James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, James Moore- these are names which set my heart a’pounding. I have a Manics collage poster which I recently made hanging on my bedroom wall. I am thirteen years old and they are my nineteen year old heart throbs or rather I’m a responsible 25 year old and they are nearing 50 and I didn’t even know who they were when I was thirteen. It’s a shame because I would have loved them at that age. I can’t seem to adore them the way an adult should adore a band, in a quiet sophisticated way, I love them in a slightly more giddy fashion. In keeping with having arrived on the Manics scene a little late in life, I have an overall poor record with the Manic Street Preachers. I once got in a car accident on a way to a Manics gig and never made it. I’m usually either leaving town or entering town one day short of a Manics gig and fail to see them. Last night of course, during the first Manics tour in the US in several centuries, I had to baby-sit. This is fitting, because apparently I’m thirteen and babysitting is the only way I can afford gig tickets. Of course the overworked parent was late picking up her child, and I missed the first half of the Manics show. I hardly even fucking cared though, it was still the best damn gig I’ve been to in my life.
I was floaty, giggly, probably obnoxious to everyone around me and didn’t give a damn. These are Welsh Gods for crying out loud. So I whip myself into a frenzy, resemble someone having a rock ‘n roll seizure, scream at the top of my lungs and rush headlong into the thick of the crowd Braveheart style. Most of the crowd were older people, well not old, but responsible members of society, who own things like iphones and apparently don’t like to get to close to each other for fear of breaking out into a sweat. No problem, more room for me to jump around and fling myself about. It wasn’t the crowd’s fault, really, that they were old. The Manics haven’t been promoted in the US in years, their albums aren’t available here, and they haven’t made an appearance in quite a while so they haven’t made any new younger fans. The fans they have are older, they’ve been following the Manics for over a decade, so they’re dedicated hero worshippers but they just don’t feel like moshing anymore and with no teenagers around to force them to mosh, they simply stand still and sway a little. It’s nice, really. In fact it didn’t really matter what the people in the crowd were doing with their bodies, their veneration showed in other ways- the rapt faces focused on the Welshmen on stage, mouthing words to the songs, you could see it in their eyes- they were in heaven, the Manics were at the Fillmore, our Fillmore, in our San Francisco. They didn’t even take out their iphones to text their friends about it, it was much too important of an event for such frivolity. Our Gods in our church. Fucking amen to that.
It dawned on me half way through the half of the show which I managed to attend that I wouldn’t mind having sex with James Dean Bradfield, it doesn’t count as cheating if it’s with a member of the Manics. I wonder if my boyfriend would mind this coupling, I think I’ve actually asked him this before and can’t remember what his answer was. I fantasized about this for the whole of “Little Baby Nothing.” It didn’t happen of course, it never does. What did happen after the show was I ended up in a karaoke bar, which didn’t carry babycham (I did look,) but did carry other alcoholic beverages and a well stocked karaoke machine. My more sensible friend and I managed to belt out a stirring rendition of “Motorcycle Emptyness” (well, I did the belting part, she did the standing on stage looking cute part.) We then took our seats at the bar again, only to be accosted by 40 year olds who thought we “did a great job with that song” and who is that band again? Oh right, maybe you could sing something by Bon Jovi next, or even something by Journey? They’re rock bands too afterall. We excused ourselves- my friend needed to get some sleep and I felt the need to go be alone with my Richey Edwards shrine. For a second I considered running away from home and following the Manics for the rest of their US tour. But then I remembered that I had agreed to babysit this weekend.

The Manics at the Fillmore

The Orange mobile phone adverts you see in the cinema before your film starts are a jokey, self-referential look at the distortions placed upon artistic expression by capital. During the nineties it became increasingly common for film-makers to gain funding by agreeing to place products prominently in the film, or make reference to them in the script. It’s a personally bugbear of mine. I can forgive a film much but if I get the hint that I’m being marketed at during time I’ve paid to experience art and be entertained in, my opinion of the film is likely to be very unfavourable. The counter argument is that if it were not for product placement these films would not get made at all, but that’s a consequence of allocating funding on commercial viability rather than artistic merit, and an argument for freeing capital from the control of a few multinationals.

By exaggerating rather than denying this effect, Orange get a cinema audience who are well aware of the affect of marketing to laugh with them rather than complain at them. And yet, having to sit through these adverts (usually the same one) every time you go to see a film gradually becomes irritating and frustrating. Ironically, an advert based on acknowledging the negative affect of corporate money on film manages itself to spoil the experience of cinema goers.

Just a quick plug for Glasgow Film Theatre’s Cine Cuba festival, screening films representing the peak of Cuban cinema output during the month of August. If you haven’t been to GFT this is a perfect excuse to check out the cinema’s beautiful art deco interior. (An aside- with the amount of other art deco buildings in this part of central Glasgow, the grid street system and complex freeway interchange, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Hollywood during it’s thirties heyday, only without the good weather.) First film is Personal Belongings, at 1pm tomorrow (Sunday 2nd.)

It was inevitably going to happen. Just as early eighties post punk gave way to mid eighties electropop which then gave way to late eighties rave, the early 2000s post punk revival gave way to new rave which in turn is giving way to… this. This is “glo-fi” or “hipstergogic pop” if you prefer, both thoroughly silly names, and is a dreamy blend of ambient, offbeat trance and synth pop seemingly written for blissed out summer nights and lazy days in the sun. The first track above sounds almost like early Orbital.

Simon Reynolds discusses the emerging genre at some length here. He makes a couple of interesting points, one being that having appropriated and made shit the all best bits of popular culture the hipsters have moved on to something which could never be considered remotely cool- New Age music. This idea has a certain lol-factor but the more substatative point is that the influence of New Age music on glo-fi might be the result of it being absorbed sub-consciously by today’s musicians as they grew up. New Age was born with Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells in 1973 but peaked during the mid-eighties, when the people responsible for glo-fi would have been kids. Reynolds continues,

…does this mean that every generation from now on will come up with its own equivalent of hauntology/hypnagogic, a working-through of the music/popcult assimilated during infancy and early childhood? You can see something like this process happening with wonky maybe, in the way that games music is such a strong influence… that palette of day-glo synth-tones seem to be heavily coded as “halcyon”, presumably because for an entire generation, a high percentage of the total amount of music they heard as children would have been via video and computer games…

Funny that, I may have suggested something similar myself.

Lemuria (not be confused with the Belgium black metal band of the same name) have one of the best debut albums I’ve heard in a long time. Get Better is a fantastic slice of awkward pop-punk that’s too shy to ask you out but not to tell the rest of the world about it. Um, or something.

Anyway, Lemuria and bands like them will be successfully in the next period because before too long we’re going to rediscover how much we loved geeky, noisy, uncommercialised indie rock back in the early nineties. This, folks, is the next big thing. As fantastic as Friendly Fires are, it’s been four years since Silent Alarm, and that wave has now broken.

It just gets better and better. From the BBC:

Hip-hop producer Danger Mouse is to release a blank CD, after record label EMI reportedly cancelled his new album.

Dark Night Of The Soul, a collaboration with rock group Sparklehorse, also features Iggy Pop and The Flaming Lips, along with artwork by David Lynch.

It has already been streamed online, but Billboard magazine said a “legal dispute” with EMI derailed the project.

Danger Mouse, who is half of pop group Gnarls Barkley, said he hoped people would still get to hear the record.

A spokesperson for the producer said: “Danger Mouse remains hugely proud of Dark Night of the Soul and hopes that people lucky enough to hear the music, by whatever means, are as excited by it as he is.”

He added that the album, which comes with a limited edition, “100+ page book” of David Lynch photographs inspired by the music “will now come with a blank, recordable CD-R”.

“All copies will be clearly labelled: ‘For Legal Reasons, enclosed CD-R contains no music. Use it as you will.’”

It is unclear at this stage whether the record has been postponed or scrapped altogether. EMI could not be reached for comment.

Record labels are supposed to be a means for artists to get their music to the public. If the labels actually prevent this from happening, and the artists are forced to encorage their fans to get hold the music illegally, what exactly are the labels for? How can the record industry attack fans for downloading music when they wont let the fans buy it on CD?

From the BBC:

The new Manic Street Preachers album is being shipped to supermarkets in a plain slipcase because its artwork has been deemed “inappropriate”.

Concerns have been raised that the cover for Journal For Plague Lovers, a portrait by artist Jenny Saville, looks like it is splattered with blood.

Singer James Dean Bradfield called the situation “utterly bizarre”.

“We just thought it was a beautiful painting. We were all in total agreement,” he told BBC 6 Music.

The frontman disagreed that Saatchi favourite Saville, who also painted the cover for the band’s 1994 album The Holy Bible, had intended to depict a bloody face.

“It is her brushwork,” he said.

“If you’re familiar with her work, there’s a lot of ochres and browns and reds and browns and perhaps people are looking for us to be more provocative than we are being.

“We just saw a much more modern version of Lucian Freud-esque brushstrokes. That’s all we saw.

Bradfield added that the band were frustrated by supermarkets’ attitudes.

“You can have lovely shiny buttocks and guns everywhere in the supermarket on covers of magazines and CDs, but you show a piece of art and people just freak out,” he said.

Four of the main supermarket chains – Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons – are among the shops using the slip cover.

Asda told 6 Music they wanted to be extra cautious in case the artwork upset some of its customers.

Meanwhile Nicola Williamson, Sainsbury’s music buyer, said: “We felt that some customers might consider this particular album cover to be inappropriate if it were prominently displayed on the shelf.

“As such, the album will be sold in a sleeve provided by the publisher.”

So now you have to purchase a Manics album in a brown paper bag. FFS. Big business pandering to the lowest common denominator yet again. Who needs Mary Whitehouse when you have the force of the market?

Album review coming soon…

Apologies to those of you who don’t give a fuck, but earlier this week Radio 1 played a track from the Manic Street Preacher’s new album Journal For Plague Lovers. You can hear it again here:

Manic Street Preachers – Peeled Apples

It sounds, as promised, like The Holy Bible via In Utero. Which means it’s pretty damn awesome.

Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien has some interesting news:

Two days ago a historic meeting took place in Heaven (!) under Charing Cross railway station in London. A group of us Featured Artists, that’s anyone who has put a record out, gathered for the inaugural meeting of the Featured Artist Coalition (FAC). Traditionally in the music industry two groups have been shut out of any negotiations and rights/revenue carve ups … and that’s the artists and the fans. The formation of the FAC is all about changing this state of affairs … hopefully we can not only do artists justice but also the people who listen to our music. After all, in order to be a musician you have to be a music fan …… And first and foremost this is about trying to ensure that young bands and artists get a fair deal and are able to make a living in the digital era ….
I’m going to post up stuff about this because it’s an exciting time and also because there is going to be some seriously heavy PR aimed at us by the interested parties who might deem the FAC a threat …there’s a lot of fear out there in the biz….

Blur’s David Roundtree adds a bit more detail:

“The digital revolution has swept away the old music business of the 1960s, and changed forever the relationship between artists and fans. For companies who made their living sitting between the two, these are increasingly hard times, but for music makers and music fans this should be a fantastic opportunity.

“YouTube’s row with the PRS is the most recent example of just how fast the music industry is changing. There has never been a greater need for the collective voice of featured artists, whose music generates 95% of revenue in the industry, to be properly heard.

“As this revolution gathers pace Featured Artists must seize the initiative. We are looking to forge a new deal, built on fairness, with our fans, the music industry and governments.

“To achieve this, we must own our future, take real control of our rights and genuinely work together. Acting alone, artists’ voices will not be heard. Acting together, we can be a powerful force. Our rights are our power. By making ourselves heard and arguing for what’s fair, we can help reshape the industry for the future so that it serves the interests of those who want to make new music as well as those who want to hear new music.”

Essentially, this is a union, but it’s a union with a specific purpose. As David Roundtree says the industry’s old method of working is being destroyed by mass piracy. We have now reached the point where anyone can download for free almost any album they want, in high-quality and lossless audio formats. Oink.cd was the most extensive music library ever created, and although the music industry can shut down a few bittorrent sites they’ll never be able to stop new ones from springing back up. The financial model which the music industry has been using for the last 60+ years is no longer viable.

Piracy harms artists, but it harms the record labels (and the endless middlemen, who have been largely rendered superfluous by digital technology) a hell of a lot more. A typical artist’s share of the profits from a record is between 10/90 and 20/80, so every album pirated hurts the industry five to ten times more than it does the artist. This is why people generally don’t feel bad about piracy- those who are hurt the most are the record companies, who generally deserve it.

But the fact remains that piracy does hurt artists, and for a new artist can be the difference between making a living from their music or not. So it’s vital that a new business model is developed. The current situation is unsustainable, and actually benefits mainstream commercial artists, whose fans are less likely to download their music for free.

However artists end up getting paid in the future- and I have no brilliant ideas over how this should be accomplished- artists deserve a bigger slice of the pie, and fans should be paying less for their music. This pressure group seems to have been formed for the purpose of achieving this aim, and so must be a Good Thing.