Are you a fan of turgid, pedestrian, Bryan Adams-sounding cod-political stadium indie music? Well you must be a fan of the Manic Street Preachers then! Or U2. Or Coldplay. We’d add Senser, but they only filled the ‘cod-political’ bit.
Anyway, we’re here to talk about The Manics and specifically, World’s Worst Bass Player and skipping/eyeliner fan, Nicky Wire who would like to make some money with a book of badly taken photographs.
That’s right Manics fans! Wire has been taking polaroids throughout the band’s tedious 25-year-career which are going to be collated into two volumes, the first of which will be called ‘Death of The Polaroid: A Manics Family Album’. Feel free to start speculating about the whereabouts of the obviously deceased Richie Edwards.
The photos start from the band’s beginnings as a dreary combination of glam, The Clash and Guns ‘n’ Roses when they made the awful ‘Generation Terrorists’, right through to when they were as thin as bulimic coat hangers recording the occasionally harrowing ‘The Holy Bible’, right up to their latest album which hardly anyone has heard, ‘Postcards From a Young Man’.
Speaking of the book, Wire sez:
“You see the unfolding and unraveling, really, of four kids that kind of grew up in a bedroom, dreaming of taking over the world. I’m hoping it will be really engaging and really tactile.”
Gah. Of course it’ll be tactile you idiot. It’s a book. A book you pick up with your hands.
Nicky added:
“Obviously the amount of travelling you see in the book – from Blackwood to Japan and back, is pretty amazing.
“I think the genius of Polaroid is you can pinpoint a memory really easily, and our fans are just as dedicated as we are in that sense, so I think they’ll just look at the book and be able to associate a memory with it as well.”
Or, if you use it as a flip-book, you can watch James Dean Bradfield’s stomach expand in a hilarious manner. Anyway, if you’re stupid enough to be interested, ‘Death Of The Polaroid: A Manics Family Album’ will be published in November.
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Punk fan says
It’s easy to forget the impact ‘Generation Terrorists’ had when it came out. I distinctly remember trying to buy it in Woolworths in 1992. I was promptly ushered away to a dingy room with a spotlight and interrogated by two men who looked like Hale & Pace. Apparently, they had me down as some kind of hand grenade wielding anarchist. ‘I Just like the tunes’ I nervously replied. When I eventually got my hands on the LP my mum banned me from playing it in the house, ‘just shouting’ she ignorantly proclaimed. I’ve never forgiven her for that. Since the departure of Richey they have slowly turned into A N Other rock band. Shame, for a while they had it all.
deraderpderp says
You should have listened to your mum. The Manic street preachers are shite.
Jimmy Bradfield says
Fuck off, lad. I could have you in a fight any day, kinda like.
Si Sharp says
True, but it was also easy at the time to overestimate the musical importance of ‘Generation Terrorists’. On the one hand it was nice to have a band that had passion and principles, and one that inspired such devotion from people.
On the other hand, they also kind of amounted to some really bland edgeless stadium punk played by people who made their points by having slogans stencilled onto the clothing. Maybe it’s cynical of me, as times were different then but I distinctly remember thinking “is that it?” when I heard ‘You Love Us’. I don’t have an issue with sloganeering but I could never get my head around the fact that their music was so much less challenging than their lyrics. Maybe that was the point.
I also heard that they kept a quarter of their royalties LONG after Richey went missing presumably with the intention of giving it back to him or his family. Do they still do that? I remember being very impressed, but they did seem very principled so it’s unsurprising.
SHAZ says
Flamming hell – acidic article or what? and deraderpderp – shove the article where the sun don’t shine!