might fuck around and listen to every manic street preachers track this weekend
Iāve made a playlist itās over 16 hours long
11am day 1: crying over the suicide alley demo
there are a few bsides I wonāt be able to listen to: Iāve got most of them on tape or cd but havenāt had a working device to play either of those on for about a decade. I have a cassette Walkman but no batteries. A pleasing number are available digitally nonetheless.
I wonāt be doing remixes or all the live versions of everything that are available: Iām only going for distinct songs, or radically different versions of songs like the heavenly version of you love us
confession Iāve never actually listened to the last 2 albums. Iām not being funny about it Iāve just not really got round to it, in stark contrast to the times I used to bunk off sixth form and wait for the Woolworths in town to open whenever they had anything coming out
ok itās 16h 48 minutes and Iām missing 14 b sides, including the heavenly version of spectators and never want again which is a shame because I like them a lot. are mothers saints is available but not included because I canāt stand it sorry lads
oh wow I remembered I also have quite a bit of manics vinyl despite never having owned a record player... itās very pretty though.
anyway generation terrorists is a perfect album
generation terrorists is like 90 minutes long and every second sends me absolutely fucking feral. they stuck theme from mash and motown junk on the end of the remaster and I was there aged 30 like ok brb burning down barclays bank
I read an interview where one of them said nat west barclays midlands lloyds was āa bit embarrassingā and I was like
trying to decide whether I like the Heavenly version of You Love Us better or the album version but no: Heavenly is all ramshackle and chaotic and messy, the album has that shiny big rock thing going on and theyāve made the solo MASSIVE and both of these are positive energies

ok I wasnāt sure I was ready emotionally to watch the videos as well but I have to put little baby nothing on because a) Steven Wells was a genius and b) JAMES
I wonder how the little girl with the ācarpet bomb the richā T-shirt is doing now
look I love appetite for destruction as regular readers will know but the manics cover of itās so easy is better than the original there I said it
have actually just listened to generation terrorists + its bsides three times today
alright the big tracks have really benefited from this iāll grant you, but itās very important to me that nostalgic pushead sounds like it was somehow recorded on a literal garbage can https://twitter.com/jaymc82/status/1318259899038650371
Jamesās voice really is lovely on this record
I was never that into the sort of idealising tone some of their lyrics about women tended to have. Thereās a lot of stuff about purity and sainthood &c that obviously passed for feminism back in the day, they were always better when they didnāt, like, TRY to write a Women Song.
ok Iām on nostalgic pushead now and itās miles better than I always remember it. I think the sort of spoken word bits throw me off.
ābut hey! cocaine keeps cholesterol at bay!ā iconic line perfectly delivered

jdb: [rhymes āsoho squareā with āgaultierā]
me:
me:
progress is a lie Iām going out for a walk

I did not make progress today I just listened to GATS another couple of times
wasnāt ready for my first listen to patrick fucking bateman for the first time in years so letās save the bsides for Monday when Iāll already be Going Through some things so what the hell

alright itās bsides time. Hibernation! Very pretty. Some lovely high notes from JDB and the solo at the end is

Patrick Bateman! Oh boy. Allow me to start with how bad an idea it was for me to read American Psycho when I was 17, and indeed ever, and how much I fucking hate that bullshit edgelord trashpile of a book now.
The song is appropriately overlong but needed a lot of work if it was going to be anywhere near as tiresome and self involved.
Itās a very charitable reading of the book imo and has some great lines, āmy personality is held together with sellotapeā etc
two guitar solos mr bradfield u are spoiling us