 songs that have, over the past 15 years, been a well-kept secret from pop music's back pages. We're the Pet Shop Boys, indeed.
- posted by Mark @ 9:30 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
FANTOMAS - "The Directors Cut" : New Years Revolution (Live)


Fantomas are perhaps one of the finest bands most people have never heard of. Their strange and wonderful combination of ambient nose and jazz-thrash metal is about as commercial a prospect as cyanide pie. To me, however, and hopefully you, this music – largely shorn of chorus, discernible structure, or lyrics, is a manna from an angry heaven. Filmed one New Years Eve, Mike Patton – the voice of Faith No More, Mr Bungle, Tomahawk, Peeping Tom, and many others – leads this unholy quartet (with members of Mr Bungle, Mudhoney, and Melvins in his racous orchestra) through the entirity of their unsurpassed 2001 masterpiece “The Directors Cut”. For many, this band were a bag of rubbish. But this album, 13 themes from classic cinema recast and covered with a respectful irreverance, is one of the finest records I have ever heard.

The performance is immaculate and finely honed - it is, amongst all other things, a unit that cohesively glues together seemingly disparate influences to form a whole that is much more than the sum of the parts. And, given that the album they are performing in full explores the world of cinema, the visuals are bizarre. Taking a cue from the classic tricks of old, don't expect a fimmaculate Blu Ray presentation of a show at your local enormodrome. This mixes footages from phones, cameras, and treated formats, combined with a dded grain, distorted, and playfully applied visual tricks including blurred moments, ghosting, static cross fades, fake VHS interference, painted on glowing red devil eyes, and anything else you can think of treating the visual images as moving palette of experiments.

Then again, if you made it to the third paragraph of this review, you'll know Fantomas aren't exactly Linkin Park for the middleaged. You should expect more than the usual run-of-the-mill singer-points-and-everyone-goes-whoo experience you will get with your latest Madonna live DVD. Besides, it's not as if there is a giant robot about to emerge from backstage, or anything like that for your delection. Just four men (one in a hat) with a cacophony of noise for you to experience. If anything, there is little music in the world that requires such rapt attention, as tempos rise and fall, music becomes a form to used, abused, and left for dead. Opening with “The Godfather”, the set for me, peaks with the totally fucking bugnuts 2-minute race through Jerry Goldsmith's theme “The Omen” - during which Satan Worship has never seemed quite so appealing. The drummer is a frantic blur of limbs. Throughout the 70 minutes, the band roar and dip and play ; in the truest sense of the word, play – with the music with a sense of amusement and outlandish quirky whimsy with whistles, theremins, and grinding guitars wormed into an experience I can best described as the musical equivalent of extreme sex. As Maybe it's something you had to be there for, or something you had to feel in your guit at an insane volume in a crowded room. Fantomas are, like everything these musicians has been involved in, a labour of love, where music is made more with the idea of the glory of the noise instead of any eye towards key issues. Who cares how many copies it sells? Who cares about many tickets? As long as you don't have to do a day job as well, a musician can make music, for that is what he does and where his instinct takes him – often at the cost and sacrifice of pension schemes, medical insurance, or an affluent life, but with a richness far beyond that of any bank balance. A glorious continuation of the muse, and the music.
- posted by Mark @ 9:40 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
How To Remove the Ukash Virus.


Yesterday I got hit with the particularly nasty malware scam. Though it took me about 90 minutes to solve, I found the whole thing was an awful lot of lead of faith and trial and error. If you've found me by a search engine, congratulations, you've probably got it. Stay calm. Get something with caffeine in. This will take about 20 minutes.

First off, you'll find your entire system is locked down so there are just two options. Task Manager, starting any new programmes, accessing anything in almost every application, all locked down. I could open .jpgs, so luckily, baby pics on a USB drive saved me.

The typical page looks like this. Yep. The usual, illiterate you were look at violence child pornography nonsense. How do you get rid of it? It's a wee bit techy, but not beyond anypne.

1. Insert a USB stick and open a file in Firefox or Chrome. (This is how I got to google the instructions to solve it and do the research). Navigate to google, and search the virus name.

2. You may have to do a hard reboot by yanking your power plug or holding down the "start" button for a few seconds. When the start page boots up, press F8 repeatedly. Boot in Safe Mode. From here, click on start. In the text box, type msconfig. From here, you will be able to see what programmes are in your start-up options when the machine boots under a normal configuration.

3. Look for a file that is a totally random string of numbers such as 08896765658807655.exe. It should be located in C:\Users\(Your Name)\AppData\Local\Temp. The manufacturer may be "unknown". Unclick the "Startup Item" box, so this will not start the program when you boot up. Tick "Apply". It was probably enabled about the exact time your system was compromised.

The virus will be called something like "Shark Fear Wait", run by The Orb Network, and have a modifed/installed date/time identical to when your system got locked down, in this menu.

4. Reboot in normal mode. Open Windows Explorer. Set it so it shows "Hidden files and folders". Navigate to the location you found the file (totally random set of numbers).exe in. Delete that file. Go to your recycle bin. Empty it. Clear out your cache, temp files, and internet history. Just to be sure.

5. Update and run a complete virus scan. Lots of people recommend Malawarebytes. I don't have a preference.

6. Reboot your system, you should now be clean.

What a ruthlessly executed idea - to lock down all your permissions apart from those needed to pay the £100 ransom demanded by a non existent police force that cannot spell. The intelligence and devious thinking demonstrated is certainly smarter than your average malware scam, and it probably wasn't cheap. Whoever coded this knew exactly what they were doing. And they didn't care about the effects on anyone apart from making money through theft.

Now. If only they'd used that to create something that wasn't a criminal scam.
- posted by Mark @ 9:25 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Internet Addict


Is Internet Usage An Addiction?

According to the The Independent, The United Nations, Internet Access is a human right. Certainly, over the past twenty years, the Internet has revolutionised the majority of human interaction. Twenty years ago, life was clearly defined by opening hours. Shops closed at 5.30pm on Saturdays, supermarkets were only open late on Thursdays, and if you wanted to pay bills you often sat down for an hour a month and wrote and posted cheques for every service you received. The only established dialogue between people was a one-way communication from the throne of the media to the populace in the printed form. The vast majority of the world was able to spread ideas to strangers through the letters page of the newspapers, magazines, and – occasionally – in photocopied fanzines. Life was expensive, time consuming, and the stressful tussle of a Saturday morning race around the local supermarket before the shelves were stripped bare by hungry people who worked for a living was certainly one of the least enjoyable parts of many peoples everyday lives.

Nowadays, you can click “repeat previous order”, and your shopping arrives (albeit with orange juice replaced by orange paint) at your doorstep.

So... is frequent Internet use an addiction? Absolutely not. With the transformation of the access the population have from print media to the internet, anyone in the country can, if they really want, set up a website about anything. And, be it derelict railway stations, or your wedding, they can and do. In order to participate in modern Britain, Internet use is practically a necessity. If you want the best prices and largest choice for your utilities, your travel, concert tickets, consumable goods (music, books, and film), the Internet is the broadband nipple you should eat from.

How could business be done these days, if you waited for the postman to arrive with the letters in the mid-afternoon? How could you work flexibily, from home, or caring for children or relatives, or stranded with cancelled trains in a suburban snow drift, without it? Slowly, and with incumbent delays, for a start.

Engagement in many aspects of modern life, culture, news, and my friends who live half way across the world, or work night shifts, is only practically possible through the time-shifting element of the Internet. Time spent working at home in evenings, and on the train travelling to and from work, is time I don't spend at the office until 10pm. For us who are relatively lucky enough to have jobs, albeit understaffed and with high workloads, the Internet allows me to leave work with enough time to give my children a bath and put them to put at night. For those of us for who love people where 8pm in their country is 4am in mine, or for those where the only opportunity for daily phone contact is to call someone in America on their lunch hour when it is 1am in Britain, the Internet is the only practical way to keep relationships alive. Ask any touring businessman, musician, or anyone whose parents are in Australia, for example.



Imagine a world where the only way to watch the news was at three set times in the day – 1pm, 6pm, and 10pm. Imagine a world where the only news you could read had been vetted and sanitised with the agenda of a set of shareholders and checked with a Paper Editor. Where the people involved, or accused, in these stories, were silent and voiceless to correct gross lies unless it served an agenda. Imagine if all you read about Hugh Grant, or Christopher Jefferies or Mllly Dowler was through the lens of a newspaper trying to shift product.

Certainly, the signal to noise ratio can be very high. More than once, the adage “Never read the bottom half of the internet” has been heard. But it is not Internet usage which is an addiction : the Internet is a portal, and like any machine – a car, a cigarette, pornography (42,337 of the 1,000,000 most popular sites are porn) – it is not what it is that is crucial, but the usage it provides. The Internet, like any machine, is not an end in itself. A car undriven is just a lump of metal parked somewhere. A cigarette unsmoked is just tobacco wrapped in paper. In the same way that people are not actually addicted to cigarettes – but to nicotine, the medium – The Internet – and the message and function are easily confused. A woman who starved her 3 year old baby whilst playing World Of Warcraft is not an Internet addict, but a World of Warcraft Addict. It is no surprise it is called “World Of Warcrack”, and there are “Warcraft Widows” the world over. The addiction is not to the method of delivery – the cigarette, the roar of an engine, the roar of the guitar or the orgasm of promisciousity or the thrill of the goal – but to what it does to human beings somewhere inside of us on a physical, chemical, psychological basis : a temporary, impermanent escape from the prison of circumstances that surround us.

Certainly, when real life itself is frankly, mundane, often boring, and frequently fairly joyless, the Internet can offer a vital opportunity for us to recast ourselves as who we want to be and not who or what the circumstances of our finances and social surroundings force us to be. And the Internet is, relatively speaking, a cheaper, and more reliable form of entertainment than almost all the other options. A film costs £8.80 and barely lasts two hours excluding adverts for mobile phone providers and caloriffic sugary products. If reality itself were not mundance and joyless, then a Washing-Up-Simulator App, or perhaps a Xbox Game called “Get To Work On Time!” (which involves, say 60 minutes of standing motionless and trying not to touch anything, which would oddly enough be similar to games such as Desert Bus! and Takeshi's Challenge) would be an enormous success.



All human addiction is a desire to transcend and escape reality. The key to any enjoyable activity is to knowing when you have to come back down to reality. The issue of Internet Addiction is symptomatic of something else : anyone who has been a sleepless, exhausted parent knows the temptation to reclaim an hour of time to be something other than a Mother- or Father-Unit shackled to a small child.

There is no such thing as Internet Addiction, as such. Like Food Addiction, modern life has become such that to fully engage in our world around us, we must partake in use of the Internet to pay our bills and interact : in the same way that a food addict must eat or starve to death. All addiction is not an addiction to the medium, but what the trigger creates in our mind : a distraction from the often less than amazing reality.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.", Philip K Dick, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later".
- posted by Mark @ 10:03 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Dear BBC
TOO MUCH SPORT COVERAGE.



Both BBC1 (something about Freddie Flintoff) and BBC2 (Darts! Darts! Darts! zzzzzzzzzz) are both currently showing sports coverage. Sports? In the middle of winter at 11pm? Why? Can't you create a BBC Sports and just be done with it? I don't like sport, and having BOTH channels monopolised by middle aged blokes throwing objects at each other in competition is boring, boring, boring. I spend more than enough time at work bored out of my skull, or buried under a crying sleepless child bored out of my skull, to then find the BBC are subjecting me to cheap, allegedly "quality" programming about sport. I want a wider selection of programming than SPORT SPORT SPORT. If you must show pointless sports coverage then please try not to show it on all your terrestrial channels at the same time, because then I have to watch grim social realism dramas on Channel 4 or rubbish Hollywood blockbusters with Mel Gibson, and that's only tolerable because it's not middle aged balding fat sportsmen. Less sport please.
- posted by Mark @ 11:37 PM 4 comments links to this post

 
UNDERWORLD - A Collection / An Anthology 1992-2012


Replacing 2003's now incomplete collection, “A Collection” and “Anthology” are, in effect two parts of the same whole. I despair though, of the release strategy for this. To obtain every song on this wonderful release, you have to buy both the single and triple CD versions. The new, post-Barking, 2011 recordings, including “The First Note Is Silent”, the Eno colloboration “Bee Bop Hurry”, and the download-only, unheralded 2009 single “Downpipe”, are only on the single disc, remixed/edited “Collection”. The single disc version is also the only place you can find any version of “King of Snake”.

For a more comprehensive overview, you need to plump for the full length mixes and broadband version that is triple-set of “Anthology”. Or, if you're like me, you have to buy them both. To the casual fan, it doesn't really matter which one you go for. They've all got “Born Slippy” on.

How far we have come since then. It doesn't seen 18 years ago that I loaded the phoenomenal “Dubnobassinmyheadman” onto the deck, fired up the Playstation, and played racing games, Doom, and GrandTheftAuto, on summer days with the summer sun streaming in and the sound of softly pulsing machines keeping my heart beating. It doesn't seem 15 years ago I danced all night to “Pearls Girl” in Manchester, London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Chelmsford, Brixton, Stafford, and so many other nights knowing that whilst the morning was coming, even if it was dawn outside, the morning hadn't come yet. Steam rising from young limbs as we fell into the cold streets and rain at 2am. These songs, this band, those shows, were the ones that – like contemporaries Orbital, Aphex Twin, The Orb – were ones that are both of a time, and utterly timeless.



If Underworld didn't exist would anyone invent them? Of course not. The idea of two fifty something technogeeks pulling out three hour sets of relentless, dense, and intelligent electronic music, and celebrating the utter silliness of the world would baffle people. After all, they started out as a lumpen semi-Simple Minds, turned into part of Debbie Harry's backing band, and then reinvented themselves. Certainly, over time, Underworld evolve, change, mutate, but also, always at their heart are the same thing : a great big lump of machines making a big noise. The story is told chronologically. And whilst “ A Collection” runs backwards through time, opening with the new material – all of which stands up next to the better known 'Big Hits', the fear here is that the band put the big stuff at the end so people don't reach for off/skip button when the future starts being the recent past and not the distant past of futures unlived. Certainly, there's wonderful bursts of chemically-enjoyable breathless pop with “Scribble”, the under-stated slink of “Crocodile”, and following a mid decade absence of five years from the record scene – punctuated only by the odd vinyl, Japanese only live album, or soundtrack release – we drift back to “Two Months Off”. “A Collection” concentrates on the big numbers, “Push Upstairs”, “King of Snake”, “Jumbo” (bafflingly, a miniscule hit at the time, the pop equivalent of a 'sleeper hit'), all capture the way a big night might sound the morning after. Not the chemical rush, the crash of eyes, the brush of skin, the moment your nose fills with the smell of her midnight hair as you stare to the ceiling, and you dance, dance, dance, and wonder could this be love? Could this be The One? Who knows? The words surround and enscapulate, capture the confusion, the waitress, the red and yellow, the lager, the lager, acid ted, blonde boy and this is now and here and all happens around in your ears. And if you are listening to this on your iPhone at the station, or walking down the road, or even doing the washing up, whilst our bodies may be here, in Meatspace, we are all somewhere else, dancing in our minds, grabbing a cab home with a stranger or a lover, the music, and the gentle sound of a Sunday morning. And this is where, like The Shamen and so many others, where Pop met the dancefloor.

Certainly at one point, Underworld, like New Order, Depeche Mode, Orbital, and everyone else, changed – and became dance music for people that didn't go dancing until dawn anymore. But did this hurt us? No. You cannot remain the same forever : let that crown of thorns sit on the heads of AC/DC, who have remain frozen in some kind of musical amber since 1977. The joy, the power of this, the importance of this is not just how they were, but also how they are now, how they have tracked their lives, changed and evolved and grown up and become something else.



As “A Collection” races backwards, the listener is faced with the odd sense of the record speeding up – faster, more intense, as we race to the end. But it doesn't really matter. The cutting, sawing, heart racing “Cowgirl” doesn't mean anything, but in this rush of noise and confusion and clusterfudging, it means everything.

For “Anthology 1992-2012”, it present a more cohesive set, a wider overview : split from the necessarily evil of the pop format, here the songs live and breathe to the full extent, over three hours of material designed for cycling, dancing, or some kind of intense physical activity – an orgy, perhaps – where the mind loses itself in the body and you achieve, as I have rarely felt, but treasure, where we transcend the mind and the boundaries of known perception fall away and we are perhaps best known, in ourselves, just being, no lonmger doing, or thinking, but exploring, in our own universe. Over two discs, the mind can wander : much like those rare moments in my life – particularly seeing Pink Floyd do “Echoes” - where everything goes away and I am somewhere, someone else completely.



But the three disc set is also short shrift. “King of Snake” is not on this at all. Neither are the three new songs. Neither are the later singles such as “Dinosaur Adventure 3D” or “Always Loved A Film” or the re-recorded 2003 version of “Born Slippy.Nuxx”. Aside from the obvious, and blatant value-for-money aspect of the keenly priced, three hour set, the draw for me is the third part, which collects 80 minutes of rare, previously uncompiled material from deleted singles, compilations, ancient vinyl and elsewhere, and brings them together as a mini-rarities release in its own right. Some of this is better than their huge selling big hits. Underworld never wrote hits, or albums tracks, or b-sides. They just wrote songs. Lots and lots of songs. And they are still here. And in ten years time, they may still be here with us. Growing older, growing spiritually, mentally, and going somewhere. Just like all of us.

In either case, the music is unquestionably strong. “A Collection” is more for the pop fan looking for a short and quick hit of glorious pop. "An Anthology" a large unit of direct, weighty electronic music of deservedly renowned gravitas.

An anthology? A Collection? All of these, and more – A Life.


- posted by Mark @ 11:26 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
The Unquenchable Light


Midlife Crisis? Probably not. Life's fairly brilliant for me in many ways. Not perfect. But rarely is life brilliant. Mind races with the things unsaid. The letters never sent. Well. I don't know anymore. Many things I don't get. I'm fairly sure I lost a friend a while ago, as they listened to an Ex that was full of shit. My side, her side, the truth somewhere inbetween. Who hasn't said or done something stupid twenty or ten years ago when were 18 or 20 or 22? Who wants to be defined by one incident fifteen years ago? I know I shouldn't care about this. That life is fundamentally unfair. Some people look at me and see another dumbfuck they can rip off and abuse and steal from or treat like shit. Well, people have the right to be wrong. Me too. Life is what it is.

Still, it's imperfect. With many great friends and wonderful things in it. The internet is big and has a long memory. So do I. I'm a lucky man with where things are. A girl who I never thought I would actually be with, and who every day, amazes me with the smallest things. Two lovely boys. And everything else that is pretty good. The world, and many people in it, are assholes. And every day, someone, totally unprompted, often demonstrates to me how stupid or cruel people can be. The trick is not being one of THEM.

I don't blog about politics anymore. The fact is there is too much to discuss there. It feels as if I am trapped in a society that is setting fire to itself because it is cold, without wondering about putting a jumper on. I've never liked the world I live in, but my part in the world is to try and make it a better place in any way I can.

And, thus, the first week of the year is done. Now we have the rest of our lives to live. Ah fuck it. Music anyone?



The world will not impose its will. I will not give up and I will not give in.
- posted by Mark @ 11:12 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
Away From The Internet


Well, not really. It's been Christmas, and a very busy year. There's been love and laughter and tears.

2011 was a good year. Better than 2010.

I was nostalgic for old cinemas and wrote some words about growing up and about identity. I was looking for career progression, and found out there are no points for second place, and I made second, out of 550.

Sadly, I think Dreams are not for your children. But then, some glorious summer, April happened. In May < we saw the rare Axolotyl of Hastings. Wow.

I wrote about my first marriage and then my second marriage.

In momentous news, (I resigned). And it is hard to believe that it is now four years since I almost jumped from Beachy Head.


Our adventure has been long and strange, and in August Moby complimented me on my suit. How bizarre. I went back to Birmingham for the first time in three years.

September brought an an epic complaint with my train provider which almost put me on the BBC, briefly. A month in pictures, shows little of my commute and my work.

2011 is hard to believe, but it is 20 years since I went to Leicester Polytechnic, and time flies. I rounded off the year with New Order and I had a special evening together and The Manic Street Preachers said goodbye for a while.

It's been a busy, hard, glorious year.
- posted by Mark @ 6:05 PM 1 comments links to this post

 
THE WONDER STUFF - "Never Loved Elvis" - London Shepards Bush Empire - 16 December 2011


It's not every day a band gets a new guitarist. It's also not every day this band gets a new guitarist. After 25 years, Malcolm Treece – alongside Miles Hunt the sole remaining link to The Wonder Stuff's original lineup – has left the band. It's no longer the band that made those records. But the singer from that band, and another new band. Perhaps it might be time to stop trading on past glories, and create new material again.

It certainly feels different ; and not entirely right – but not wrong. But it isn't The Wonder Stuff. Not in the way that you recognise them. With Malc gone, it's Miles Hunt and a band – and a good one, that has slowly evolved over time. Mark McCarthy has been on bass eight years, Erica Nockalls on fiddle for seven years, and Fuzz Townsend (last seen in Pop Will Eat Itself) on drums and backing vocals. Joining them, and with barely six weeks notice to work up 29 songs, is Jerry De Borg of Jesus Jones. As it is accurately described, it's not The Wonder Stuff, but Jesus Will Eat Stuff. Certainly, the band that make the records we are celebrating, and the one that people came to see is not the same one on the stage. It is difficult to keep a working relationship with anyone for 30 years, let alone in the field of the creative arts. So many bands fall into a sort of stasis and eventually, even, disappear forever. And you miss the songs, the memories. One day all these bands will be gone and no one will sing these songs.



But these songs. They sound the same and feel the same. But the band that lasted seventeen years before the final split in 2003 no longer exists in any way anymore. The Wonder Stuff is the name for the band Miles Hunt sings in, playing songs he wrote twenty years ago. Put like that, and of course this is The Wonder Stuff. Put it another way, that the only common member between the band I saw in Walsall in 1991 and Hammersmith in 2003 and now is Miles Hunt. But it sounds the same, and would you – if you'd never seen them before, think that you were missing out? Probably not. It's not the brazen and shameless creation of an entirely new band with only a singer, using the same name of an older and better band to generate goodwill. Had Miles started a new band called The Wonder Stuff with Dave from Dyson Vaccumcleaner, Bob from Bogshed, and someone from Kingmaker, perhaps the use of the name would offend and be sued under the Trade Descriptions Act. Instead this band may only share a singer with the original lineup, but it has been a slow and considered evolution over time.

These songs set in our hearts – well some of us anyway – twenty years ago. Some of them - “Sleep Alone”, “Play”, “Inertia”, “Maybe”, “Grotesque”, “38 Line Poem” - are ones the band haven't played in ten or twenty years. With Malc absent, the band have had to rearrange longstanding performances, with Fuzz and Erica taking over backing vocals, and Keyboard/fiddle/mandolin parts replicated by Ercia on violin. It still sounds the same. Sometimes, it sounds different, but even then it sounds the same. These songs still sound wonderful.



Not that anyone really notices. People have come here to see the songs, and the names of the respective members are somewhat sidelined compared. The songs, the body of work, is bigger than any one individual. Given that he has been in the band less than a few weeks, and Malc's departure was officially confirmed four days before the shows, the fact these shows are even happening at all is the product of intense work and invention for the band to inhabit and recreate these songs. Jerry stands mostly stock still, concentrating on an entirely new recipe of songs and striving to reproduce them faithfully. In the meantime, if there is any confusion or consideration that The Wonder Stuff as is exist as the name of a musical unit with no lineage to the original partnerships, then that is certainly not mentioned here. Whilst the evolution of the band has been a whole and clearly traceable, slow path that has taken a decade, it still remains a band that performs, to a man, songs that are, at their youngest 18 years old. These songs can have sex, drink alcohol, get married, and join the army legally.

With the “Elvis” songs completed, encore time sees the same songs the band have always played. They are by any standard superior, clever songs. But after 1,000 times, surely it gets a little.. predictable to always do the same songs? This is the albatross that hangs over every band though – the songs the people came to see. “Room 512”, “Redberry Joytown”, “It's Yer Money”, “On the Ropes”, “Golden Green”, “Don't Let Me Down”, “Unberable”, “Give Give Give.” These are still the same spiky, witty, irreverent things that they were a quarter century ago. But if you think Metallica don't get boring doing “Enter Sandman” for the 1,588th time you really have no idea about what it is like to be in a band.

There came a time, a while ago, when a friend of mine – one of the many who I frequently see at these shows and has hit over 100 shows (tonight is my 143rd Wonder Stuff show) – said that he doesn't come to see the band anymore, but to see his friends. Not only is this about the music, but also, it's about catching up with friends the world wide who are all brought together by great taste in music. Perhaps what matters is that we are all here, still doing this, loving the world, loving each other – and that is more than the idea of any shared lineage between now and then. The night comes to an end in a frantic pop kid rush, a keen and excited night of jumping up and down and forgetting the house and the kids and the wife and the lies and everything else that comes with it. And then, I suppose, it's time. To the bus stop or the station or the car, to get home before the babysitter goes into doubletime, and back to the world the way it is. Maybe it doesn't matter who is in the band anymore, or what happens next, and it is just these songs and what they meant that matters. For some, certainly, the final link between then and now has been lost, and that is the end of the journey. What is more important is that, four days after confirming a new guitarist, that the Wonder Stuff performed, more than ably, and the songs will live on as more than memories. But what has changed? Everything changes. Nothing stays forever stuck, frozen in amber, for the world goes on ahead of us and the band itself moves through time, as we all do. You can't go back anymore. And for me at least, I don't think I want to.


- posted by Mark @ 9:25 PM 0 comments links to this post

 
MANIC STREET PREACHERS - “A Night of National Treasures” - 17 December 2011, London o2 Arena


20 years. 38 singles. 40 gigs. It's been a long journey. When the Manics came into my life, they were three singles old : “Motown Junk” was my entry point. Their entire discography consisted of nine songs. I was the shy, scared virgin. At lost in a world I neither liked, nor understood. A cruel land that was made of poverty and little joy. A typical teenage world then. In many ways, not much has changed since then.

Ten albums, two marriages, two divorces, two children, ten homes, fourteen jobs, countless funerals later, and here we all are again. I never thought, when they first pounced on the stage to 400 people at Leicester University on 30th January 1992, that 239 months, 7,263 days after I first saw them, I am still here. Still as excited as ever.



I never thought I'd be watching them in the biggest indoor venue in Europe, selling out, and performing a three hour set of 38 singles. I never thought I'd be nudging 40, jumping around, and shouting “rain down alienation - leave this country” as if it were still part of my very soul's DNA. The world changes, and we change the world with what we do, but also, we make the best of the world we can. How few songs ever capture so utterly the complete contempt with which I percieved the world as a child, and also, the same complete sense of betrayal with human potential that still is within me. Certainly, every agent defects, every artist sells out, and everyone is changed in small ways (at least), the question is how much one changes, and how much one resists the creeping tendrils of conformity. Yes, I may wear a suit, I may recognise I cannot instigate intellectual revolution, but I still want more than the world is prepared to offer, and much more than the world wants the future to be.

If this is a goodbye, then what a farewell this is. A defiant victory or something.



After 20 years though, and easily 10 years since their peak, the Manics have become almost just another band : yes, they make records and play live and sell T-shirts, just like other bands. But they are not like other bands. Even at the time of the chronically misunderstood “This Is My Truth”, the first concept album about depression and inertia and the failure of ambition to bring contentment (a charge echoed narrowly by Pulp's equally obtuse “This Is Hardcore”), when the band frequently toured arenas with enormous staging, even then, it felt like a kind of aberration – that the band would be so big and yet still strive to reach each of us. In the first ten years their rise was unstoppable. The final ten, their decline was palpable. Each album sold less, and featured more and more unessential material. After twenty years, you start to run out of things to say and exciting ways to say them. You have to keep trying. And here, the Manics recreate for one night, perhaps as a bookend, the kind of essential, pinned-to-the-wall fervour and relevance they held for so long and also, if this is the end, to go out in one final, defiant act of celebratory glory before they disappear. At least we had this.

But the O2 can be a soulless lump of a venue. Designed to resemble each heavily sponsored American Photocopier Arena from the off, this venue, buried inside the heart of a crudely designed entertainment complex of bars, restaurants, cinemas, is a machine designed to extract money in return for entertainment. And this, though presented as entertainment, is so much more than that, some populist art that communicates a world. The O2 meanwhile, is a frosty cavern, with 4,500 people thrown through each entrance every 45 minutes (100 people per minute, or 3 seconds per person per line). I arrive at 7.00, and the queue snakes around like some kind of bizarrre, glitter laden post-Christmas Harrods sale. Home made, paper thin t-shirts and skin made of cold bristles. People of all ages, from the once-in-a-lifetime thirteen year olds who've never seen them before that will speak of tonight with reverence in 20 years time, to grizzled fortysomethings for whom this is the inevitable splitting-up gig that we all know must one day come for each band we love.



20 years after I first saw them, and 330ml of plastic-bottled Pear Cider costs more than the first ticket I bought. 20 years after I first saw them, and the audience is still a mess of eyeliner and feather boa's. Yes. We're mostly older and not always wiser. Time has changed us. And some of our contemporaries, barely older than I, are ruining the economy, gifting the undeserving poor more poverty and suicides, and failing to learn the lessons of history. Some of the people who voted for the uncompassionate “Christian” values of the elected government are in this room. They know the words to all the pretty songs and they like to sing along. But they don't know what they mean.

At the start of this band's life – 25 years ago – this country was no different from now. Under the rule of the Conservatives, admidst riots, strikes, and decimated towns shorn of hope. Little has changed. Too little. Time is not infinite, and every day without change us a day further away from all this world can be.

After ten years, give or take, in a career wilderness of decreasing sales and slowly less-inventive records, the Manic Street Preachers are, for now at least, putting their memories to rest with this, a one-off celebration and farewell. Who knows when or if they will be seen again? This is history – we are living through it and often forgetting that key fact. One day, the New York Dolls put it, it will please us to remember even this.



In terms of 'historic' shows in the Manics calendar, this is one of those shows that you had to be there for. The longest show they have ever played by far (38 songs, three hours and ten minutes long). Every single hit. And quite a few singles that fell limply into irrelevance. But also, given the fervent reaction, the passionate delivery, the fire of the evening, it is also the best Manics show I have seen since the 1999 T in The Park performance. It may be an impersonal arena in London, but this is the Manics coming home, for home is wherever their constituents are.

Eschewing the idea of playing the singles in order, the Manics therefore avoid a mass exodus at a certain point in the evening when they ceased to be of such stark relevance and became just another – albeit superior – pop group.

However, the uneven pacing of the set – hit singles from the 90's sitting next to not quite so good, or so popular, singles from the 00's – manifests itself in an often uneven experience. Pockets of furious jumping start for songs such as the glorious incendiary and beautiful “From Despair To Where” suddenly followed by a mogadon “AutumnSong”, which is an inferior copy of “Design For Life” in key, tempo, bassline, drums, and all but words and chorus. It is, frankly, boring.



Over time, The Manics fire dimmed. Not every song they ever release can be an absolutely essential document of the human existence. Latter singles such as the dreary “Autumn Song” - the chorus is what have you done to your hair? for fucks sake – are the sound of musical tedium chasing it's own tail and imitating past glories with none of the honesty or power. It's a slight return to the pastures of “A Design For Life”, the gap between watching pornography and being in love. An imitation of dignity. Sandwiched between these damp squibs are some of the finest songs ever writen.

And for me, this is not a funeral, but a bonfire of the vanities, a final glorious affair, before the inevitable comeback in 5 years time. The lights fall, the sirens wail, and the band appear from behind a curtain. For the first time in fifteen years, James Dean Bradfield is wearing a sailor suit. I know it's only clothes. But these things matter.

It starts with “You Stole The Sun”, which commits the greatest sin of any rock band. It is a dull and boring song about the perils of touring. It may be a fun vaccous bouncy-bouncy song, but it's not the way to start the defining gig of your decade. Luckily, it's out of the way at the start. It's followed by “Love's Sweet Exile”, which was, as far as I can remember, last played when John Major was Prime Minister and before the Internet was invented. It sounds the same as it always did.



So yes, they really are going to do it. Play all 38 singles, but not in order. “Motorcycle Emptiness” is gorgeous. Shorn of it's iconic Rumblefish visuals though, the song lacks the connection with the same film, the air of lost, youthful and doomed romance – but still resonates. Half my life later, and the words “This wonderful world of purchase power”, which entered my life when I was 18 years and 7 months old, still mean as much as they ever did 19 years and 10 months later.

And the lyrics. You forget the lyrics. But you never forget the lyrics. They are still in here. Hundreds of lines that shaped my world, and how I see the world. “A morality obdient”. “I don't want to be a man.” “There's nothing nice in my head : the adult world took it all away.” “Gorgeous poverty of created needs”. “If you stand up like a nail, you will be knocked down.” “I laughed when Lennon got shot.” These shaped my world view. I saw the world though their eyes. Though eyes just like mine. Eyes hungry, and aware, and shut out, dispossessed. I was just little people. At best, then, I hoped for change. I got a job instead. Libraries gave us power. And then work came, and made us free.



Followed with the first single from last years “Postcards From A Young Man”, the first set, like the whole night, is frustratingly uneven. Lesser known songs barge inbetween better songs and result in sporadic moments of cathartic furious exorcism through jumping around, and mild breathers as yet another, later-years midpaced ballad appears forgettably. Certainly, some of these songs - “Empty Souls”, “Let Robeson Sing” (sung by Gruff from the Super Furry Animals) are under-rated, but others : “Autumnsong”, “Indian Summer”, “Some Kind Of Nothingness” are the sound of boring complacency.

Can anyone write a protest song? In this day and age, the most turbulent and unhappy political landscape I can remember since 1985, we need angry songs that peel back the foreskin of capitalism and show this world for what it is, and what it isn't. Shopping won't make us happy. Commercials kill our sensitivity.

And in this, the rarely performed songs - “She Is Suffering” that was last seen about ten years ago. The performance is far from perfect – perhaps to save his voice for the 30 songs yet to go, James Dean Bradfield misses verses out of songs and undersings them : there is no angry cry of “I don't want to be a man!” in Life Becoming A Landslide.



And “This is the Day”. In probably the only time it will be played in public. Strange it is, and my eyes damp, to think of the sentiment behind it : not only do I recognise the footage shown in the background, but I was there at those gigs. I remember those scissorkicks with my own eyes. But this, all of this leads up to today. You cannot reach the future without living through the past.

“You've been reading some old letters. You smile and think how much you've changed.All the money in the world couldn't buy back those days. “

Some people don't listen to words. This band was – is – my truth. I connected with these people. Barely older than me, too, living in a town seemingly without much hope. We may have been relatively rich, we had food, and beds. But that is not all a man needs. The Manics grasped this nettle, and squeezed until it stung the life out of complacencey. Even the first handful of single, not featured here, made the point. “Hospital closures kill more than car bombs ever will.” And This Is The Day draws the line between then and now, and the linearity of history. It can only be understood backwards and can only be lived forwards. We move forwards because that is the nature of time.



There are 38 songs. Not every one of them can be brilliant.

“The Everlasting” is a song that saw the Manics at a crossroads. Only seven years into their existence, and already, they were showing nostalgia for what they had lost. It's been a long time since I have heard this song live : and even longer since it sounded so good. Here though, it is utterly and correctly of its place – in a set that is entirely made of looking back, this captures the air of regret and joy that often comes with the passing of time. The O2 is bathed in a mirrorball. The lyrics speak of knowing your history. At the time of its release, I was barely 25, and yet, also, keenly aware of time, precious time, slipping away, of opportunity passing. “The gap that grows between our lives, the gap our parents never had”. Which now, now we are adults with mortgages and children and careers, and our parents – if they are alive, til death us do part – are together, and we are the divorced, the broken, the hoping still.

And during much of the first set, the band perform with a last-chance saloon passion, before an audience that could be cut up and sold as hamburgers.



It's a night of many emotions. Too many in fact in many instances. My mind races from regret and sadness, to joy, and furious indignation. After 20 years, we, mankind are still here fighting the same fucking battles. Have we learnt nothing? Gone all this way yet ended nowhere ?

At the interval, we tinkle glasses, and some people eat Pringles. The lights dim at 9.15, and the band start their second, nineteen song set, to a roar of sirens, and then – the frankly pedestrian “Australia” : for some reason, this strangely popular song is one the band still play. But it is boring stadium rock, with mediocre lyrics, and like a Bruce Springsteen b-side. It's followed by “La Tristesse Durera”. Who else would do a single, quoting a French philosopher as its title. This song. THIS song.

“Life has been unfaithful. And it all promised so much.”

A song that captures my life in itself. A song that changed my life. When I was sitting in unheated rooms. When I was sitting with too much month at the end of my money. When lovers betrayed me. These songs were here. They kept my soul warm. These songs were comfort sometimes, and others like it, when life itself was disappointing.



Even “There By The Grace of God”, a song that live often fell flat when performed live, here, achieves a status of almost elegant calm. The screens behind the band fill with images of Dungeness and Derek Jarman's Garden – which is my favourite place in the universe apart from my bed. But again, as per the rest of the night, the response is uneven, fast, slow, slow, slow, new slow single, die of boredom. And then, as “Some Kind Of Nothingness” fades into nothingness itself, the evening finally seems to jettison the mediocre or the middleaged and aim, headlong and heartfirst into 14 non stop, stonking hit singles, one after the other.

My soul may always be young and hopeful, but it is now I forget the past twenty years existed. Because these songs speak to me as much now as they did then. I wish they didn't, but so little has changed in this world. If you stand up like a nail, you will be knocked down. And then... not played for ten years - “Revol”. The most obtuse, and somewhat brilliant lyric I have ever heard, which details the sexualisation of politics in the same way that pop, and films are sexualised, through the iconography of ideas. And, at one point, 20,000 people are staring at a screen saying “STALIN” in huge letters. It sounds immense, huge perfect. Few bands have ever meant so much to someone, anyone. Even at this late stage in their career, the band are still writing defiant statements of intent : “The world will not impose it's will : I will not give up. And I will not give in.”

Time may change you, but I can change time.



Behind and around all of this, the etheral presence of absent guitarist Richey Edwards is untouchable but tangible : his visaqge mouthing the words to “Roses In The Hospital”, his words running through at least half of the songs, his presnece and his ethos in every moment, as the band claim back the sense of life, of fury, of existence, from these songs, as if being in a state of resistance and awareness were a justification for life itself. We know we are alive, because we do not accept but we resist.


Nina Perrsson appears for “Your Love Alone is Not Enough”. A strange, and unusual title for a song. It's a fun romp. But the kind you could see and hear being sun by anyone. There's not enough individuality in this song.

Followed by the first-time-in-a-decade “Slash N Burn”, which is executed – and executed is the word – ruthlessly with a keen eye to getting to the end as fast of possible, with a shitload of cowbell. At least they don't have that crap second percussion player they did in 2002. It's not the best song they ever did – at best, it was a unholy mix of Marx and Motley Crue – but it was perhaps their most accessable attempt at combining knowingly-stupid rock and knowingly-clever words. The set starts to end with the most precise, furious, condensed, best ever, white hot, “I-laughed-when-Lennon-got-shot” of “Motown Junk”. Steam rises from the crowd.



For three minutes, everything makes sense again.

The evening closes with the rote, but still glorious “A Design For Life.” It may be that, like having watched Star Wars too many times, repeated exposure has made this song – the national anthem this country should always have had – has dimmed the shine a little. But it is still one of the best songs I have ever heard, a song that encapulates the nature of class struggle, class structure, and the fine art of getting drunk in one precise four minute adrenaline hit. As always, the song comes to a rousing chorus, the huge venue smiles and sings and dances, and we celebrate the end of our grand little dream that maybe once, we could have been contenders. As. We. Are. Told. That. This. Is. The. End.

The venue empties. Feedback rings in our ears. The Manics are gone. Maybe for now. Maybe forever. And I am glad that I was here for this. I've seen this band 40 times in 20 years. I've not seen them quite so engaged this millenium. One day, today, it pleases me to remember this. We were there. We saw this. We tasted history as it went past. We are all part of history. And this band, these moments, this passion – that is something to look back without regret. In a life filled with regrets, this isn't one of them.



Setlist :

You Stole The Sun From My Heart / Love's Sweet Exile / Motorcycle Emptiness / (It's Not War) Just The End Of Love / Everything Must Go / She is Suffering / From Despair To Where / Autumnsong / Empty Souls / Let Robeson Sing (with Gruff Rhys) / Faster / Life Becoming a Landslide / Kevin Carter / Little Baby Nothing / This Is The Day / The Everlasting / Indian Summer / Stay Beautiful / If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

Australia / La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh) / Found That Soul / There by the Grace of God / Some Kind Of Nothingness / You Love Us / Suicide is Painless (Theme from MASH) / Revol / The Love Of Richard Nixon / Ocean Spray / The Masses Against the Classes / Roses in the Hospital / So Why So Sad / Postcards From A Young Man / Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
(with Nina Persson) / Slash 'n' Burn / Tsunami / Motown Junk / A Design For Life
- posted by Mark @ 10:38 PM 0 comments links to this post