might fuck around and listen to every manic street preachers track this weekend

I’ve made a playlist it’s over 16 hours long

11am day 1: crying over the suicide alley demo

there are a few bsides I won’t be able to listen to: I’ve got most of them on tape or cd but haven’t 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 won’t be doing remixes or all the live versions of everything that are available: I’m only going for distinct songs, or radically different versions of songs like the heavenly version of you love us

confession I’ve never actually listened to the last 2 albums. I’m not being funny about it I’ve 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 it’s 16h 48 minutes and I’m 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 can’t stand it sorry lads

oh wow I remembered I also have quite a bit of manics vinyl despite never having owned a record player... it’s 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 “a bit embarrassing” and I was like

UNDER NEON LONELINESS!

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 they’ve made the solo MASSIVE and both of these are positive energies

ok I wasn’t 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 “carpet bomb the rich” T-shirt is doing now

look I love appetite for destruction as regular readers will know but the manics cover of it’s 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 i’ll grant you, but it’s very important to me that nostalgic pushead sounds like it was somehow recorded on a literal garbage can https://twitter.com/jaymc82/status/1318259899038650371

James’s 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. There’s a lot of stuff about purity and sainthood &c that obviously passed for feminism back in the day, they were always better when they didn’t, like, TRY to write a Women Song.

ok I’m on nostalgic pushead now and it’s miles better than I always remember it. I think the sort of spoken word bits throw me off.

“but hey! cocaine keeps cholesterol at bay!” iconic line perfectly delivered

jdb: [rhymes “soho square” with “gaultier”]
me:

listening to gold against the soul this weekend is just making me want to scream lmao

progress is a lie I’m going out for a walk

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

alright it’s 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.

It’s a very charitable reading of the book imo and has some great lines, “my personality is held together with sellotape” etc

two guitar solos mr bradfield u are spoiling us