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Man, yer really handicapped in this age if you can't afford the internet. You get real outta the loop, real quick-like, which probably isn't an entirely bad thing, unless yer also too poor to live. I saw these really extravagant punk rock books at the bookstore, but they're all fifty bucks. My old record store owning former compadre has a Cherry Bombz concert DVD in stock, but it's thirty dollars. A copy of any decent rock magazine from England is ten bucks. I'm so fucked. I've recently read reviews of books about the Replacements, Axl Rose, Manic Street Preachers, The Smiths, Joe Strummer, and Adam Ant. Much of my classic Van Halen is on tour. I'm dyin' to see the new anime film, "Chicago Ten". There's new discs out by Soho Roses, NY Loose, Hanoi, the Cult, Snatches Of Pink, Spike from the Quireboys, Tyla, Dramarama, Tex Perkins, Ian Hunter, Johnette Napolitano, the Waterboys, a Kusworth box-set, Motorcycle Boy, Chesterfield Kings, the Hangmen, Rudi from the Fuzztones, etc. New bands I'm really excited to learn more about, like the Urgencies, Stripclub Devils, Airborne, Soho Dolls, Magic Christian, Nagg, and Bubblegum Screw. I still haven't seen those DVDs on Mother Love Bone, or Brian Jonestown Massacre, in spite of my odd history with those groups. I see all that beautiful rock swag at Full Breach and Altamont Records and almost wanna cry. I guess I'm in consumer-withdrawal. I never thought I'd stay this broke for this long. No contacts, No creepers, no band, no nothing. A shoebox full of used cassettes. I'm writing a song called, "Nothing's Coming". See, I can't afford ANYTHING, cos I quit drinking and got a job. Now, every last red cent goes to the man. They tell me that's "life, on life's terms". It don't even reach my family-it's all just funneled up. It hurts. I'm going through some kinda uncharacteristic materialistic jag-I think it has something to do with my aching back, working in retail, all day, lifting, bending, crawling round on my hands and knees like a canine, taking non-stop shit from rude suburban pigs, and not having any money to show for it, whatsoever. I'm not stupid, despite current appearances, I know that even if I could purchase all that boss rock swag, desire begets desire - it's just flash paper, then I'd want something else. It's some kinda weird, bent, cosmic-law that anything I lust for with all my heart - something as ephemeral as that NEW ROMANTIC MAGAZINE from England last year, or an Andy McCoy DVD, or Shane MacGowan t-shirt, or something more profound-to be reunited with loved ones, or a girl I love, or to get to make albums, nothing can bear the stress of my regard, the center never holds, it's all just carrot on the stick.

The acoustic version of James Dean Bradfield's "A Design For Life" really nails down alot of the emotion I've been experiencing, since the legendary divorce from many years back, and all the bitter disappointments, major betrayals, lesser break-ups, sudden deaths, and broken dreams, that followed, in machine-gun succession. I've cherished alot of James Dean Bradfield's operatic, mainstream Queen/Oasis/George Martin sounding material - especially the really frayed and weary shit about misery and despair, but it was really the "Stay Beautiful" e.p., that most affected me on a personal level.
 

Back when I could still get hired-on, at pretty much any record store I chose, I purchased "New Art Riot" from Newbury Comics in Harvard Square-- back when I could still afford to pay top dollar for all the buzzed-about, hot, new imports, and thought, "Ho-Hum. More Clash impersonations!" 
The Manic Street Preachers also reminded me a bit of Cheap Trick, early on, in that they had these two extremely talented, but average joe-looking cousins-Jimmy Dean, and Sean Moore, plus two bitch-magnet glamour-dolls, Nicky Wire, and Richey James Edwards. "Stay Beautiful" totally delivered on all their cocky bravado, as far as I was concerned. "R.P. McMurphy" was my favorite song for several years. Every song on that disc was a winning hit - only "Star Lover" kinda paled, at all. That one was more in league with the kinda third-rate glam I'd been writing with my flaky, girl-chasing guitarists, China White, and Nasty Bastard. I'd gone to the trouble of borrowing a hollow body bass for Nasty from a very dear girl I knew, which he promptly got stolen, or sold, or lost. We also had severed ties with another really fantastic lead player, a really talented glam dude who looked like the Asian dude from Cats In Boots, because he could never make band practice, cos he was always too busy hunting dope. That was probably the most talented guitarist I ever worked with, too. We'd been in negotiations forever with these older Boston Rock vets - one had written a song for Alice Cooper, and the other had toured with a major label band, opening up for the Cult and Masters Of Reality. They were really talented dudes, who really, really wanted me to be their frontman, but they, too, were mostly interested in picking up drunk college chicks at Foleys and Bunrattys, and hunting for dope.


Richey: the doomed one.


FINALLY, I'd found these twin brothers from some little rural community an hour away who shared all my musical influences and didn't have drug problems, though they did write songs about having drug problems, but they wanted a singer who would do what they told him, and sing their corny lyrics, and that just couldn't be me.

Plus, I was already deep in the throes of my alcoholism, their practice space was in their Gramma's basement, where I wasn't allowed to drink, or smoke, which made it a completely untenable, non-negotiable exercise in futility, for me at the time. In spite of hundreds of hours I'd invested gabbing with these brothers, but primarily, the drummer, on the phone, good naturedly arguing about, and exchanging bits of rock arcana, and planning world-conquest, like you do, when you're still young enough to dream. Eventually, they drafted a more malleable singer from Florida. All those guys wanted me to cut my hair short to distinguish ourselves from the hairbands. I couldn't be bothered with acknowledging bands like Slaughter, Kingdom Come, Southgang or Whitesnake, so their hair length really didn't figure in to my world view much, except when my girlfriends, D and S ended up sleazin' around with Joe LeSte and Taime Downe, the metallers were of little consequence. Of course, some people said I looked like this metal dude, or that-Phil Lewis, or Chris Robinson. I just wanted to be me, but my contemporaries all wanted to cut our hair short and wear pinstripe suits, like the Godfathers, or latter-day Electric Angels. I had to tell several groups to fook off who demanded I cut my hair. Years later, I was similarly antagonized by various bandmates for no longer keeping my hair long enough. You can't please followers. You just gotta be who you are and roll with it. Some'll like it, some won't. Fuck 'em. So the rhythm section basically started another group with the other guy, and modeling themselves after the Manic St. preachers. They started gigging, and doing tons of very aggressive self-promotion, specifically targeting my connections, and associates, and all this kindof annoyed me. I had just wasted months of my precious youth, and gotten my hopes up, only to see them dashed when these guys molded a different singer in the direction they'd already plotted out with me, except, while I'd loved the Manics e.p., I wasn't gonna slavishly copycat it, cos imitation's boring.
Me, Nasty and China had moved to Boston cos we wanted to be in a more liberal, metropolitan city full of new ideas and opportunities. I moved in with some broads, Nasty and China moved in with a genius Harvard drop-out named Rattlesnake Jake. RSJ was really into Burroughs, Thompson, the Clash, and true crime. He and China both got jobs in Harvard Square at the Army/Navy surplus store, where China White, my primary collaborator, started meeting alot of New England's extremely educated, cultured blue-bloods. Even the street crazies are literate in Cambridge. He became really engrossed with the upwardly-mobile college culture. He started taking classes-first, kung-fu, and then he joined a chess club, next it was onto Med School and dating all these super-rich girls. Lawyers and entrepreneurs. I think that one chick's Dad owned the big cigarette company in South Africa-the one we met at L.A. Guns.

Anyway, while I'd gained an inspirational and righteous friend in Rattlesnake Jake, we started losing our most competent musician to the straight world, when Mister China White took a big belly flop right smack into the deep end of the rat-race. It was a set-back indeed, for our fucked from the start Flash Metal Suicide Brigade. We felt like the Doom Patrol.

Now it was down to me and Nasty Bastard. This is right around the time when I met Sleazegrinder, who renewed my faith that we weren't alone in our search for the place where the kids are hip. Nasty was my evil henchman - a real "You have to fight to live on the Planet Of The Apes" sorta fella. Infamous. He was mostly into AC/DC, Motorhead, the Cult, and Zodiac Mindwarp, but really, just AC/DC. He liked to fight and vomit on the subway. My girlfriends usually hated him, and even I got tired of him stealing all my clothes. Jake & China got sick of him setting their apartment on fire, punching their guests, and stealing the rent money for booze. Other more serious musos I wanted to work with us always insisted that Nasty was an atrocious guitar player, but I considered him my very own Cobalt Stargazer. Here's why, he was gifted at writing big stupid monkey dumb Stooges riffs. There's no denying it. He was a hack rhythm guitarist but he wrote really good Kid Chaos/Billy Duffy/Stooges riffs like his AC/DC heroes...minus the Angus solos. Just stripped down to the brass knuckles and malt liquor, bloody nosed essence. He was also a good sideman in other ways. We picked-up ALOT of girls together. The ones who liked grunting, hairy, monosyllabic tough guys, who were only really proficient at driving fast, punching people out, playing pool, brute-force, and breaking and entering, went with Nasty. The ones who liked eighth grade dropouts with bad tattoos and a lust for glory--your run-of-the-mill, unemployable, dandy alcoholics who liked to shock people, and even wore full Nik Fiend/Sean Purcell/Alice Starr make-up to the liquor store, came with me. You'd be stunned by how wickedly popular we both were for years, and years. We were always shocked, ourselves. We had many, many utterly-daffy, fooking unbelievably absurd experiences, gallivanting around this nation's seedier bars, squats, V.I.P. green-rooms, penthouses, and homeless shelters. Our whirlwind adventures ended poorly for both of us. After spending a brutal winter outdoors in the cold of Marianne Faithful's former bass player's unheated garage, Nasty was the first to get sober. We wrote alot of songs that people can still remember, even though we never got to record them properly. Seen 'em come, and we seen 'em go. I am a relic, scream to a sigh.
The maddest thing is that here in this bizarro-world corporate cop-culture, all the hokiest, suckass stupid fucking gimmick rock we all hated and scoffed at 15 years ago, has been propped-up to seem important and legitimized by playlists and units-shipped, so everything that sucked shit in 1987 is now considered important and meaningful by the heavily programmed public. "People Like Me"--nobody cares, nobody remembers. They'll kill you, nowadays, for mere sincerity, or having any soul at all, or for breaking the bully culture protocol, to tell the truth. Look at how they even brought down Dan Rather, a grey eminence. It's savage.
You have to hear about Warrant and Winger forever, but who mentions Scarce, or Snatches Of Pink, anymore? It's like that Replacements album - title, "Don't You Know Who I Think I Used To Be?" Except even Westerberg owns a home and his own recording studio, us bastards, we never got nowhere at all. Flat tires. Thumb in the air. Beat up. Homeless. Thrown-out. Fuck you. The sidewalk. The psych-ward. Muttering crazy, emotional jibberish to ourselves in empty rooms.
 
 I may not have fully appreciated it at the time, but I actually had alot in common with Richey James Edwards, as a young man. Except his ship came in. The poetry, politics, shock-value, the weight-issue, vodka, depression, thinking-problems, vanity, delusions of grandeur, the monkey-ward, and deep empathy for the world's forgotten and downtrodden. And I couldn't play an instrument for fuck-all. I didn't envy his fame and fleeting fortune so much, as it did seem that he had two great things goin' for him...a record deal, which gave him a real voice, and a loyal band who seemed to love him in spite of his flaws, or sensitivity. I've always wanted that family that sticks together for richer or poorer. A real rock group is a kind of marriage that requires loyalty, patience, hard work, sacrifice, and forgiveness. Al ot of my bands were like fickle chicks, they wanted to see the money. They roll where the champagne flows. That hurt. It's like fallin' in love with a hooker: "But I thought we really SHARED somethin's..."

Me and Nasty kept seeking worthy shipmates, in musicians- wanted ads, in the back of magazines, and in big city after-hours bars, but they always died, or went to jail.
 
 It wasn't just the Sid-style show-off, self-mutilation, always a favorite party-trick of mine, or the penchant for Dollsy- androgyny that I had in common with these Preachers. It was the moral outrage at the injustices of commerce, the genocide, open class-warfare on the poor and the tyranny of these corporations and bankers, posing as democracies, that only protect and serve the secret-society super-rich.

It was the love of a sweet, fizzy, summertime melody, married to a lyric that meant something real, that said something true, and valid. That's what made the Manics so marvelous - even important. Their words set fires-provoked thought - like Strummer, Smith, Dylan and Lennon in their days. We need that now, as people just adapt, and accept these fake elections that are less real than wrestling: Skull N Bones Kerry's gotta take one for the team. PMRC Gore scared silent by Jim Baker's permanent police state goonsquads. Democrats who don't impeach. They keep shopping, and collecting, and ignoring the liars and killers who shredded the supposedly sacred Constitution, and plan on permanently perpetuating an endless world war for the sake of weapons manufacturers, bankers, and oil companies. Nobody's really talkin' bout that shit. Least not when you're just another phony on the take. (Hi, Kid Rock!) A lot of the old crowd's moved on up to their deluxe apartments in the sky - now they make all that cash, they're uncomfortable with us losers - they all know I got troubles, woman troubles, poverty, addiction issues, worries. I don't hear from summa my sentimental favorites no more-they're all busy alphabetizing their collections, and buying new tits and fish-lips for their girlfriends, and worshipping the Money God. Where's Richey when we need 'im? If you got eyes, I can show you what this latest, horrible job is doing to my lower back-no pain pills, no benefits, nobody cares. I have to pretend I ENJOY slaving for nothing ,and be chipper, and full of company pride, or they cut my hours even more. It ain't no fun at all, sayin' cheerio to the wild-life-to all the lostboys, and the long procession of brave and crazy broads who loved us, and put us up. Part of me is proud of summa them, for climbing out of the hopelessness and dead-end poverty that still afflicts yours, but it's four in the morning - I have to be back on the job at eight, and I awoke to scrawl these words from a dream about middle school, and I'm hearing that ferocious Public Image Ltd. snaredrum beating in my memory, and the King-Jester, John Rotten, snarling from the post-punk limbo of "F.F.F.": "Used to be nice! Now you're twice as NICE! Used to be good! Now you're TWICE as good!" No one expected any of us to survive our teens - one of my own unrecorded choruses sez it best. "It's sad, but true, cos baybeh, here I am-fading into the Middleage Wasteland!"

When the live fast die young set doesn't die young, all-too-often, all that's left's the crying and groveling for pennies. Submissive crumb-beggars and hunchbacks, strungout on ulcers, timeclocks, utility bills, polyester uniforms, canned food, and regulations. It ain't all glamour, being herded around, like cows, or Palestinian refugees. The curious thing about my little story of woe is that it could happen to anybody. Three false moves, and no one will take your collect calls anymore. I used to be the toast of the town. From a hero to zero, in nothing, flat. Things ain't gettin' any better, while the yuppies get fatter. Their next move towards Martial Law in America is National I.D. cards with that surveillance chip. They'll say you shouldn't mind, if you got nothing to hide. They'll say it's for your own safety. That they're the ones protecting you from some foreign invaders. Ever see the "Fisher King"?

When the Manics were all the rage, their love of tour bus video games seemed very suburban and bourgeois to me - so did their seemingly obligatory early-championing of Public Enemy, that just went over my head, back then. They did love Hanoi Rocks, Guns N Roses, Only Ones, Sylvia Plath, and Van Halen, same as me. Having come from Blackpool, they'd grown up with the Welsh mining strikes and righteously swore their allegiance to labor and the oppressed. In America, everyone dumbly sucks up to money and power. It's really crass on the old punks. They love their high gas prices, S.U.V.'s, taxes, shackles, and credit-debt. It was refreshing to hear the Manics siinging about the Masses Against The Classes and Motorcycle Emptiness and all that, cos all we hear in the States is fake shit-kicker, Kid Rock and Toby Keith war mongering, and jingles bragging about all their name brand shit, and shopping, or hootchie-mama disco duckery, or still more badly regurgitated, false new wave, rich emo dorks in makeup and fedoras bouncing up and down for their corporate paymasters. Back then, it was all that lifeless, joyless grunge bullshit that still echoes blandly on the airwaves. All that horrible, horrible Nickelback and Matchbox 20 bullshit that Eddie Vedder and Hootie wrought. I remember how much ink the Afghan Whigs were able to milk from the gullible British tabloids by hating the Manic Street Preachers. It figures.
 

When "Generation Terrorists" first came out, it was JUST LIKE when I was first so smitten with the Guns N Roses "Live Like A Suicide" ep. By the time I got the full-length, expectations were so high, that initially, it was a let-down. It seemed painfully overproduced to me at the time, cos I was still TOTALLY vibing on the "Stay Beautiful" ep's low-budget Gen X/Clash/Hanoi/Buzzcocks trashy pop feel. I pretty much hated "Gold Against The Soul"--I remember saying it sounded like Jeff Lynne produced the Scorpions. It was warmed over opera-metal, Scritti Politti whiteboy prog-funk, and like "November Rain" era Guns, it all just got way too dolphin-video for me. I STILL have never owned "The Holy Bible", even though halfa rock'n'roll's offered to tape it for me, I only know a few of those songs from the Hits compilation, but really love alot of the lyrics penned by Richey James before his disappearance on February 1st, 1995. They found his car by a famous suicide bridge, and dragged the river, but never found his remains and England finally declared him dead like seven years later. Spawning the Cult Of Richey all over, everywhere.
 
I loved alot of the stuff Nicky & James penned after his vanishing act. "Everything Must Go", "If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next", "Kevin Carter", "Why So Sad". All that stuff. I wasn't as psyched about "Send Away The Tigers", or the solo albums, as my best pals were, but Bradfield can still awe me with his melodic abilities and even his lyrics can still sometimes floor me. What a band, an institution. Sure J.D. Bradfield can sometimes overindulge his inner Macca & Wings, and has a tendency to make alot of their stuff really pompous and grandiose like Queen meets Oasis, but it usually works.

Summa my comparatively- impoverished British musician correspondents are dead-tired of this well paid, now mainstream, top-ten, Sony recording Artist singing still more songs about being an underdog while cashing mammoth checks, and recording with Abbey Road symphonies, like Abba. I get where they're coming from, but to me, the Manics are still the greatest, the flashest, most heart-felt and 4-Real thing that was around in the 90's.

Wherever Richey James Edwards is, I hope he never had to get drug tested for the privilege of a minimum wage job in food service or corporate retail.... You learn to serve a life sentence here. This country pisses debris. Best go shoot the fucking doves. This is my truth-tell me yours.

Betty Blue collapses in the fields where it feels free.

-Pepsi

www.manics.nl/

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