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One week before November 22nd<\/sup>, the evening I went to see Welsh rock band the Manic Street Preachers perform at Singapore\u2019s Star Theatre, I read John Niven\u2019s satirical 2018 novel Kill \u2018Em All<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kill \u2018Em All<\/em> is a sequel to Niven\u2019s Kill Your Friends<\/em><\/a>, written a decade earlier.\u00a0 It continues the adventures of Steven Stelfox, a record-company A&R agent so devoid of things like conscience, empathy or decency, and so determined to climb the corporate ladder and make pots of money, that he\u2019ll countenance doing anything, murder included.\u00a0 In Kill \u2018Em All<\/em>, Stelfox has become a millionaire through helming a hit reality TV show called American<\/em> Pop<\/em> Star<\/em> \u2013 I wonder if Niven had a real person in mind when he constructed that scenario? \u2013 and the immoral, money-grasping monster has taken to the late 2010s, the era of President Donald Trump, like the proverbial pig to shit.\u00a0 He\u2019s particularly enamoured with the phenomena of fake news, online conspiracy theories, social-media rabbit-holes, and bot-farm-generated misinformation and propaganda, which the Trump presidency elevated to a new level.\u00a0 At one point, referencing the title of the Manic Street Preachers\u2019 1998 album, he sneers: \u201cThis Is My Truth Tell Me Yours<\/em>, those Welsh socialist miner f**ks sang, way back in the day, before all of this happened.\u00a0 Nowadays?\u00a0 This Is My Lie Prove Me Wrong<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t the only coincidence I experienced with the November 22nd<\/sup> show.\u00a0 I\u2019ll explain the other coincidence later.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, the backdrop for the Manic Street Preachers\u2019 gig in the plush, sweeping amphitheatre of the Star Theatre seemed in defiance of Stellfox and the rapacious, corporate world he represents.\u00a0 It was a reproduction of the cover for their 2011 compilation album National Treasures \u2013 the Complete Singles<\/em>, depicting a girl clutching a French horn, clad in a brass-band uniform (presumably a colliery band) and standing in front of a pithead (presumably a Welsh one).\u00a0 Reassuringly, this suggested the Manics \u2013 who in 2000 released a single called The Masses against the Classes<\/em> (2000), which begins with a quote by Noam Chomsky and has the Cuban flag on its sleeve \u2013 remained proud \u2018Welsh socialist miner f**ks\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 Columbia<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nonetheless, I felt apprehensive about what lay ahead of me.\u00a0 I\u2019d only seen the band once before, in 1993, when they were promoting their album Gold Against the Soul.<\/em> \u00a0They turned up in the Japanese city of Sapporo, where I\u2019d recently started a job, and delivered one of the most memorable live-music shows I\u2019d ever attended. \u00a0It was also rather odd. \u00a0In Britain they might have had a reputation for being radical, shit-stirring retro-punks, but in Japan they were seen as a sort of Guns n\u2019 Roses-lite, possibly thanks to their predilection for wearing eye-liner and slightly glam clothes.\u00a0 Accordingly, their gig at Sapporo\u2019s Penny Lane attracted a squad of young Japanese ladies dressed in floppy hats and silk scarves who spent their time squealing \u2018Rich-ee!\u2019 at the band\u2019s iconic but troubled guitarist, Richey Edwards. \u00a0Tragically, Edwards was to disappear<\/a>, and never be seen again, two years later.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n That 1993 gig was emblematic for me.\u00a0 The young Manic Street Preachers had throbbed onstage with a brash, youthful energy that mirrored how I felt too at the time \u2013 I was young, full of beans, ready to take on the world.\u00a0 And later, looking back, the memory of it made me feel a little melancholic in a wistful, where-did-my-youth-go?<\/em> sort of way.\u00a0 This was emphasised by something that happened a decade afterwards.\u00a0 I listened to my copy of Gold Against the Soul<\/em>, which I’d bought in Japan, for the first time in ages.\u00a0 It was only then that I discovered the bulky CD case contained a second tray I hadn\u2019t noticed before.\u00a0 This tray held a second, bonus CD \u2013 a live one of them performing during their 1993 Japan tour.\u00a0 I played it and immediately felt a nostalgic sadness, for in the crowd I could hear those ladies shouting \u201cRich-ee!\u201d again at the Manics\u2019 now-vanished guitarist.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t so much a CD as a time capsule.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, how would the band strike me in 2023, now that they and I were well into our middle-age?\u00a0 And in the Star Theatre, a venue that seemed the antithesis of the small, intimate and cheerfully dingy place that Penny Lane had been? \u00a0(One major point of difference between them was the purchasing of alcohol.\u00a0 In Penny Lane you got tins of Sapporo beer out of a cheapish vending machine at the back of the little auditorium.\u00a0 At the Star, where your bags were painstakingly checked before you entered the premises to ensure you weren\u2019t bringing in any food or drink \u2013 not even water \u2013 you joined a long queue for the privilege of buying a pint of beer for 24 Singaporean dollars, which is about 14 British pounds.\u00a0 Phew.\u00a0 Steven Stelfox could have been running the catering.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But enough of the brooding introspection.\u00a0 The Manics came onstage just after half-past-seven and launched into Motorcycle<\/em> Emptiness<\/em>, from their first album, Generation<\/em> Terrorists<\/em> (1992).\u00a0 And undeniably, they sounded good<\/em>.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t show the raw, sometimes-nervous, sometimes-ragged energy that they\u2019d shown in 1993, but played with the confidence and professionalism you\u2019d expect from an outfit who\u2019ve been together for more than three decades.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yet it wasn\u2019t the slick, on-autopilot, by-the-numbers performance of a jaded old rock band.\u00a0 The Manics retained their pleasing idiosyncrasies of old.\u00a0 Sporting a white dress-jacket and (for a bloke his age) an astonishingly skinny pair of jeans, tall, gangling bassist Nicky Wire still looked like he\u2019d been assembled out of pipe cleaners \u2013 and still ambled about like a man with a new pair of legs who was testing out what they could do.\u00a0 Meanwhile, vocalist \/ guitarist James Dean Bradfield, during those moments when he let himself go, behaved like a dad secretly dancing to his favourite music in his bedroom, twirling around, pogoing on one leg, attempting a Chuck-Berry-style duck-walk.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the Manics had played Penny Lane in 1993, their set had consisted entirely of numbers from Generation<\/em> Terrorists<\/em> and Gold<\/em> Against<\/em> the<\/em> Soul<\/em>, the only albums they\u2019d released by then, so tonight I was treated to much broader palette of music.\u00a0 There were five songs from Generation<\/em> Terrorists<\/em>: Little<\/em> Baby<\/em> Nothing<\/em>, Slash \u2018n\u2019 Burn<\/em>, Stay<\/em> Beautiful<\/em> and You<\/em> Love<\/em> Us<\/em>, as well as Motorcycle<\/em> Emptiness<\/em>.\u00a0 Wire dedicated Stay<\/em> Beautiful<\/em> to the memory of Richey Edwards.\u00a0 From Gold<\/em> Against<\/em> the<\/em> Soul<\/em> \u2013 an album that, despite me really liking it, has never been highly regarded in the Manics\u2019 oeuvre \u2013 only From<\/em> Despair<\/em> to<\/em> Where<\/em> got an airing.\u00a0 From the late 1990s, when the band were perhaps at their commercial and critical peak, they played A Design for Life<\/em>, Everything Must Go<\/em>, Australia<\/em> (all 1996), If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next<\/em> and You Stole the Sun from My Heart<\/em> (both 1998), while the band\u2019s 21st<\/sup>-century career was represented by a smattering of singles like Your Love Alone is Not Enough<\/em> (2007), Walk Me to the Bridge<\/em> (2014) and International Blue<\/em> (2018).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thus, it was almost a greatest-hit package, which went down well with the audience.\u00a0 Many of them seemed to be long-term fans.\u00a0 Despite the constraints of the Star Theatre, with its wall-to-wall seating, a lot of folk were soon on their feet, jumping about as if they were in an open venue.\u00a0 Two big, macho-looking guys a few rows in front of me, obviously well refreshed, got extremely emotional \u2013 arms wrapped around each other, bodies swaying precipitously from side to side.\u00a0 If the gig had lasted another half-hour, they\u2019d probably have shagged each other in public.\u00a0 I even thought I heard a distant, communal chant of \u201cWales! Wales! Wales!\u2019 at one moment.\u00a0 (In addition to the backdrop\u2019s picture of a Welsh colliery, a Welsh flag was draped over one of the units behind the band, and Bradfield and Wire mentioned their home country several times during their between-songs banter.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Most bands who are still recording would pepper their set-list with \u2018new songs\u2019 off the \u2018new album\u2019.\u00a0 But the Manics trotted out only one number from their most recent offering, 2021\u2019s The<\/em> Ultra<\/em> Vivid<\/em> Lament<\/em>, an album I\u2019d never heard and knew nothing about.\u00a0 I was really surprised, then, when the song they played from it turned out to be called Still<\/em> Snowing<\/em> in<\/em> Sapporo<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 Later, when I researched the song, I discovered that it\u2019d been inspired by the concert they\u2019d done in Sapporo 30 years ago \u2013 the one I\u2019d attended.\u00a0 According to songfacts.com<\/a>: \u201cWhen the Manic Street Preachers toured Japan in 1993 they played a gig there.\u00a0 The song is a reverie of a magic moment, when they felt they could pretty much do anything.\u201d\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 That was how I\u2019d felt about myself, that I could do anything, when I saw them. \u00a0And how weird to hear them perform a song inspired by a long-ago gig and realise I was (probably) the only person in the audience who\u2019d been<\/em> at that long-ago gig.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So, now, I feel more psychically attuned to the band than ever\u2026\u00a0 Strictly speaking, though, the Manics\u2019 Sapporo concert was on October 22nd<\/sup>, 1993, which makes the song-title Snow<\/em> Falling<\/em> on<\/em> Sapporo<\/em> redundant.\u00a0 Snow wouldn\u2019t have started falling on the city yet.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll allow them poetic licence.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When the band finally trooped off the stage, they left behind an extremely satisfied crowd.\u00a0 A man beside me remarked, \u201cSuede will have to be bloody good to top that<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Oh.\u00a0 Did I say Suede were playing on the bill too?\u00a0 Well, they were.\u00a0 But that\u2019ll be the subject of another blog-post.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n One week before November 22nd, the evening I went to see Welsh rock band the Manic Street Preachers perform at Singapore\u2019s Star Theatre, I read John Niven\u2019s satirical 2018 novel Kill \u2018Em All. Kill \u2018Em All is a sequel to Niven\u2019s Kill Your Friends, written a decade earlier.\u00a0 It continues the adventures … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/GatS.jpg\")
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