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Thread: Manic Street Preachers

  1. #1
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    Manic Street Preachers

    On a major Manics kick right now.
    I kind of missed out on their output between 2001-07: what I heard from that period seemed really bland to me. But I like some their latest stuff, and their old material, especially The Holy Bible, is classic.






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    i am mostly hit or miss with them, but the holy bible is one of my all time favorite records. just blisteringly good!

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    Manic Street Preachers

    Ok. So who has spent years staring at the wall, listening to The Holy Bible?

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    Yes but...http://www.echoingthesound.org/commu...ighlight=manic

    I wrote a book proposal for a 33 1/3 on THB but it didn't get taken. Bummed.

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    I've been digging Send Away the Tigers in the last couple of days, I know it's considered amongst their worst efforts.

    Also...very amusing that this band can't arrested on ETS. Tsk.

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    Quote Originally Posted by aggroculture View Post
    I've been digging Send Away the Tigers in the last couple of days, I know it's considered amongst their worst efforts.

    Also...very amusing that this band can't arrested on ETS. Tsk.
    I think Send Away the Tigers is a great album. Not quite Richie-era good, but still after several snoozer albums, it was a breath of fresh air. I love the song "I'm Just a Patsy."

    Plus after this album was the fantastic 'Journal for Plague Lovers' which was the closest they've come to being as brilliant as they once were. Overall great band, really enjoy the majority of their albums.

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    picked up holy bible and send away the tigers last week, still need to listen.

    IN the UK, their stuff is often very cheap in "That's entertainment" 3 albums for a fiver, that sort of thing.

    I've always really digged 'The Masses Against The Classes' and they were great at Leeds fest in 08.

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    Can you still find the 10th Anniversary 2CD + DVD Editions of Holy Bible and Everything Must Go at a decent price in stores? I waited too long and now can't find it on Amazon.co.uk except from much pricier 3rd parties. As a Yank, my options are limited...

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    Latest manics material sounds like a real return to form.

    Quote Originally Posted by The Doctor View Post
    Can you still find the 10th Anniversary 2CD + DVD Editions of Holy Bible and Everything Must Go at a decent price in stores? I waited too long and now can't find it on Amazon.co.uk except from much pricier 3rd parties. As a Yank, my options are limited...
    I'll double check the price in my local shop, I see it there often (HB that is)

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    holy bible tour just announced... THREE NIGHTS IN CAMDEN TOWN

    hnnnnnnnnn

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    Funny, just started listening to Futurology yesterday. It's hit and miss so far: some good songs, some embarassingly bad ones. I guess that's been the Manics for the last decade or so.

    1994 was the year though.

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    I lost my patience with their new stuff years ago. I don't hate all of it - The glacial melancholy post 1994 manics held out from "everything must go" until "lifeblood", everything after that isn't my thing. Always been amazing live though

    However, the track "bag lady" from 2008/2009 (or whenever) is basically a holy bible track - but that only makes it more infuriating, because you realise they CAN still write that sweaty post punk stuff, they just don't

    holy god I am excited for these shows though, been waiting since I was 15 for this

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    This is one of my favorite tracks of the year. I might be in the minority but I love the new Manics record. It's currently my album of the year.




    Makes me want to dive into more krautrock, might be my new genre to finally check out!

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    I agree with the "Hit or miss" thing, and i join "The Holy Bible" is the shit bandwagon, "If you tolerate this your children will be next" is probably their best single (but i love "Motorcycle Emptiness")

    Last edited by henryeatscereal; 09-24-2014 at 03:31 PM.

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    Am hoping I'll manage to get tickets for one of the Manchester shows, not seen them since 1999 (lost interest) and The Holy Bible is one of my all-time favourite albums.

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    Got my tickets for wednesday at the roundhouse! Cannot wait to see the boyos again aaaaaaaarghh

    Last time I saw them was the homecoming show for the lifeblood tour in 2005. Which kicked arse, of course

    The only question now is... military fatigues or boas and eyeliner. I bet the crowd will be mad... blatantly be some crying down the front

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    Also attending on 17th.

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    I shall be attending on the 10th in Manchester. Spray painted t-shirts ahoy! So excited. I've never been to one of these 'album played in full' shows by any artist.

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    very very tempted to stencil "NOSTALGIA" on a camo tee

    I really am soppy for this album... I'll be singing along to the samples as well as the vocals

    imagine nicky wire bathed in red light playing the bassline to archives of pain ...& try to not get palpitations

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    Palpitations activated I need to start practising singing the chorus from Mausoleum all in one breath. I need to get some t-shirt ideas...

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    I like The Holy Bible just fine, but I don't love it. Never really saw what people thought was so incredible about it. Haven't heard much outside of that album, but what I have heard I really couldn't get behind.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jinsai View Post
    I like The Holy Bible just fine, but I don't love it. Never really saw what people thought was so incredible about it. Haven't heard much outside of that album, but what I have heard I really couldn't get behind.
    I think a lot of it is context and when you get into it. If you're 15, working class and live in a shithole, they were like your champions. Musically the holy bible was a bolt from the blue, everything was britpop or madchester bagginess, then suddenly this album comes out which musically is a mashup of Pil, pistols, magazine & killing joke (always felt THB sounded a LOT like KJ's "extremities..."). Really not a lot of albums quite like it. It's great to hear scratchy, clanking "metal box" type textures in an album that's easy to listen to - but at the same time not pandering sellout accessible

    Then there's what the manics are/were. In Britain the class system does dictate what you're supposed to be and most people are in thrall of it to a certain degree (even if they know it's bullshit, not so deep down they do believe middle class guys are effete and working class guys are unreconstructed dumbasses - in a nutshell). For a bunch of working class kids to dress up like glam punks and sing about foreign policy and anorexia is pretty unheard of (Oasis is more what we are expected to be). Sounds ridiculous perhaps (and the class system is) but that's a big part of the appeal. Working glass guys with brains and sensitivity - but not at the price of still being a bit hard

    The actual lyrics themselves are great - not the best poetry ever, but very well articulated rage. And despite being working class socialists, they weren't cartoons - they had a song advocating corporal punishment that hinted at the despair of being a troubled liberal who knows he shouldn't technically have such a stance but can't lie to himself. Twenty million times more interesting than the usual attempts at politics by bands, where they usually lean to an extreme of left or right. The idea of these guys as troubled, failed liberals is pretty compelling & a lot closer to how many of us really feel.

    Then there's the whole punk rock romanticism of it - some lifelong best friends from a devastated mining town in the Welsh valleys put together a mcclaren esque masterplan to conquer the charts - and actually succeed, despite being a pretty ridiculous punk band who dressed like a cross between hanoi rocks and gay clubbers (of the time, cutoffs and white levis).

    Once they got signed the first album basically had a bunch of their early punk tracks re-recorded with a steroid pumped GNR type production. They did a second album which was more glossy alt-rock. There's some great songs on those albums but they did basically fail to achieve their manifesto and backtracked into FM rock.

    But then they hit the bottle, their lyricist went mad, it looked like they might pack it in, they recorded the holy bible in a demo studio in cardiff's red light district and it was basically the album they should have made in the first place. The glamorous nihilist bullshit bravado of the early stuff was totally depleted and what was left was proper 2nd joy division album despair. Then the lyricist disappears off the face of the earth, never to be seen again

    after that they retreated back into britpop style fm rock, and suddenly were huge arena filling successes, the end

    Not saying all this history will win you over, but I think the mythology of what they were is a big part of their success, and the holy bible was the album where they really walked the walk to match the talk.

    It gives me a warm glow to know something with lyrics like the song "of walking abortion" has, once got to #6 in the charts. This would never ever happen these days


    And I liked Miss Europa Disco Dancer! It's like a Dead Kennedys song (like MTV get off the air), a total piss take

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    Thanks for the thoughtful analysis!

    I got into the Manics WAY late. I downloaded Holy Bible around 06 and couldn't get into it. It was too in your face, too intense for me at the time; I was at the peak of my sad bastard music listening days. But then I revisited it a year or two later and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was obsessed with and listened to it repeatedly for months, wondering why it took me so long to get into it. But that's just how life is, music just hits differently at different points in your life.

    I've explored most of their discography, but The Holy Bible is still tops for me. I get what you're saying about the first 2, I never could really get into them except for Motorcycle Emptiness and their cover of the MASH theme. But I absolutely adore Journal for Plague Lovers and Everything Must Go, then slightly lesser but still dig This Is Your Truth and Send Away the Tigers. Postcards for a Young Man is ok, Rewind the Film is kinda meh, and I haven't really listened to Futurology.

    Overall though, I love this band, for all the things you explained, and just being a great rock band. Plus, NOBODY I know knows them or listens to them here in Texas, so it almost feels like a secret...my own thing. I've tried to turn a few people onto them, but it hasn't clicked with anybody i've tried with.

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    if you liked holy bible make sure you check out the tracks "comfort comes" "sculpture of man" and "judge yrself", the first is from just before THB, the 2nd is a bside and the third is the song written after THB but before richey disappeared, and hints that they would have gone darker and heavier had he remained (apparently he left a note saying the next albums should be "pantera meets NIN meets screamadelica" - wow)

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    Holy Bible is back on vinyl... and my god, it's a sexy reissue
    http://www.myplaydirect.com/manic-st...Manics%20store
    THE HOLY BIBLE 20 - LIMITED 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION BOX SET


    Limited edition deluxe 12” x 12” box set containing the original album remastered by James Dean Bradfield and Tim Young on 180gm vinyl.

    The box also includes:
    - CD1 The Holy Bible (Remastered)
    - CD2 The Holy Bible (US Mix) (Remastered)
    - CD3 B Sides
    - CD4 Live
    Featuring the band’s seminal ’94 Astoria show recorded by the BBC and a collection of incredible acoustic performances recorded at the band’s recent Radio 4 Mastertapes session, bringing the band’s history full circle from 1994 to 2014
    - 40 page 12” book
    Including rare photos and imagery, handwritten lyrics and notes from Richey and much more



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    I want that reissue, but holy crap! For a person in the US that's $118 for a 1LP, 4CDs and a book. $32 shipping! Is this going to be on Amazon (or at least Amazon UK)? Or is this going to be an exclusive to that store? I want this so badly but can't justify the price tag.

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    First Holy Bible show last night, the encore includes 1985, motorcycle emptiness, if you tolerate this, you love us & design for life

    can't fucking wait, argh

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    Just come back from the Manchester show, I have no words. Amazing!

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    i've heard there's cargo netting and - as I wished for - red lights during archives of pain

    seriously, fuck christmas... this is the date marked off in my diary for maximum hype

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    So much cargo netting and red lights. They did it justice. Have now got tickets for Wolverhampton and Cardiff because there is no way I am not seeing that played live again!

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