Fantasy Lockdown Setlist April 2020

Spent a lot of time thinking about this, and it's still a right old dog's breakfast, but here we go, off the hip and from the heart:

1 Peeled Apples - banger to start, not appreciated enough
2 Tristesse Durera - for some reason makes me cry live
3 Yes - lots of lyrics for James
4 There By the Grace of God - a personal fave, bit of introspection, great belt it out chorus
5 1985 - got to have a bit of Lifeblood
6 Intravenous Agnostic - always wanted to hear this one
7 The Girl Who Wanted to Be God - adore this one, bawl out the lyrics, feel a bit dizzy
8 Ready for Drowning - calm it down, take it to church
9 Prologue to History - bounce
10 Me and Stephen Hawking - a highly literate racket
11 Stay Beautiful - why don't you just ...

Sean f*cks off for a coke; Nicky f*cks off for a costume and eyeliner change

Acoustic section:
12 This Joke Sport Severed - beautiful
13 Still a Long Way to Go (yes, I cheated, what are you going to do, arrest me?)
14 Raindrops (singalong, all weep)

Sean and Nicky reappear, Nicky eating a packet of salt and vinegar, launch into
15 Mr Carbohydrate - you know you've always wanted it
16 Motorcycle Emptiness - all go wild
17 Futurology - I just like the rallying cry feel and lyric
18 No Surface All Feeling - weeping a bit again now
19 People Give In - we're all getting old
20 Faster - but not so old that we don't pogo wildly
21 Found That Soul - we certainly have
22 Tolerate - ah ah ah ah ah ah, ah ah ahhhhhhhh
23 You Love Us - yes, we do
24 PCP - lots more lyrics for James, nearly there
25 A Design for Life - confetti, almost fall over trying to catch it

'We have been the manic street preachers, may your gods go with you, goodnight ... '

Scream

Bar - chips - bed.

Til next time ...

Manics Top 50 – version 2, 2015

So here's my updated top 50, post-Rewind the Film, post-Futurology, post-The Holy Bible live gigs.  This is so hard to do, because you realise how much you love them, and how it's a complete outrage that you can't get everything in that you want to get in, and how there's some tracks you really know shouldn't be in there, but you can't let them go without sobbing.  Anyway, the only real changes are, 3 Futurology tracks and one RTF sneak in between 40 and 50, and for some reason Peeled Apples has rocketed up, because hell, that album has lasted, and the opening track is like having the electric paddles applied direct to your sluggish but still twitching disaffected rocker's heart, and realising you're still alive.   

1-10: Absolute classics 

1. Faster

2. Design for Life

3. Motorcycle emptiness

4. La Tristesse Durera

5. 4st 7lb

6. Yes

7. You love us

8. PCP

9. No surface, all feeling

10. All is vanity

11-20: The ones that just get you

11. Prologue to History

12. The Girl Who Wanted to Be God

13. Enola/alone

14. Further Away

15. Socialist serenade

16. Motown Junk

17. If you tolerate this

18. Sepia

19. Bored out of my mind

20. Just a kid

21-30: The strange, slightly perverse ones

21. Donkeys

22. Mr Carbohydrate

23. Peeled apples

24. Spectators of Suicide

25. Sleepflower

26. Intravenous agnostic

27. Wattsville Blues

28. Take the skinheads bowling

29. Found that soul

30. Raindrops keep falling on my head

31-40: Late-flowering lovelies

31. Glasnost

32. Solitude Sometimes Is

33. Me and Stephen Hawking

34. This joke sport severed

35. Facing page top left

36. Epicentre

37. Journal for Plague Lovers

38. There by the grace of God

39. William’s last words

40. 1985

41-50: No surrender

41. Freedom of speech won’t feed my children

42. Let’s go to war

43. Ready for drowning

44. This is yesterday

45. Futurology

46. Black Square

47. Australia

48. Tsunami

49. Show me the wonder

50. Stay beautiful

Faster

There's nothing I don't love about Faster.  It's a manifesto, a design for life, in 3 minutes 55.  It's a fuck you to everyone who ever put you down, even while you laugh and despair at yourself.  Because it's angry and defiant and sad and tender and glorious.  Because it's literate and proud and self-aware.  Because it's about the damn annoying pain of having a mind of your own when you're supposed to be nobody.  Because it's bleak and life-affirming.  Because it still makes me ramble like a pretentious over-read adolescent.  Because I have jumped up and down to the pneumatic, hydraulic vertical music like an idiot, and shouted the lyrics til I practically pass out.  Because James wore a balaclava with his name on on TOTP, and people wrote into Point of View (why oh why), and I fell in love.  That's why.

Manics Top 50

Wow, who knew I still had a blog?  It lives!  Haven't posted on it for 7 years, but what the hell.

Manics Top 50

1-10: Absolute classics

1. Faster

2. Design for Life

3. Motorcycle emptiness

4. La Tristesse Durera

5. 4st 7lb

6. Yes

7. You love us

8. PCP

9. No surface, all feeling

10. All is vanity

11-20: The ones that just get you

11. Prologue to History

12. The Girl Who Wanted to Be God

13. Enola/alone

14. Further Away

15. Socialist serenade

16. Motown Junk

17. If you tolerate this

18. Sepia

19. Bored out of my mind

20. Just a kid

21-30: The strange, slightly perverse ones

21. Donkeys

22. Mr Carbohydrate

23. William’s last words

24. Spectators of Suicide

25. Sleepflower

26. Intravenous agnostic

27. Wattsville Blues

28. Take the skinheads bowling

29. Found that soul

30. Raindrops keep falling on my head

31-40: Late-flowering lovelies

31. Glasnost

32. Solitude Sometimes Is

33. Me and Stephen Hawking

34. Peeled apples

35. This joke sport severed

36. Facing page top left

37. Epicentre

38. Journal for Plague Lovers

39. There by the grace of God

40. 1985

41-50: The ones you’re not sure if you love or want to burn

41. Freedom of speech won’t feed my children

42. She bathed herself in a bath of bleach

43. Ready for drowning

44. This is yesterday

45. Year of purification

46. Cardiff Afterlife

47. Australia

48. Tsunami

49. Your love alone is not enough

50. Stay beautiful

If you ask me tomorrow, the order will be different.  But it's driving me crazy, so there you go!

Library things

Hey, I just created a Library thing. This one I quite like. Only one book on it at the moment though.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/heather67

RSS

I've been mucking about with RSS today. Some of it seems to work better than others. The news ones are good, but I can't ever imagine myself RSS-ing a library page. The very idea ...
I still find it easiest just to flick through my bookmarks though - if you're RSS-ing, you still have to remember to go to Bloglines to look. There just aren't enough hours in the day ...

Hum

I wonder really, in spite of me volunteering to sign up for the official blog trial, whether blogging is really the business. There's a good article here from The Guardian by Victor Keenan, making the point that really, it's peer-to-peer networking (forums etc) which really engage people:
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2054402,00.html
I'm with him on that. If I blog, I've no idea if anyone's listening. Why should they? It's a bit egocentric. But if I post to a forum, I know I've got not just an audience, but a peer group populated by enthusiasts, who generally know what they're talking about and will share information and ideas with you. It's the website/forum combos that I really enjoy, if I'm honest. I've never really believed in publishing unless you've got something original to say, and I feel the same about blogs.
Hum.

My name in lights

Now I really am just playing. Today I've been looking at Flickr mashups, most of which seemed pretty pointless to me, but the Flickr speller (http://metaatem.net/words/) did amuse me:

Nice. Only problem was, I couldn't work out how to output it as a single file, so I ended up saving it as separate letters, and uploading each one individually. I know how to make something hard work.