Been listening to Richey-era Manics bootlegs with my new earphones, and they're great. I have however started noticing various strange sounds. I initially didn't know what they were, and they're too brief to get enough out of them to describe them. Almost like little clinks. As I listened more though, I began to realise that there's a pattern to them, and I could start to make some logical deducations. The first was that they aren't just random noise, or a technical problem. The abberations occured roughly in rrelation with the music, so it couldn't be that. They could almost have been percussive, but they don't fit into any part of Sean's drum playing, be it stylistically, tonally, or in terms of volume. Unless they were the sound of his drummer stool rocking back and forth, maybe. But no. Drums are very loud, so it wouldn't be that. It couldn't be Nicky. Too high a pitch, and it occured at times when he wasn't playing. Couldn't be James either. While the sound had some loose connection with the music, it was totally out of sync with James' guitar playing. I pondered for a moment if it could be something weird he was doing, or if he was wearing a jacket that kept hitting the strings or something, but none of that made sense. The aberations remained a mystery. Looking outside the box, I began to wonder if maybe the gigs were taped on tapes that had previously been used for something else, and maybe I was hearing the residue of a loud snare from a previous recording, or from the soundcheck. Maybe it was the crowd jumping around. It was strange, whatever it was.
After some thought, it dawned on me that what I was hearing was actually Richey's guitar playing.
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