Formerly Much-Liked Welsh Rock Band PWNed By Bobblehead Predator

A friend of mine just called and asked if I wanted to see Manic Street Preachers in London next month. (The friend and the call are both real, by the way, and not just contrived into existence for the purpose of having this blogpost hung on them. The only part that isn’t really real is the “just”, because obviously it’s taken some time to compose the post, source pictures and so on. I’ve left it there for the sense of immediacy it confers. But I don’t want Shades Of Caruso to face accusations of lacking authenticity. There really is a friend, and he really did call me.)

Anyway, a friend of mine just called and asked if I wanted to see Manic Street Preachers in London next month, and I surprised both of us with the vehemence of my refusal. At one point in my life I would have dropped everything to attend one of the band’s gigs; indeed, between the spring of 1994 and the summer of 1996, I saw them a total of six times. Three times before Richey Edwards’s disappearance and three after, including Edwards’s last gig and their first show as a three-piece (supporting the Stone Roses at Wembley Arena). But now… I believe I actually used the words “You couldn’t pay me to see the Manics.”

So why is this? They were my favourite band in my late teens and early twenties, so even if their recent recordings haven’t exactly given me the Welsh horn, there should be a certain nostalgia value in seeing them live. Although they’re promoting their new material, the setlist will include plenty of old favourites for the fans, right? I couldn’t be less interested if you told me Ocean Colour Scene were the support act and threw in a copy of Kula Shaker’s Greatest Hits.

Why? Because of the new single – and I’m physically cringing as I type this title – “Jackie Collins Existential Question Time”.


I still rate The Holy Bible as one of my favourite albums. All four Manics unarguably hit a creative peak with the 1994 record: lyricists Edwards and Nicky Wire mined a seam of raw, confessional/political poetry combined with a literary quality not evident in pop music since the heyday of the Clash; songwriters and chief musicians James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore pummelled the senses with ominous riffs, disconcerting rhythmic changes and thunderous beats. It was, and remains, an astonishing major-label release.

Either side of THB, the polished, more radio-friendly rock of Gold Against The Soul and Everything Must Go brought the band’s passion, integrity and songwriting nous to the charts – the albums contain most of the Manics’ biggest hits and best pop songs, while never less than fiercely intelligent. Their debut Generation Terrorists is mainly fuelled by angst and bravado, and certainly lacks much in the way of musicianship, but it still has a few great moments (“You Love Us”, “Motorcycle Emptiness”). However, it’s been downhill ever since 1998’s This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and “Jackie Collins Existential Question Time” marks a nadir.


In the early days, detractors sneered that the Manic Street Preachers were the worst kind of pseudo-intellectuals, using big words that they didn’t fully understand to show off and living up to the “preacher” part of their name. While it’s true that their lyrics are often awkward and make little sense at first glance (leading to countless “magnolia despair tumbles beneath basketball jumpsuit vegetable misery”-style parodies), fans pored over them and discovered – especially in the Edwards days – they were allusive, literary, even erudite, betraying the lyricists’ sharp intellects.

But surely even fans can’t defend bloody “Jackie Collins Existential Question Time”. The title is the worst kind of sixth-form non-profundity (the 40ish band members don’t even have the excuse of callow youth any more), with the use of “existential” particularly heinous. Its clever-clever juxtaposition of lowbrow and highbrow subjects is intensely irritating, not least because it’s hard to believe any of the band would actually read a Collins novel. Also because it has nothing to do with the song itself, which seems to be a reactionary rant about the supposed coarsening of society, with some nonsense about the marital fidelity of Catholics and the chorus a repetition of the question, “Mummy, what’s a sex pistol?”



“Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”, the lead single from the Manics’ otherwise unlistenable last album Send Away The Tigers, employed the Cardigans’ Nina Persson on vocals (it was almost as if they were trying to win me personally back as a fan). Although it did go on a bit, it was a decent track with a big chorus that harked back to the Everything Must Go period. “JCEQT” is a screechy, repetitive nonentity of a song whose aluminium-y production sets my teeth on edge. I gather the new material, including this song, uses lyrics left behind by Edwards (who has been declared legally dead). Perhaps there’s a reason they weren’t used in the intervening 14 years.

Manic Street Preachers seem to have reached that period of their career where every album is hailed by critics as a “return to form”, which is a pretty obvious journalistic reduction of “Bloody hell, are they still going? Can anyone remember their last album? Fuck it – let’s just say this album’s their best one since that really successful one they did.” I seriously doubt whether there’s any form to return to. On the evidence of “Jackie Collins Existential Question Time”, Wire’s and Bradfield’s breaks to record hugely underwhelming solo albums didn’t recharge any creative batteries, and if the rest of the album sounds like the lead single, you might be better off with a good book. Or even a bad book.

Okkervil River Is My New Favorite Band (And A Rant About Studio 60)

The A.V. Club did an interview with Will Sheff, who, despite looking a bit (oh, how do I say this without being offensive? No chance, I’m going for it) special, seemed like an intelligent and interesting person (he used the word “quixotic”! And said he liked movies! That’s generally enough for me). I’d never heard of the band, but we promptly downloaded* their latest album, The Stage Names. It is excellent. Filled with references to pop culture and its effects on people’s lives, it’s incredibly catchy, melodic, mostly deceptively-upbeat-sounding stuff, indie folk/pop/rock done with intelligence and wit and a real ear for hooks that get stuck in your head. Of course, I wouldn’t be a real critic unless I dubbed it a new ridiculous sub-genre – let’s call it “meta-rock.”

That’s a crappy-sounding version of the first single, “Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe” – the sweeping sound references 80s pop songs with a discordant, desperate twist, though the genius of it is the racing heartbeat of the drum (though you can't hear it very well on that version) and the song’s frantic crescendo. The second track, “Unless It’s Kicks”, may be even better – a rollicking, uptempo kick in the gut. The lyrics again deal with the influence of pop culture on the characters’ lives – in this song, the narrator asserts, “What gives this mess some grace unless it’s kicks, man / unless it’s fiction / unless it’s sweat or it’s songs?” And later:

And on a seven-day high, that heavenly song
punches right through my mind
and just hums through my blood.
And I know it's a lie, but I'll still give it my love.

Ouch. But Sheff isn’t simply condemning the fact that we tend to view our lives as if they were movies or songs; he hits on the feeling of hearing a song you love and instantly feeling like the world has expanded into something joyful and glorious (even though it takes a song to [perhaps artificially] create that feeling, and it only lasts for four minutes). It’s incredibly odd to hear a song that talks about that feeling while actually giving you that feeling, and it makes my brain hurt, so I’m going to stop talking about it for the moment.

I suppose unsurprisingly, it turns out Sheff used to be a critic – this page has links to a bunch of his old articles. Looks like he’s got pretty good, if slightly pretentious, taste, though his attack on soft rock is a bit harsh – poor old Peter Cetera. Why pick on such an easy target? Does he have something against bouffants and soft-focus lenses? (And I’m sorry, but some of his songs are great, and I don’t mean that ironically – I get genuine pleasure from them, partly because they remind me of my childhood and how much I loved them then. “I am a knight who will fight for your honor”? How much of a curmudgeon do you have to be not to find that strangely wonderful? [And with that I realize I’ve now become a character in an Okkervil River song.])

I do find it a little disconcerting to read Sheff’s articles, though. When’s the last time you saw a critic rocking out on stage? It’s not right – they’re supposed to be detached and thoughtful, with their pipes and their monocles and their big books full of words, not hot-blooded and full of ketamine (with the exception of Michiko Kakutani, obviously). It’s a little embarrassing – like watching one of your teachers sing Grateful Dead songs on an acoustic guitar. I suppose I’ll have to get over it, though, because they’re playing in London in December and we’ve got tickets. I suppose to be really obnoxious, whenever they finish a song, I could shout out, “B plus! What it lacked in precision it made up for in enthusiasm! WOOOOOO!!”

*While trolling YouTube, I found a clip of Sheff talking about deciding to be a musician and saying that it was worth it even though he doesn’t have health insurance (!) and last year he didn’t have a place to live (!!!). Oh god, the guilt. I’m really tempted to go out and buy the album, though I will probably end up rationalizing the guilt away by convincing myself that buying the tickets gave them more money anyway (okay, 20 pounds, but, um, the exchange rate is really good). Usually, like any music fan, I’m happy for bands I like to stay obscure, but in this case I really hope they start getting more famous. They certainly deserve to.

+++++

And Now, A Rant

By now we all know that Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was poo. Where Aaron Sorkin was once clever and inspiring, writing fiercely intelligent and funny characters, he became hackneyed and insipid, recycling plotlines from his better days (badly, I might add) and writing characters who were either thinly-veiled versions of his crazy-for-Jesus ex-girlfriend (Harriet Hayes), supposedly ridiculously smart while never actually demonstrating this beyond being able to rattle off obscure statistics (um, everyone), or versions of himself (Matt Albie – I would say “slimy, massively arrogant, ridiculously unlikeable versions of himself,” but it appears this would be redundant) or his partner in crime, Tommy Schlamme (the absolutely odious Danny Tripp – and I cannot mention this without giving a shout-out to Television Without Pity, who said they were disappointed he hadn’t named the character Danny Schlanny, which made me laugh for half an hour [btw, Joe R.’s recaps were often the only reason we even bothered to watch, besides horrified fascination]). But I’m going to stop criticizing it now, because if I don’t, I will run out of internet.

Unfortunately for denizens of the UK, it’s time for them to be endlessly patronized about commedia dell’arte and Bush’s bad behavior during 9/11 (yes, the show actually goes back in time to lecture us. Thank god it didn’t get a second season, in which Matt and Danny would time-travel to Nazi Germany learn how evil Hitler was). It just started showing here a few weeks ago, to massive, slavish adoration from the journalists here, who apparently have never gone on the internet, because they are completely perplexed about why such a stunning example of show from infallible genius Aaron Sorkin would get cancelled by those awful money-hungry studios! They just didn’t understand his brilliance! To which I say, You lazy, incompetent little shits – it would take you two seconds of googling to find out exactly why it was cancelled – because it was shit.

It made me angry to read those articles, with their willful ignorance and their slavish devotion to Sorkin (they didn’t even bother to get anyone’s opinion other than his about why it was cancelled – I wonder if maybe he would be, I don’t know, biased?). This leads off into a subject for another day – the UK media’s shoddy reporting on American shows and movies, their simultaneous disdain for American media and the fact that they have to admit that it’s often better than what’s created here (at least in terms of TV shows and movies – though it will usually be with the tag “it’s good…in an American way”), and their love of anything coming out of it perceived to be intelligent (like Sorkin, which is why he is so ridiculously overpraised – he’s not like most Americans, because his show is about how bad American TV is!).

Aaaaanyway, I came downstairs this morning to find that the Admiral had scrawled a furious note in the Guardian Guide – the weekly TV guide from the Guardian, arguably the best paper in England (though notably filled with snobbery about American culture). Andrew Mueller, one of the reviewers, has been reviewing Studio 60 since it began six weeks ago – he praised the pilot, but foolishly we laughed and said that it would be funny to see his assessments get more negative as the show went on. Three episodes in and they were not – instead he was rambling about how mobs with pitchforks should have been storming the studios demanding that the show not be cancelled. Okay, we thought, well, the third episode wasn’t that bad, though alarm bells were starting to go off (notably with Danny’s rant about how cocaine addicts don’t hurt people [he was a former cocaine addict himself – I know, eerie coincidence!! Another eerie coincidence? Aaron Sorkin was a cocaine addict! OMG, this is freaky!] – no, only drunk drivers do that, and of course cocaine addicts are sedentary because we all know cocaine is a depressant).

We decided that the show didn’t become truly awful until the sixth episode – which has plotlines where the cast learns about how awful the blacklist was (really awful!), where we learn that the only black character on the show had a childhood straight out of Boyz N the Hood (this is after he rails against stereotypical “black people versus white people” comedy), and we learn that another character’s Midwestern parents are so ignorant of culture that they don’t even know who Abbott and Costello were (since when has the Midwest not been hooked up to electricity?), but they do know that their son is wasting his life on frivolous comedy while his brother, the war hero, is – get ready for it – STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN! It’s so incomprehensibly awful I can’t even express it.

But guess what Andrew Mueller’s reaction is?

The more of this we [we?? I sincerely hope he’s using the royal we] see, the more it seems appropriate to disdain from summarising the spectacular virtues of Studio 60 in favour of suggesting imaginative punishments to be visited on its American proprietors, who canned it. This week: feed them to hippopotamuses. [My suggestion: feed Andrew Mueller to Hiphopopotamus from Flight of the Conchords.] Anyway, tonight’s episode, with an Eli Wallach cameo, is another eruption of auteur Aaron Sorkin’s singular genius. In between adroitly perpetuating the internal soap operas, this thrillingly tours Sorkin’s signature obsessions [i.e., the things he writes about in a TV series about a COMEDY SKETCH SHOW]: American political, cultural and military history, and the clash between the country’s liberal and conservative impulses.

RAGE!!! And you thought I was exaggerating about the media’s circle-jerk of praise! I think the Admiral’s reaction sums it up best: he circled the review in pen and then wrote “FUCKING ANDREW MUELLER!!”

That’s about right.