Nearby Stoke Newington is a breeding ground for bulldog dykes. They are the ones to blame for any possible revival too.

Fucking hell Pablo. Are they keeping well?

i've always been put off listening to the holy bible because the thing that people always mention about this album is the lyrics, nobody ever says a word about the music, thank you glice for confirming my suspicions that people never talk about the music because it is shit.
i was never a member of the nail varnish and eyeliner club and i think i can live with out some lyrics about a man who wished he was an anorexic teenage girl.

lets face facts, richie edwards was probably a paedo who got chucked of a bridge by some toddler's dad.

Best oxymoronic sentence ever.

You might like the Holy Bible though - I've a feeling you'd like to listen to cock-rock, but find it all a bit ghastly and American, so the Holy Bible would suit you fine.

Actually, in Richie-related news, I know someone who's not a Manics fan and not the sort to make up utter shite who claims she met Richie in India sometime in the late 90s.

The music is very PIL-like, although this is probably mostly down to the production which is quite alot like Atomiser by Big Black i think. Its certainly their best album and its the only one i go back to from my teenage years, the rest of them have their moments but its mostly nostalgia value, the holy bible still has a serious kick about it. I do like the idea that he's alive and well and working at a sewage plant or something, and lets face it, in a world of Razorlights it is nice to have pop stars who arent completely sure of their own greatness.

and yeah, i never knew anyone growing up who was part of the leopardprint brigade or any of that business, but i wish i had, i could have had better girlfriends.

you can tell the closet fags by how much they declare hate for this album.

just sayin.

i listened to 3 songs from it on youtube and it weas nothing like big black or pil, it was like a cross between bruce springsteen and u2.

what a horrifying comparison

The music sounds like Joy Division, fm american rock, and some samples. No U2, no Bruce Springsteen.

???

anyway, i don't know why i'm still going on about this.

You have. Not all american fm rock sounds the same. Anyway, whatever, you don't like the record, why are you going on about it?

jk/./..

Oooooohhhhh!

I truely miss internetting based on board members who rarely talk about anything else. it was miles of fun. I definately remember lots of 'i saw richey at tescos today nd wi chose nail varnish together, here r sum pix'

PIL? You fucking what?

to try and make the people who do like it to not like it, obviously.

Well, I'm listening to it for the 7th time in the past few days, so you've not convinced me yet.

You have dirty dishes to wash. Carry on, concentrate on them, they are more important than this. Seriously. No, wait, not seriously. Carry on you have the time in the world. Seriously, no, wait, you have the time in the world to wash the dishes. Seriously, you please carry on telling us. Seriously. Yawn.

no. you just don't like them.
i could make up a few words like that to describe yr favourite album and still, it'd be just an opinion.

theyre not great, but its a good album

wahay

Having another listen. Still great lyrics. Some alright tunes. Really, really, REALLY annoying forced scansion on Bradfield's part.

I used to get the thing of thinking it was a waste as a rock album, but I'm thinking the lyrics don't quite work as rock lyrics but wouldn't carry as poetry. But then I read too much of that these days. Leonard Cohen's shit as a poet as well.

The central tension of this album is that James Dean Bradfield (It is his real name btw, his parents just loved James Dean) and Sean Moore somehow managed to fit the lyrics that Richey Edwards wrote into rock and roll songs.

That will be where your issue with JDBs voice will come from, its pretty hard singing "Dont Hurt Just Obey Lie Down Do As They Say May As Well Be Heaven This Hell Smells The Same" and making it sound like its your average conversation.

The lyrics are mostly in blank verse - tricky, but not impossible to fit into rock songs. The Fall do it with no problems in free verse. It's odd the Manics stick to straight rock 4/4 throughout the album. It's the extending of non-stressed words and the subsequent compressing of words across stresses that irritates me - it feels like Bradfield doesn't really like the lyrics but likes his own melodies and is determined to subordinate the lyrics to his idea of what they should be, rather than what they are. The big tension for me is less about 'fitting the lyrics in' but why he did such a shoddy job of it.

WHY FUCKING STRESS THE 'I' AND THE 'THE' BUT NOT EXTEND THE 'AND' SO THE FINAL FUCKING LINE WORKS? Dickhead.

Also, stressing definite articles - poor, poor form.

Youre missing the division of labour that the manics had.
Nicky Wire and Richey did all the lyrics and JDB and Sean Moore did all the music. Mark E Smith has always been intimately involved in the music of The Fall whereas Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards proudly proclaimed their inability as musicians. Whether JDB liked the lyrics or not was never an issue for me, i always saw it as two teams doing two different jobs.

Do you honestly think The Holy Bible would be a better album if James Dean Bradfield listened more to Richeys musical ideas and Richey listened more to JDB's lyrics?

Maybe I'm explaining myself badly - JDB should go nowhere near lyrics (I heard his solo album - it's shit). Lyrics and music aren't two separate things - the lyrics aren't in straight poetic form (sonnets, terza rima, quatrain etc) but they are close enough to form to keep within a rock meter (again, odd to keep the 4/4 for a lot of it but I'll let that pass). The point is that the lyrics already lend themselves to stresses that JDB perverts, rather than using the relatively straight form of the lyrics. Again, stressing a 'the' is really poor form unless it's a rhythmic effect in the lyrics (in this it's strictly a definite article, off-stress).

The division of labour is definitely interesting, and plays into the earlier comment I made (years ago) in this thread. But my irritation is that JDB's rendering of the lyrics actively pushes away from their effective delivery - which plays into a postmodernism that seems entirely at odds with Richey (but not Nicky's) general take on things.

Oh, and yes - effective delivery of lyrics is always preferable to actively making the lyrics difficult to understand and removing/ eliding poetic stress (see T&B's earlier points).

Just as an aside to this semi-serious conversation, it is still the case that the overwhelming majority of my sexual partners have been (or continue to be) Manics fans.

I have nothing but goodwill towards you. I wish id have known teenage female manics fans when i was a teenage male manics fan, but there werent any, alas :(

You must be younger than me - there was a point around 96-2000 or so where just saying 'I quite like leopard print' in a shit indie dive would pretty much guarantee you... well, usually a conversation about cutting, but sometimes not.

JDB's lyrics are not all that - we all know that, JDB knows that which is why he devolved that role to Richey. The Manics are a special case when it comes to this because their main lyricist disappeared and the band carried on afterwards, but personally its hard to be harsh about a group who still write really good pop songs even after all that.

I think im 5/6 years older than you then, the richey acolytes never sought me out :(

Fair shout. I'd disagree with their writing good songs after that but... well, whatevs, innit?

DRE remains Wales' finest ever lyricist though, innit?

"Fy nhad yr wyt yn Aberteifi
Daniel yw dy enw a'r teledu dy deyrnas
Nid wyf am ddim yn dy ewyllus
Ac rwy'n methu ar y ddaear hefyd"

Who is DRE? its not the bloke from Datblygugugu is it?

Datblygu, aye.

No they don't.