Daily Music Dose

      This write up is brought to you  in part by  Buzznet's Manic Street Preachers group.

[Manic Street Preachers 1989-94 are: Nicky Wire on bass, Richey Edwards on guitar, Sean Moore on drums and James Dean Bradfield on guitar and vocals.   Manic Street Preachers 1995-Present are: James Dean Bradfield on guitar and vocals, Nick Wire on bass and Sean Moore on drums.]

  Upon hearing the name Manic Street Preachers most pop music junkies will hear the line "Have you ever wanted to disappear? And join a monastery? Go out and PREACH on MANIC STREET?"    Tweeny-boppers and musical illiterates will jump to say that the band ripped their name from Fall Out Boy's "20 Dollar Nosebleed."  These are the same people who would say that corporate band Green Day's Know Your Enemy is an original title.  What the masses fail to do is look back for the originators, the source.   

            Before Emo was at the top of the charts,  'punk rock' bands went mainstream and boys in eyeliner was the norm,  four pasty boys from Wales were priming themselves into white denims.   They were shrouding themselves with spray-painted slogans and reading more thought-provoking books than an AP Lit. class.   They were a lonely group fighting to break the industrial lifestyles they had watched make old so many other promising youths.   Glamour divorced them from their surroundings.  Political thoughts set them free from fate. So, like Manic Street Preachers they took their electric guitar painted message to the stage, forever changing the face of music.

            Before them had walked great bands like the Sex Pistols, the Clash and David Bowie.  From here the group built their style.  While Nicky Wire's early hair style was no doubt a tribute to Sid Vicious,  James Dean Bradfeild's rasping voice was a sophisticated mimic of Johnny Rotten.   The adolescent, look in the mirror and see how ****ed you and your generation really are lyrics both Richey Edwards and Wire produced were in the same vein as the Pistol's "Abortion" and The Clash's "Straight to Hell." Leopard print and mascara were worn better than women, a kick back to the glam rock days which lead to the evolution of punk. 

            Unlike other bands their age, Manics didn't look to the music of contemporaries to form their dogma.   They went straight to text.  Literature played a large roll in the band's style.  Frequently the group would take to the stage with quotes from Derutti and Camus spray-painted on their shirts.  More importantly they interpreted books to assist in conveying their message.   Songs like "Motor Cycle Emptiness" and "Of Walking Abortion"  are prime examples of author inspired songs.   Literary minds lines also accompanied tracks.   A line from Orwell's 1984 introduces "Faster" and Camus ends "Masses Against the Classes."   Books weren't the bands only influence, text's rival, film played an important role in Manic Street Preacher's creative birth. 

            College student cult classics including Naked Lunch, Quadrophenia,  and Repulsion  inclined the band's anti-establishment and crashing youth vibe.  Thus helping blend the line between ideology, visual appeal and sound.  This gained aesthetic ability is perhaps what helped the Manics excel.

            Art was another visual form Manic Street Preachers clung to.   Having grown up in a time where art had just been opened up as something the working class could enjoy as well, the four Welsh lads took in all they could of canvas and paint, broadening their mental palate.   Painter Jean-Michael Bisquiat's work "To Repel Ghosts" spawned a song of the same name.   "Strategy," a three view portrait of a morbidly obese woman by Jenny Saville was used as the cover of  Manics most potent album, The Holy Bible.  This was not the only time the French painter's art was used by the band.  Journal for Plague Lovers, Manic Street Preachers' latest release features an original painting by Saville.,  Photographer Kevin Carter, most famous for his picture of a starving African collapsed on the ground next to a vulture, was also paid homage by the group in the track is "Kevin Carter" which speaks of his untimely demise. 

            No doubt it takes a set of extraordinary minds to turn a group of mediums and turn it into something new.  What is even more extraordinary is the band's ability to cope.   In 1994, after years of playing as a quartet, lyricist and Patron Saint of The Manics, Richey Edwards went missing.  After having dealt with having to watch their dear comrade injure himself and spiral deeper into an unyielding depression, the nerves of the remaining three were frazzled.  For any other band this would have been a fatal blow.    Yet, they pushed on.  

            No doubt, the group was in pain, but hope remained that Richey was still alive and happy somewhere.  Yet, they knew there was no point to cling to the past. They  tossed away their glitter, feathered boas and pretentious glamour and emerged a mature, alternative sounding band.    Keeping a bank account open for the MIA lyricist Manic Street Preachers released their most commercially successful album Everything Must Go.   What the public now saw was a band turning its lowest point into a high. 

The next ten years were a transitionary time for the group.   In the public eye they had grown into men who were now getting married, started families and still writing lyrics ripping the superficiality of America to a pile of ash.   In support of their album Know Your Enemy  Manic Street Preachers became one of the first western bands to play Communist Cuba.   Not only did the band play sold out audiences, but they had the once in a life-time experience of meeting Fidel Castro, a thrilling experience for anyone in the Marxist spectrum.  Shortly afterwards Manic  Street Preachers released the double album Lipstick Traces which was compiled of covers and b-sides spanning the band's early career.  During this time Richey was a strong fixture on their minds.   In 2008 the lyricist was finally declared as legally dead.   While no press release was issued, Manics shortly announced afterwards that their latest album  Journal for Plague Lovers will consist of the final lyrics Richey left behind.   Fans have taken this as the group saying their goodbyes to their misplaced comrade. 

This act of sincerity is what sets Manic Street Preachers apart from the common music horde.  Despite the lines of self loathing they've belted out over the years and mockery of lesser bands, the fact remains that Manic Street Preachers are still a very human band.   They have passion, something every band since has lacked.   

Manic Street Preacher's latest release Journal For Plague Lovers will be out on May 19^th.  

Tracks:

Faster

A Design For Life

Love's Sweet Exile

Yes