In this month's UNCUT, our writers, friends and favourite musicians reminisce about their favourite gigs. The October issue, onsale now, features our best 50 - including Jimi, U2, The Band and Oasis - with rare photos from the shows too. Now here’s some more – we'll publish one everyday this...
In this month’s UNCUT, our writers, friends and favourite musicians reminisce about their favourite gigs.
The October issue, onsale now, features our best 50 – including Jimi, U2, The Band and Oasis – with rare photos from the shows too.
Now here’s some more – we’ll publish one everyday this month – including online exclusives on gigs by The Stone Roses, Pixies and the Beach Boys, and Stereophonics’ Kelly Jones and Babyshambles’ Adam Ficek‘s favourite live memories too.
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THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS
The Bull & Gate, London
April 1991
PAUL MOODY:
Manic Street Preachers 1991: they loved Warhol, laughed at Shaun Ryder and thought name-dropping Guy DeBord, Hanoi Rocksand Public Enemy made them special. Who could doubt them? Quite a few, if a half-empty Bull & Gate populated by music biz scensters, cynical punks and the curious was anything to go by, as they trooped on in spray-painted t-shirts and smudged lipstick to promote latest single “You Love Us”. “You’re shit!” shouted one of Heavenly labelmates Flowered Up good naturedly, the second they plugged in.
“Fuck off!” bawled James Dean Bradfield in a flash, already a veteran of PA warfare. If a blistering “You Love Us”, and a terse “Starlover” were electrifying bursts of small town hope and disgust, such white-knuckle intensity had its drawbacks. With Nicky Wire’s bass already down to two strings, the band meekly trooped off-stage after barely twenty minutes to derisive cheers.
Their answer? An encore of anti-royalist rant “Repeat” (“Repeat after me fuck Queen and country!”) delivered with such paint-stripping intensity even the loudest dissenters were finally won over.
The battle lines were drawn. Within a month, Richey Edwards would carve ‘4 REAL’ into his arm with a razorblade after a gig in Norwich, and no one would ever doubt their integrity again.
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plus WERE YOU THERE?
Not even UNCUTs war-weary gig-hounds have been to every great show in history – but you lot probably have.
Email Allan_Jones@ipcmedia.com, or share your memories in the comments box below, of the ones we might have missed, and we’ll publish the best in a future issue!
