15 years since Know Your Enemy

[LA ex]

A very strange album.

Asides from Found that Soul the singles are probably my least favourite tracks.

Asides from a few SATT era performances of Freedom of Speech, have any of the album tracks been performed live post touring KYE?

[Bambi]

Originally Posted by Flint

Both Miss Europa and Epicentre are some of the best songs on the album... !

We've had this debate before!

Ugh, Epicentre. I worship the painkiller...and the foam earplug - coincidentally, often available in the same aisle.

[Borderliner]

Great album, great times. When I listened to Intravenous Agnostic and Found That Soul they sounded so "noisy" yet so cool. I still remember that very first impression.

So Why So Sad video was pretty impressive as well.

[junkymotown]

Did anyone else buy a "Braindead Motherfucker" badge and proudly wear it for years afterwards? It stayed pinned to my bag for ages.

[Donkey]

Originally Posted by LA ex

A very strange album.

Asides from Found that Soul the singles are probably my least favourite tracks.

Asides from a few SATT era performances of Freedom of Speech, have any of the album tracks been performed live post touring KYE?

Thanks God no. And it would be great not to hear Ocean Spray and LRS anymore either.

[Europa Gluten Free]

Originally Posted by Donkey

Thanks God no. And it would be great not to hear Ocean Spray and LRS anymore either.

This is a load of balls.

The most recent versions of Ocean Spray have been fantastic. The SEAT session thing 3 piece version in 2010 (?) was what it should have been - a compressed gritty rock song.

Let Robeson Sing is one of the most underrated Manics tunes. Lyric and music fit perfectly.

[Europa Gluten Free]

Originally Posted by LA ex

Asides from a few SATT era performances of Freedom of Speech, have any of the album tracks been performed live post touring KYE?

Great question. I think you might be right. It must be one of the most underrepresented albums of them all. I'm sure they played more songs off PFAYM in 2010/11 considering both albums are similar track lengths.

According to setlist.fm, they played Intravenous Agnostic live once in August 2001. Does anyone have a copy for it? I must make some inquiries.

Glad I got to hear Y of P, Miss Europa, Baby Elian live in 2001.

[Marconi Delorian]

There is no known live recording of the full band IA, unfortunately - have always wanted to hear this. There is an acoustic version James did on a radio session, haven't heard that one for years!

[Elizabeth M]

Know Your Enemy changed my life!

[AK47]

KYE is regularly played in my house. A truly interesting album and I long to hear an album like this from them again.

[everlasting]

Some top tunes on there and some misses but overall it's a decent album. IA is a great rocker, I always remember before the album was due out the official website loaded up with dark purple clouds and lightning striking with part of the song playing, I thought it was awesome. I do remember when they played TOTP I spoke to a few people and they said they were pretty unimpressed with SWSS and turned it off, therefore missing the rocking performance of Found That Soul.

[Manicben]

Originally Posted by junkymotown

Did anyone else buy a "Braindead Motherfucker" badge and proudly wear it for years afterwards? It stayed pinned to my bag for ages.

It's still on a jacket I bought when I was 16. I wore it everywhere for years.

I listened to KYE yesterday.

Intravenous Agnostic, really is a belter, isn't it. That noise!

[Bambi]

With IA, it's just a shame about that ridiculous bit where Sean's then-pudgy hands batter the drums to no effect while James squeals around aimlessly on top. It's the musical equivalent of running on the spot and it still sounds a bit sad; the band literally flailing around, looking for their edge.

Oh, and the lyrics, obvs.

[darkanddivine]

Although it wasn't my first Manics gig, today is the anniversary of the first "proper" headline show I saw by the band, so I remember it very well.

It holds fine memories of course, from the initial rush towards the stage when the lights went out to getting knocked over in Found That Soul, and the resulting blur of the next hour and a half. All a distant memory now, but damn good times. And to think back then there was a definitive split between the fans. I was one of those annoying new young people apparently!

[Porco]

I've said similar before, but I think Know Your Enemy is a funny(~strange) album, in that I think there's a really good normal length album in it with a few tracks it could have lost, it's just that almost everyone disagrees which tracks those should have been...!

Some random KYE opinions/memories/thoughts:

• Personally I love the lyrics of Intravenous Agnostic almost as much as the music, which is a lot (and that others find them so poor baffles me slightly, but horses for courses and all that). For me that track is like the beating heart of the whole album. And "What a mess" is possibly still my favourite Wire interjection in any of their songs, summing up both the song and album for both good and bad perfectly IMHO.

• Still can't get on with Watsville Blues, which remains one of my least favourite Manics songs.

• Why they didn't include The Masses Against The Classes on the standard UK album still baffles me. It would have fitted tonally, KYE was hardly the most coherent conceptual piece anyway, and the song was a promotion-friendly no.1 hit single... And maybe I've answered my own question and they were so intent in doing a complete 180-turn on the commercial success of TIMTTMY they didn't want to include a already-established hit. Still, amongst the more crazy things they have done IMHO.

• I still have the IA/doom-laden thunderclouds .swf off the KYE-era website saved somewhere, and while it's still quite cool the last time I looked at it it had dated quite a bit, so my advice is don't seek it out, just remember it in your mind as the cool thing it was back then and don't spoil it for yourself in the context of the present.

• Without outright disliking them I don't really get on that well with The Year of Purification or Royal Correspondent. I feel like the former is to R.E.M. what Autumnsong later became to Guns 'N Roses - an (IMHO) unsuccessful pastiche that for me lacked much of the emotional impact, or 'Manics rush' of most of their songs - it just sounded like them acting as another band to me. RC I just find a bit dull and whingey and I have grown to hate the line about food being chewed to a degree I can find no rational reasoning to express.

• I like So Why So Sad, but I love Found That Soul, and I think they would have been better off only releasing the latter as the first single.

• I know us lot often say this, but for me this is THE album/era where some of the B-sides were better than some of the album tracks and I would have happily swapped them. Locust Valley and Fear of Motion especially, but I also have soft spots for Groundhog Days and Masking Tape, and as we heard much later, Midnight Sun. Not so much Pedestal though, that was a slightly p-p-p-preposterous song (though ok as a B-side).

• I love Ocean Spray, Let Robeson Sing, Dead Martyrs, His Last Painting, Baby Elian, Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My Children.

• I like My Guernica, The Convelscent and Epicentre. I quite enjoy Miss Europa Disco Dancer but don't really like the repeated braindead muddyfunsters bit at the end, it's like they couldn't leave it as a daft fun straight tune, they had to self-sabotage it, which is so them, and part of why I love them in general, just not here specifically.

• For all its mess, the production on KYE is always more pleasant to listen to, when I do, than I remember it being later. I type this as I am listening to it!

• I was still living at the top a tall building with a big bedroom when KYE came out and so I could play along on my guitar extremely loudly without anyone complaining, which was nice. Happy days.

• More than anything, the original release of KYE and its singles reminds me of getting the bus to uni, listening to them on my Minidisc player. Looking back, Minidisc seems like the most appropriate format for the album in some ways, loved by those who loved it but never really made it totally mainstream like what came before or after...

• I also remember around this time period I had a mini-altercation with someone trying to hand out flyers for a club/event or similar that was (mis-)using the infamous Richey '4 real' photo. People trying to force junk mail into your hands is annoying at the best of times, but the use of the Richey image for so something so vaccuous particularly riled me, and I let the person know, loudly and in no uncertain terms as I swerved the attempt to push the unwanted flyer into my hands regardless. There's your braindead muddyfunsters Wire, maybe you were right all along after all!

Wrote more than I thought I would there.