Yeah, yeah, fuckin' sez you....

[TraceyQ]

This man is a fucking prick and the minute he realises that his band only ever produced one and a half songs of an acceptable quality  (Faster and half of Motorcycle Emptiness) he will understand why Ritchie did what he did.

http://www.nme.com/news/110348.htm

[Neil]

"I think it's too easy to make good music. There are so many idiots out there who've got rigs and computers in their bedroom who are making unbelievably average music that sounds quite good – it's not a healthy thing.

I said much the same recently, I agree with him on this entirely.

I don't really know what to make of Nicky Wire, he seems like a complete tosser at times, but I think I should respect him for saying what he thinks without giving a monkeys about who it upsets.  It's hard to decide if he's a twat or a...

"I met Daniel Bedingfield at 'CD:UK'. He is an absolutely brilliant nutter actually. He's truly warped and mad – in a good way."

...Oh, never mind.

[pandadeath]

Yah, he deserves to be shot. I mean. Yes Jet are really, really, really shit. But The White Stripes aren't "fucking rubbish" they're a great band, not as amazing as they used to be, but still much better than the Manic's ever will be without Ritchie.

He needs to be shot does the Manic's bassist.

Or maybe he doesn't understand the white stripes because there is no bass player?

[TraceyQ]

:)

Yes, my point entirely.

I've always been of the opinion that the Manics were a band for bedroom goths, scratching themselves with compasses and pouring indian ink into the wounds.  Friendless teenagers with self esteem issues and repressive parents. Grim. Now  those teenagers have grown up into the adults of today they appear to have lost their place in the world to Marilyn bloody Manson and Evanessance and are desperatly scrabbling for a new  audience to play to. By the state of the last single it looks like they are going for the David Gray fans of the world.  Their music is getting played in wine bars. It's all over Nicki, you've made your money. Now fuck off, there's a good chap.

[Peking O]

We need more Nicky Wire's. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, at least he's not afraid to speak his mind, which is preciously rare in the music world these days. Having said that, Jet are far too easy a target to take aim at.

[Mr Colossal]

Well reading that he only actually says that The White Stripes  album sounds like it was recorded in two days... No mention whether he thinks they are a good band or not.

NME...Journalists... Pay no attention.

It doesn't say what he thinks of Beddingfields music either.

[phalmachine]

I've always been of the opinion that the Manics were a band for bedroom goths, scratching themselves with compasses and pouring indian ink into the wounds. Friendless teenagers with self esteem issues and repressive parents.

If you read the letters page of C4's Teletext music news, as I often do for a laugh, you'll find this is exactly the case.

As for the Manics: it's always difficult to be lectured about greed from a guy as fat as James Dean Bradfield.

[BetaKarraTene]

I've always been of the opinion that the Manics were a band for bedroom goths, scratching themselves with compasses and pouring indian ink into the wounds.  Friendless teenagers with self esteem issues and repressive parents.

Ouch! I'm afraid I'm going to have to completely disagree with everything you've said TraceyQ. I don't feel that pigeonholing stuff based on fashion and pre-conceptions is the route to be taking.

Now  those teenagers have grown up into the adults of today they appear to have lost their place in the world to Marilyn bloody Manson and Evanessance and are desperatly scrabbling for a new  audience to play to. By the state of the last single it looks like they are going for the David Gray fans of the world.

This is interesting. I reckon that everyone would be completely and utterly bored of the Manics these days if they had carried on in the Holy Bible vain for the past 10 years - as tiresome as Marylin Manson has become ironically -  so I can't criticise them for trying something different. Far from being a move to sell more records, I think it would have been far more cynical of them to just carry on with their old sound just for the sake of it (Marylin Manson again). I doubt that many older bands will claim that they are as rebellious as they were 15 years ago, so it would be disingenuous of them to make music like that.

I agree with Peking O in that although we don't like what some musicians say, at least they are saying something interesting and genuine, whether it's a popular opinion or not like the Daniel Beddingfield quote (in which he only said he was a nice person and didn't say anything about his music). When Nicky Wire says something, I know he means it, unlike some others who might skate around certain topics.

Oh, and I like the new single.

[non capisco]

Nicky Wire is a truly appalling lyricist, that much is for sure. I'm surprised that dirge of a single got so high in the charts. I'd more or less assumed the various strands of their fanbase (Virgin listeners who liked 'Everything Must Go' because of its anthemic 'qualidee rock', 'intensely intense' Richie fans of the sort parodied in that Melody Maker (?) 'Diary Of an MSP fan' bit that used to be in their jokes section, bog standard indie kids) had dramatically dwindled by 'Know Your Enemy', and 'The Love Of Richard Nixon' hardly seemed like an all guns blazing 'this is what we do' comeback single to win back the floating voters.

They had their moments. 'The Holy Bible' musically is still a jarringly stark listen even if you're not prepared to buy into the 'last words of a tortured genius' bollocks, and the bit where James Dean Bradfield yells 'lawyers before love!' on 'PCP' is ace. They've been irredeemably shite since 'Everything Must Go' though. That at least had a few singles that had an affecting sort of, I dunno, yearning quality to 'em. Everything since then's been dreadful sub teenage poetry set to soporific music, that's a step down from ignorable AOR fodder to irritating because of the inbuilt self importance in Wire's lyrics.

[Lt Plonker]

By the state of the last single it looks like they are going for the David Gray fans of the world.

It never ceases to amuse me, does that. :)

"I didn't know I had any."

[chand]

The Holy Bible was an aberration in an otherwise fairly predictable journey thorugh several albums of stadium rock. 'Everything Must Go' was the obvious successor to the not-actually-that-good 'Gold Against The Soul'. So I've never really followed the 'Richie was the whole band' thing, because his lyrics weren't terribly good on the first two albums anyway.

[Neil]

Well reading that he only actually says that The White Stripes  album sounds like it was recorded in two days... No mention whether he thinks they are a good band or not.

No, that's not right:

He said: "The White Stripes – I just don't get that at all. When they say ' We recorded the whole album in two days' its like, yeah it sounds like it – it sounds fucking crap because you recorded it in a second.

[Beagle 2]

Well, what can I say except they were one of my favourite bands for a long time, I discovered them when the Holy Bible came out, it remains one of the most astonishing, hook laden punk albums I have ever heard, aside from the lyrics which are also stunning. Archives of pain is the best guitar solo ever. I still think EMG is good, a lot of the B sides are kickarse too. There's about a quarter of This is my truth I can stand... maybe. Mases against the classes I loved a lot. SInce then, except the odd decent track on a flipside or a couple at the most on KYE, well it's awful stuff. A lot of Generation Terrorists is bab a decade on. Wire's always been a gobshite, but I'm sure his lyrics weren't always as bad as they became from TIMTTMY onwards.

"You have to know when to stop and get out. I think we'll know when it's time to stop

That's just about the most wrong thing you could have fucking said. And the stuff about more production equalling a better record, what a crock. Yeah I'm sure the White Stripes would sound better with an orchestra and twenty overlayed guitar parts.

I've always been of the opinion that the Manics were a band for bedroom goths, scratching themselves with compasses and pouring indian ink into the wounds. Friendless teenagers with self esteem issues and repressive parents.

Sounds like something Nicky Wire would say ;-). We weren't all like that, some of us just quite liked good loud rock songs, with a corker of a voice and a bit of depth. Yeah I know they always talked a fair bit of shit but at least it was interesting.

James should go solo very quickly indeed. If these keep plugging away with dirges like "the love of Richard Nixon" well into their 40's, well, I despair.

Mind you, Jet are absolutely fucking awful.

[boki]

Hmm...so a short article in an interview with Nicky Wire  where they pull about 3 lines of quotes from an interview that probably went on for at least 5 minutes is to be considered of any worth, eh?  Shows that either NME have lost it even more than Mr Jones has, or that he said too much that didn't fit their angle.  I think at least  a third of the first two albums (all I'm certain I could be arsed to bother with, although I may have a copy 'Everything Must Go' knocking about somwhere) still stands up, so I reckon the one and half songs thing is a bit mean.

But hey, that's just me.  I'm well plebby.

[Purple Tentacle]

The Holy Bible is in my top 5 albums of time. You can't beat raw, raw anger. Far more raw than yer Cradles or yer Mansons.

Conversely, everything else they did afterward (except Design for Life) is total and utter fat shit.


Received opinion? No.  

I find the Manics quite quaint, a prime example of how filthy lucre can change even the most "radical" of souls. This is why I'm centre-ist in my politics. Anybody who claims to be a socialist can be bought.

[Ciarán2]

:)

Yes, my point entirely.

I've always been of the opinion that the Manics were a band for bedroom goths, scratching themselves with compasses and pouring indian ink into the wounds.  Friendless teenagers with self esteem issues and repressive parents. Grim. Now  those teenagers have grown up into the adults of today they appear to have lost their place in the world to Marilyn bloody Manson and Evanessance and are desperatly scrabbling for a new  audience to play to. By the state of the last single it looks like they are going for the David Gray fans of the world.  Their music is getting played in wine bars. It's all over Nicki, you've made your money. Now fuck off, there's a good chap.

Ahh noooo, TraceyQ! "The Holy Bible"! "Generation Terrorists!" "Everything Must Go"! They're great records! "Friendless teenagers with self-esteem issues and repressive parents" need all the support they can get, and if MSP were the band to do it, then they've done something great. Everyone has these problems at some stage. Don't you think "Motorcycle Emptiness" is beautiful? Doesn't "4st 7lb" strike a chord with you? Isn't "A Design For Life" swoonsome, delightful, life-affirming? In short, weren't MSP once truly GREAT? I think they were and maybe without them I wouldn't have read Camus.

[Rubbish Monkey]

Jet are so bad. Their music has the mental age of a foetus.

He has a point there.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I can't really disagree more with TraceyQ here. The majority of Manics songs I like are post-Richie anyway.

To say that everything they've done since The Holy Bible is crap basically ignores dozens of great tunes. Even on their last album which most people hated for some reason, So Why So Sad, Baby Elian, Intravenous Agnostic and Dead Martyrs were great tunes, and there were several good tunes too.

I agree that This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours was quite overblown, but then I'd also say that Everything Must Go is as good an album as The Holy Bible. In short, if I was to arrange my favourite 20 Manics tunes, there'd probably be half-before and half-after Ritchie.

I've always been of the opinion that the Manics were a band for bedroom goths, scratching themselves with compasses and pouring indian ink into the wounds. Friendless teenagers with self esteem issues and repressive parents. Grim

I think one of the biggest mistakes people make when discussing music is pigeon-holing the audience of certain groups. That statement for one is absolute bollocks. Most people I know who like the Manics aren't goths, or even 'grebs', but normal people who happen to like great music by a great band.

They're an absolute mile better than the White Stripes too, before and after Ritchie. I can't even believe that was posted. Plus, even if the band members are/aren't twats, the music surpasses that. There's plenty of other bands out there manned by total cunts who have still made magnificent music.

[Mr Colossal]

Well reading that he only actually says that The White Stripes  album sounds like it was recorded in two days... No mention whether he thinks they are a good band or not.

No, that's not right:

He said: "The White Stripes – I just don't get that at all. When they say ' We recorded the whole album in two days' its like, yeah it sounds like it – it sounds fucking crap because you recorded it in a second.

Sorry, bit of a lazy skim read quote. But still,  'sounds like crap because you recorded it in a second' could just as well be from the audiophile sense of the word. Would be interesting to read the whole interrupted interview as it just seems like a shitty 'lets be controversial' cut and paste job.

' NICKY WIRE has hit out at bands like the WHITE STRIPES and JET, branding them "fucking crap".'

Notice how in the first sentence to get your attention  they've botched the quote from the 'White stripes sound being fucking crap '. To bands like Jet and The White Stripes are 'fucking crap'. Give em an inch and they'll take a mile.

One reason why I don't bother reading mags like NME. I'd expect to read something like that in  star or the sport.

[mayer]

the new album's anodyne, banal and totally forgettable and ignoreable. but now we're all talking about the Manic Street Preachers. easy.


the fact that he's right about Jet and wrong about the White Stripes is irrelevant. it's publicity-seeking bullshit worthy of someone like U2.

[cptwhite]

O come on, I think the White Stripes portray an image that makes me want to vomit more than Nicky Wire in a skirt.  They're extremely image oriented and I don't think the music is amazing.  I just get a horrible sense of the pot calling the kettle black Trace.

True the maincs are a bunch of old farts these days but The Holy Bible was an incredibly powerful album - might not have been you're cup of tea as you're a positive thinking type, but it was deep, real and raw.  You might have thought it an athemn for teenagers cutting themselves up - and for a few trend setters this is true but if you look at it without bias it's a truly amazing album.  I think since then the manics has done some good pop/rock songs aand it's easy to critisise them at this point in there career - they're not bowing out gracefully and as such appear like a bunch of twats still moaning on about politics in their 40s.

[mikeyg27]

I got into the Manics because of TIMTTMY, yet since I got all their albums before it, I've decided that they really were better with Edwards. I really like Gold Against The Soul, and The Holy Bible ain't bad either (I think I'm less disaffected now though since I stopped listening to it so much). There is good stuff post-Edwards, but it is largely outweighed by the pants stuff. I ain't too fond of the new single, though.

[Morrisfan82]

"I think it's too easy to make good music. There are so many idiots out there who've got rigs and computers in their bedroom who are making unbelievably average music that sounds quite good – it's not a healthy thing.

What?? What the fuck is that? Are you saying it's good or average music then? Are you saying music is great when only people with a shitstack of money can afford to record? Bullshit.

If people in bedrooms are such a fucking threat to you then quit being a whingeing bloated self-important pile of shit and write some half-decent music FFS.

"You just press a button and it does it all for you!" - Captain Cliché, being a dull uninformed wanker, in a pub, yesterday

[The Man With Brass Eyes]

O come on, I think the White Stripes portray an image that makes me want to vomit more than Nicky Wire in a skirt.  They're extremely image oriented and I don't think the music is amazing.  I just get a horrible sense of the pot calling the kettle black Trace.

I disagree with you here CTP.  but that's coz I like the White Stripes and see past the "oh it's just about image" that so many people throw at them.

Music does not always have to be prefectly well-honed.  Technically Meg White is the worst drummer in any band ever (and she's not the best drummer in the White Stripes either) - but it's not about perfection, or either quality.  More Primal and raw.  It suits them down to the ground.  They're certainly a lot more innovative then the Manics of late.

[Jemble Fred]

The issue isn't really with the music anyway – it's just a simple fact that Nicky Wire is one of the biggest TWATS ever to express an opinion. The fact that the NME is awful only heightens the natural effect of his stupidity. It's nothing to do with music – just one Welshman's terrible personality.

[fanny splendid]

"I think it's too easy to make good music. There are so many idiots out there who've got rigs and computers in their bedroom who are making unbelievably average music that sounds quite good – it's not a healthy thing.

What?? What the fuck is that? Are you saying it's good or average music then? Are you saying music is great when only people with a shitstack of money can afford to record? Bullshit.
If people in bedrooms are such a fucking threat to you then quit being a whingeing bloated self-important pile of shit and write some half-decent music FFS.

No, what I believe he is saying is, that at the moment new, cheap technology has given a lot of people the mistaken impression that what they create is any good. However, I am sure that this fad will soon wear off. People will (hopefully) develop a sense of self-critical analysis which will not only improve what they do, but also make them realise that the be-all-and-end-all isn't in the writing of a song, but in the song (book, poem, photo, picture) itself.

[NobodyGetsOutAlive]

We need more Nicky Wire's. Regardless of whether you agree with him or not, at least he's not afraid to speak his mind, which is preciously rare in the music world these days. Having said that, Jet are far too easy a target to take aim at.

Oh bollocks, bollocks and thrice bollocks. You could say the same fucking thing about Kelly Osbourne for fucks sake.


Wire was on tv the other day lambasting...wait for it...Busted. We do love your controversial views Nicky.

He's a twat, plain and simple. Let's not forget he was a man who said "in the season of goodwill, let's pray that Michael Stipe goes the same way as  Freddie Mercury pretty soon"

For the record, I do like The Holy Bible and heard Motorcycle Emptiness the other day for the 1st time in ages and was still impressed by it. but:

To say that everything they've done since The Holy Bible is crap basically ignores dozens of great tunes. Even on their last album which most people hated for some reason, So Why So Sad, Baby Elian, Intravenous Agnostic and Dead Martyrs were great tunes,

No. Know Your Enemy was a DREADFUL album. A real midlife crisis affair and the point where they really fucking lost it. If they'd ended on "This is My Truth.." then they'd have went out on a more mature peak (as long as they shaved "SYMM" off the end of it) but they just had to carry on, becoming the sort of band they'd have despised back in 1991. I was having a read of the "Know Your Enemy" lyrics the other day and I cannot believe that there weren't moments during the recording process where James and Sean didn't just say "Er..no, Nicky, I'm not going to be involved with anything that laughably bad":

You've been this way since school
Dysfunctional, translucent
Royalty on your wall
So desperately mundane

They're inbred baby just like you
But you'd love the chance to eat their food
Even though it has been chewed

Royal correspondent
Sad and lonely
Royal correspondent
Kills her daily

Dream of the Daily Mail
It is the Holy Grail
And then the BBC
Your life would be complete

Build a fountain, wash away the poor
Just as long as your motives are pure
Hold on tight or you just might lose her

Royal correspondent
Wears their Sunday best
Royal correspondent
Smarter than the rest

Other examples of his poetic mind can be found here


Oh, and they sell ringtones on their website. Nice socialist gesture lads

[NobodyGetsOutAlive]

Oh, and doesn't

I think it's too easy to make good music. There are so many idiots out there who've got rigs and computers in their bedroom who are making unbelievably average music that sounds quite good – it's not a healthy thing.

just completely contradict with his new-found respect for Daniel Beddingfield, whose first single was average and a song created in his bedroom on a pc?

[Morrisfan82]

No, what I believe he is saying is, that at the moment new, cheap technology has given a lot of people the mistaken impression that what they create is any good.

Show me any point in music history where there haven't been musos thinking that the over-blown rubbish they've made is actually good and I'll give you an hat.

However, I am sure that this fad will soon wear off. People will (hopefully) develop a sense of self-critical analysis which will not only improve what they do, but also make them realise that the be-all-and-end-all isn't in the writing of a song, but in the song (book, poem, photo, picture) itself.

That just doesn't make any sense. You're saying that the writing of the song isn't as important as the finished song itself? Surely that's precisely what twatface was 'attacking', ie. average songs made to sound 'good'?

[fanny splendid]

Show me any point in music history where there haven't been musos thinking that the over-blown rubbish they've made is actually good and I'll give you an hat.

Ho, ho, ho. The hat response!
New technology has made it easier for everyone to get the crap they make heard.

That just doesn't make any sense. You're saying that the writing of the song isn't as important as the finished song itself? Surely that's precisely what twatface was 'attacking', ie. average songs made to sound 'good'?

People are under the mistaken assumption that, because they have managed to write a song, it must immediately be of some worth. New technology makes the finishing of a song more likely. It's there to do the work for you. In a sense, the average song can be made to sound more 'produced'.