Manic Moments

[CaerphillyCheese]

After listening to the “Do You Love Us” podcast chatter about nostalgia and recently watching High Fidelity (which includes a scene where he compiles his record collection autobiographically), I thought it would be fun (for me) to share and read other peoples Manic memories

The only rule is that it is a song/album/video attached to a particular fond memory - gigs would be too obvious.

I figured this was as good a time as any to reminisce about happy stuff. So here goes…

Remaining sat in the car park near Blackpool Pleasure Beach in August 98 to hear the first radio play of If You Tolerate This. I’d just bought my first (proper) guitar that week and was soon to discover that although I could play a few of the MSP songs I sure as hell couldn’t sing them.

[LA ex]

It's strange, I'm genuinely struggling to remember many big first listenings of Manics songs...

Building on what you've said about Tolerate, I seem to remember tuning in to listen its premier on Jo Whiley's show, desperately watching the clock hoping it got played before I had to go to work the lunch shift at the hotel I was working at. The rest of TIMTTMY I either heard live first or the following day when I bought the album.

Masses I seem to remember somehow getting an audio rip of the live version from the V99 shows.

Know Your Enemy and Lifeblood I can't remember anything notable... Empty Souls I think I had a live rip of.

SATT I seem to remember hearing Underdogs and YLA after getting home from work and seeing Forever Delayed at probably its most busy.

Albums since then... Seem to have mostly been getting home, finding out a new song had been released, then finding it on Youtube.

Strangely for other bands that I've loved I've got far more vivid memories of hearing new stuff for the first time.

[Son of Stopped]

Since their SATT comeback, the first single has been as played safe as possible.
Before then, there was always this adjustment. Tolerate didn't sound like anything they'd done before. So Why So Sad seriously didn't sound anything like Masses or Tolerate...
It came to a crashing conclusion on my choice.

The Love Of Richard Nixon.

It was the lukewarm chart performance of Lipstick Traces that dented my perception the Manics were still popular. Since KYE, we had The Libertines, The Vines and guitar bands coming along. Ah, wait until the Manics get back. No, didn't go London War demo. Pretty sure I saw on coverage, a tall person in sunglasses and dark leopard jacket in front of the stage of those who had skipped the march, and were waiting for a speech from Tony Benn.
Empty Souls on the radio performed live on the Isle of Wight the year after.
Yeah! This is the Manics that will make everything better!
And so came the first play of TLORN on Radio 1. Jo Wiley (Whiley?) announced. Pressed record. "Richard Nixon? But Dubya Bush!" and then came the song.
What the hell is this? I immediately pictured Brian from the Children's show "My Parents Are Aliens!" playing it at a Disco to baffled responses.
Damn that voice was deep. Is James ok? What the fuck is that chorus? And hold on, is he trying to do Robert Fripp in the guitar solo?
I stopped the tape after the song had finished. Played it over and over. Couldn't get my head round it. Had I failed the Manics? Had the band failed me?
I didn't have Internet of my own back then. Anyway, I read on Teletext the song was number 1 in the midweeks. This was heartening!
So that means people will like the song and I won't! So listened over and over. Fell in love with it. They'd done it! They'd gone further musically than Tolerate and it still sounds like it's applicable to today's President!
And then it just entered at number 2. Oh.

[CaerphillyCheese]

I too struggle to remember first times I heard songs/albums for anything in the past 15 years! I was a teenage during the 90s so I dont know if that has something to do with it but despite being longer ago my attachment of memories to songs is far more significant during that period.

I even remember the first time I saw the Slash and Burn single cover in Woolworths and that was at least a couple of years before I actually started listening to the Manics.

I can relate to the experience of waiting to hear TLORN and then being quite confused/disappointed. I appreciated that bands need to try new/different things but I was also frustrated by it.

Perhaps it isn't just an age thing. It's probably also down to how we consume music and that there is no longer a need to tune into a radio station or tv channel for a first play/screening of a song/video.

[Bobafettish]

My overriding memory is the first time I heard Faster on the Forever Delayed comp. I'd bought it as a 2 for £10 with Nightclubbing by Grace Jones... I'd heard stuff like ADFL, Tolerate, Motorcycle Emptiness, but hadn't paid attention to them too closely. I was 16, had recently read 1984 and so as soon as it starts, everything just fell into place. Then a few weeks later Richey was officially declared dead, and they haven't left my mind since...

[blackflower]

My first memory of the Manics is from sometime in 1991. I'd bought a copy of the NME and the first thing I saw when I opened it up was the 4 Real picture of Richey. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that my first reaction was that it was fantastically cool and a new and exciting way to behave as a rock star - in my defense I was only 16 and had no idea about self-harm and its mental health implications. But even though I'd never heard any of their songs (I was in Australia where they had almost no airplay) I was firmly pro-Manics from that point on and always enjoyed reading their interviews. I even included Richey in a collage I made the following year of all my favourite singers and bands (yes, I made collages, I was that sort of teenager!)

Then in late 1993 I was in a sort of life limbo - I had dropped out of my first attempt at uni and was waiting until the following February to start my second. Into this void crashed "From Despair To Where" and my whole world changed. The Manics were my favourite band. It felt like I'd been hit by a lightning bolt that had woken me from a long, long slumber.

As a diary writer I could probably fill pages of this thread with memories of various Manics Moments that I've scribbled down over the years! A lot were of gigs which are on my blog of course, but there's so many others - like learning that the Manics would continue without Richey in 1995, then hearing ADFL for the first time in 1996, and planning my trip to London only to discover that they would be playing three nights there a fortnight after I arrived. So many wonderful memories. God save the Manics indeed.