Thoughts on the Manics

On hearing the Manics announce another 'indefinite hiatus' recently, I thought of one of the many reasons why Bono is a tosser. On the release of one of their many interchangeable, pleasant albums, Bono remarked that he was "re-applying for the job of the Best Band in the World'. The thought that this role is something that one can apply for sums up everything that's wrong with Bono. You can imagine him, sat in some neutrally decorated reception somewhere, running over his just-affecting-enough lines, smoothing his sensible hair and polishing his rebellious shades (hinting at the morning after) before entering to a panel of elder statesmen and listing his merits. The Manics, in contrast, wanted nothing more than to be the Best Band in the World and failed. If only they'd not mentioned the Holocaust repeatedly in the interview, they might have been ok. The Manics really wanted to be the Best Band in the World, whereas Bono wanted to get the job to pad his CV when he applies to be Pope.

The Manics wanted to be the Best Band in the World because rock music really mattered to them, as it does to millions of people in derided backwaters all over the world. The openness and freedom matters when your horizons feel very near, the chord hangs on long enough to suggest a future and a far-away, a happy-ever-after. They added to this, a resolute refusal to patronise their listeners (which is why their fans adore them, and I'm writing this now).

Think of Bruce Springsteen, and the words he puts into the mouth of the protagonist of Thunder Road. Addressing his beloved, he mumbles "You ain't a beauty/but hey, you're alright". Now, the Manics' protagonist responds: "Life is full of cold made warm and they are just lizards"; "Anxiety is freedom"; "Rock and roll is our epiphany/of culture, alienation, boredom and despair". The mode remains the same, now weaponised by intellect, fortified by reading. The refusal to accept that living in a back end of arse-nowhere meant a focus on your own bubble, an ignorance of the rest of the world.

Of course, for Manics fans, the period where they meant that is long gone, and the above paragraph is mere jumpers for goalposts stuff. But even when the Manics changed course and turned inward, it was done with a lacerating lack of self-regard, another reason why they couldn't be the Best Band in the World. Their last truly great album, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, dealt relentlessly with the possible suicide by drowning of their hitherto most important member. The perversity of naming songs "Ready For Drowning and "Tsunami" in this context is admirable. The specificity of this album makes it a fucking miracle it ever got the Number One. Everything must go, never say goodbye, drift away and die.

Except they didn't, and wouldn't. The Manics have trundled on for more than ten years making songs that sound a bit like ones that they made when they were great. The best album was based on the work of their departed comrade. Their best songs, Indian Summer and Postcard from a Young Man, have sounded like goodbyes. So, goodbye.

Album of the Week: Community Music

Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to go on holiday the week leading up to the Royal Wedding. Watching BBC World on hotel television was like viewing a distant, strange culture. On my return, my workplace was filled with bunting and minature Union Jacks, like the inside of William Hague's mind. But unlike William Hague's mind, it was in no way uncritical, self-satisfied and smug. Cynicism was, as always in these instances, the default reaction of my collegues and most folk. An astonishment and grinding irritation, bourne of the entire media reminding you that you are, in actual, legal fact, lower than others. If a millionaire a commoner, what the fuck is someone on minimum wage?

Perhaps it doesn't help to live in one of the Kingdom's peripheries, where notions of national identity are dual, making an idea of a national celebration a conflict at least. Whatever it was, the Royal Wedding made me angrier than a lot of more justified causes. The Wedding seemed like the horseshit cherry on top of the bullshit sundae of a decades long handwringing panic on the part of our rulers.

Whether it's Thatcher's migrant swamp, Blunkett's concern that immigrants continue to speak other (oh so other) languages at home, Tebbit's cricket test, British jobs for British workers, old maids cycling past village greens pissed on warm beer etc. etc. etc., our rulers express continual concern that the British, or, whisper it, the 'British', aren't trying hard enough to be British. This is proposterous, in no way their role, and should be spat on whenever it rears its grotesque and in no small part racist head.

This absurd spectacle, with its preemptive arrests for anyone who dares criticise it in an excessively visual fashion, marks its high point. After a near half century of spurious attempts to define Britishness as based upon human rights, democracy, fair play and the like, the wedding of an unelected posh bellend (as opposed to all the elected ones), visited by war criminals and autocrats and paid for by commoners has supposedly united and defined us all as British.

Pass the sick bag, and if you can hear over the sounds of my wretching and ranting, listen to this, this, and this. It may, for a fleeting second, make you feel glad to be British.

Album of the 'Week': Graceland

When does politics interrupt music? The short answer to that is: when you're listening to it in my presence. The interaction between politics and music fascinates me, and bad politics in particular. On hearing a bar of Billy Joel's 'Just The Way You Are', I will, regardless of circumstance or propriety, explain how it's a sexist Trojan Horse, sneaking in controlling impulses and a heavily gendered idea of what women are for under its calm-sea sheen ("I don't want clever, conversation/Just cook my dinner right you bitch). As for 10CC's 'Dreadlock Holiday', well, the problems with that really shouldn't need explaining.

However, those songs are politically dreadful AND shit. Graceland by Paul Simon is one of the first albums I ever loved, but on listening to it recently, it was interrupted by politics. A low level buzz of wan, patronising and ill-judged politics defines the album as much as beauty and lazy refinement. For the best example, see 'Under African Skies', a haunting melody, an earworm beyond compare. Now, take its lyrics. A protagonist named Joseph is introduced and it is established that he is black and African. That is all. "The roots of rhythm remain" indeed.

Yes, this is Paul Simon's Black Album. The international legal issue around its creation is less problematic frankly - the sheer amount of hairshirted gesture politics that followed his seemingly ignorant breaking of the UN Cultural Embargo on South Africa (playing gigs outside of SA with the cream of exile talent, playing for the ANC in exile in Zimbabwe, ending all shows with the ANC anthem - check, check and check) surely made up for that. The problem more the embedded power of going somewhere with the intention of picking its talent like the coolest kid in class, and the idea of specifically yoinking players on the basis of their cultural/racial heritage. Not exactly wrong, but disquieting nevertheless.

This disquiet pervades the album. The disconnect between Simon's aging hippy lyrics, a thoroughly different musical tradition and the now laughable hi-tech of yesterday's tomorrow creates an extra queasyness and leaves behind a genuinely uncanny music. 'The Boy in the Bubble', with its dislocated pump of accordion and bass, drums synthesised and shifting volume without logic, and a lapsed idealist straining for a political point, ranks #1 in my Oddest Records of the 20th Century. And that century contained 'Ride A White Swan'.

Of course, this is criticism masquerading as praise. The real reason why I love this political and musical experiment (apart from the fact that it's a political and musical experiment) is its humility. From 'Graceland', a rare break-up song that doesn't idealise or despise either party, to 'You Can Call Me Al' - wherein a person undergoing a mid-life crisis is redeemed by the horror of the Third World ("scatterings and orphanages") - the whole album is deep structured by the lack of confidence of its narrator, their crippling fears and very timid hopes. For that, and the bass playing, this album repays listening by anyone who may be put off because of 'Scarborough Fair', the subsequent hi-jinx of Bono and Geldof and the undignified parp of synth brass.

On Colonialism

An upcoming cricket match has reminded me of a deeply illustrative bit of commentary from the 2009 test match series between the West Indies and England. In a West Indian innings during a limited overs match, the Windies were having one of their sadly all-too-rare periods where they surpass what is expected of the game, and begin scoring and hitting wildly for no loss. These are also the moments where cricket becomes the most entertaining sport on earth.

The English commentary team shifted in their seats for a few overs, audibly strategised, and decided that this was frankly disrespectful - to the bowlers, of course, but most importantly to the game. Grumbling continued, then, in one over, Kevin Pietersen achieved three successive wickets. The commentators could not have been more delighted. Order had been restored, and the underdog lay beaten.