#1
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Rewrite History
Imagine if the order of released albums was like this. How would you feel if the band had released the albums in this particular order. Would you still feel the same way about the band?
GATS (Debut) KYE LB THB TIMTTMY GT SATT JFPL PFAYM EMG
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LET'S GO TO WAR! |
#2
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That's a tough one cos I discovered he Manics at a certain time in my life when it all just clicked. Dunno what I would have been like/thought of them if say I'd heard GT or GATS first before Truth. SATT and Postcards would have got my attention if they had been released earlier in their career!
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"Former glam-punk rocker James Dean Bradfield now looks like your friendly, slightly rumpled Welsh uncle who always brings you chocolate when he visits. That's not a bad thing." - Allister Thompson aka The Gateless Gate (Canadian musician) |
#3
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In this alternate reality i wonder if they would have been dropped by Sony after KYE? Some excellent work on both that and GT, but not great albums by any stretch.
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#4
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Quote:
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There's not enough black in the Union Jack, there's so much white in the Stars And Stripes. |
#5
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I'd have loved if GATS was the first album purely because their are a lot of big radio friendly songs on there. The band would have played festivals, got a following but would ultimately disregard the commercial edge to the band and promise to come back with something "raw" for the 2nd L/P. The manics would then come back then with the "difficult second album" in KYE, where I can imagine the band stating that "We were too commercial on our debut. We had become the enemy and this album is about redefining ourselves as a band". Having garnered wavering reviews and some new fans, the band once again feel they're not exploring other aspects of their potential and decide to come back with a "dark, edgy, pop sound". The result is LB. It almost destroys the band forcing them to disappear for two years. The failure of LB forces Richey into meltdown, mental hospitals, drug and alcohol abuse, self harming. The experience allows him to go completely into foreign territory and write the lyrics for THB. The album is a huge success and obtains a cult following and rave reviews despite not receiving huge airplay for the singles. The reception of the THB force the band to think about what they're likely to come back with. Nicky and Richey collaborate on lyrics and James believes the next album should be a more soft affair but with more of a radio friendly vibe. Richey becomes infuriated by the softness of the album and refuses to be apart of it and leaves the band to join The Stereophonics. The Manics become huge but it slowly becomes apparent that they're abandoning the very core of what the band are about so they fuck off for 2 years, Richey rejoins, and they come back with a double LP, GT. The album is generally well received and ME puts them onto Q's Instant Classic Track in the June of that year. The band are happy but Richey is still bitching about TIMTTMY and threatens to leave again. James, Sean and Nicky boot him from the band and he becomes a session musician for CAST while the band return with SATT. Massive hit singles, great reviews but the band feel they've over egged the commercial pudding and need to go back to their darker side. Swallowing their pride, they visit Richey with a frey bentos pie and chips and beg him for some lyrics. The result is JFPL. Richey enters the band again and says they need to keep him around so he can write dark lyrics for the band. The band, unhappy that JFPL got Richey too much recognition, boot him from the band and he joins StarSailor as a backing singer. The band record PFAYM and get great reviews but people are getting fucked off with the commercial sound and shit lyrics. The band enlist Richey once again to write lyrics for EMG with Nicky. They all become friends again and are planning on writing 70 songs of hatred and failure.
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LET'S GO TO WAR! |
#6
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Well on top of never hearing sultanas go "crunch", I can't quite rewrite the Manics history. But carry on, this is a good read!
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#7
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#8
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Oh fuck it! I can't help myself.
Their first album is TIMTTMY and gets completely overlooked by everybody as they aren't from Seattle or Manchester. They are a three piece with a backing musician on keyboards and the most they can get mystique-wise is nobody can remember how the keyboardists surname is spelt. The band follow this up with PFAYM, which gets them a support slot with Bon Jovi. Not just in Milton Keynes, but across the country and America as Jon Bon thinks they are of "No real threat". They surprise everyone with their third album "Lifeblood" which wins the Mercury Music Prize and gets used in adverts for coffee, cars and Stannah Stairlifts. After having the piss taken out of them by Noel and Liam they make their fourth album EMG, which breaks them in America and elsewhere. Suddenly they are the biggest band on the planet. But are constantly put down for being pussies. The band get a bit riled by this, so emerge in 1996 with... SATT. Where they court controversy by playing a gig at the Conservative party conference. The album stiffs and they get swept away by The Verve. This hurts. A lot. So they get angry and unleash... KYE. The world laughs, and listens to "OK Computer" instead. This proves too much for Nicky the Unnameable who leaves and they replace him with their friend, Richey. The band see out the decade with JFPL, but when challenged by Steve Lamacq, Richey just goes "Well... well, that's your opinion. Nothing really I can do about that." and just shrugs, as the world shrugs when they bring out GT in 2001. Then 9/11 happens. The band cave in and agree to Sony's demands to delete it from their catalogue and come back with 2002 with a kiss and make up album GATS. The world proves it's goldfish minded (Plus heavily medicated by aspartame and other pacifying drugs the world agrees to have pumped into their water supply to prevent terrorism) and embraces the band back to it's hearts. And thanks an adverse reaction to their drugged up state, they agree to Richey's idea and release THB. The album has 80 billion pre-orders worldwide, as everyone expects an album of vague and unworkable religious pomposity. Guess what happened next? The whole world turns against them. They get death threats. Bin Laden releases a tape of him going "What the fuck? What the fuck?" that's even more digitally cobbled together than his usual messages and also the IRA/MI5 conglomerate come out of hiding to also declare war on the band. "This is all your fault, you bastard!!" the tearful band accuse Richey, who sensibly decides to fuck off without even offering an explanation. This seems to pacify the world, who are too disease ridden and brain damaged by the additives in the water and food supply to think clearly. The band surprisingly get over the loss of Richey quite quickly, and were last heard of recording an album called "70 Ways Of Saying 'NURRRR'!" which would have 80 billion pre-orders, but sadly the criminal cabals that have taken over the worlds governments have successfully wiped out three quarters of the world population through wars, biological warfare, and enforced social collapse. As they put the finishing touches to their new album, Nicky is asked about this by the last journalist who hasn't had a microchip implanted into his forehead (which renders all life on Earth complacent and unthinking). "If only there was an angry working class band who commented on this sort of stuff?" Which causes Nicky to make the "URRRRRRRRRRRARRRARRRRUURRRRRRRRAAAAURRRRRR" noise from the end of the 1970's Invasion of The Bodysnatchers, causing UN double agents to enter and forcibly insert a microchip into the journalists head. Then, during an atomic blast at the London Olympics, number four reactor at Fukushima melts down and sends 826 Chernobyls into the northern hemisphere. Meanwhile, in Central Africa, a group of survivors who avoided the genocide and the microchip come across a cassette copy of THB. "We could do this!" one will say "We could use this band to inspire us to... oh shit!" as they look up and see Planet Nibiru crashes into the Earth causing super volcanoes to erupt and the magnetic poles to shift and send the Earth spinning into the heart of the Sun. And as the Earth spins to it's doom, somewhere on the planet the recordings of "70 Ways Of Saying 'NURRRRR!'" play over and over again. Powered by a faltering power supply. Meanwhile the underground lifeforms that have lived on this planet have managed to work out how to build spacecrafts and as they leave, they home in on the faltering power supply at the studio and listen to it as they blast off to uncharted futures in outer space. "Hey, this stuff wasn't bad!" "Yeah, but did they ever work out how to spell that Nick keyboardists surname?" "Father! Father!" says their lizardy/rock child thing "I've worked out how it's spelt!" And as the underground life forms looked over to what their child had written, they took their eyes off the controls and radar and went crashing into Mars. This crash was so powerful, it activated the sleeping Martian lifeforms who were in suspended animation below the surface. The underground lifeform lizard/rock things from Earth were quite celebrated in Martian culture. It rewrote everything in Martian history. Martian scientists worked out how their spacecraft worked and managed to get working the mastertapes of "70 Ways Of Saying 'NURRRR!'" and celebrate forever the curious lifeforms the "Naysmiths". Meanwhile Richey and the rest of the Manics look on and don't really mind seeing as they have discovered their true existence is to become part of an infinite consciousness having a physical experience in a particular dimension. And THAT, FD, is how you rewrite MSP history! |
#9
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Debut album Generation Terrorists sells 60 million copies worldwide and the band splits up. Band refuse to reform, despite rumoured offers of £20m+ for concerts. Reclusive Richey Edwards is often blamed as the one who doesn't want the band to reform. On the 20th anniversary of GT Richey suprises everyone when he agrees to be a judge on The Voice UK. Despite some erratic judging he is a hit with viewers, especially with his catchphrase "Are you 4 real ?" Viewing figures break the worldwide record when the Manics agree to reform for a live performance on the show. Speculation is high as to what song the band will perform. Unbelievably they choose a new song, written without Richey's input, and perform as a 3-piece the new track Autumnsong. It's immediately proclaimed as an all time classic. Richey then joins the band and announces that "this one is for her majesty" followed by James screaming into the microphone "Repeat after me....
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#10
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Aaron, that was possibly the most frightening thing I've read in a while, I think I need a lie down!
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If I can't scream like a banshee and tell jokes and quote Monty Python and organize backrub circles and put Twizzlers in my soda and giggle freely, I don't want to be part of your Revolution. |
#11
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It broke the thread! Sorry about that AK47!
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#12
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I thought of two more rewrites.
The history where the band follow the career we have now to the letter, every success and heartbreak the band has had IRL happens to them. In the chronological order. Only in this history one of the sides in WWII never stopped, so Manic Street Preachers but Manics are now Japanese. In a rewrite where the Atomic Bomb got dropped in Wales in the 1940's: MSP are having their 1970's Primary School together. But all four of them have been brain damaged by radiation so they flayed about with instruments to the point of appearing to be forcing them to play by carers sadistic. It managed to get recorded on a special tape recorder at the nursery. But not a single MSP lived to reach 11 to do anything with it. Although as a consequence, their case was the one that changed the will of the United Nations to finally evict the British to other parts of the world. Forget "No Manifesto", they get a mini-series on "Lifetime" and the producer and main adult actors win Oscars. So the Manics never existed, but instead they become a "Schindler's List" moment in time. |
#13
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i suspect that Lifeblood would have got the reception it deserved and the band wanted if they had put it out after they had done Send Away The Tigers.
also "look, Nicky, it's shit. it just goes on about hair. we are not doing it, fuck off and write something better" would have been a very good conversation for them to have had.
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#14
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If they hadn't released the 10th anniversay edition of The Holy Bible a couple of weeks after Lifeblood, that might have been a good idea.
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Once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand |
#15
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So glad that never happened!
__________________
"Former glam-punk rocker James Dean Bradfield now looks like your friendly, slightly rumpled Welsh uncle who always brings you chocolate when he visits. That's not a bad thing." - Allister Thompson aka The Gateless Gate (Canadian musician) |
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