Dear Manic Street Preachers,
It has been just shy of twelve years since you last graced our shores. A small group of us down here in Australia still listen to your records - new and old - and were still excited when you announced a tour in support of your tenth album ‘Postcards From A Young Man’
The problem with a gap of eleven and a bit years between seeing you is that we really forgot just how great you are. We had forgotten how great it feels to sing along with your classics.
Tonight I had so much fun singing along to your audaciously titled ‘You Love Us’ from your 1992 debut ‘Generation Terrorists’. In 1992, you commanded people to love you through song and in 2010 people are still following orders. Tonight I heard songs that were defining moments of my teenage years. ‘Everything Must Go’, ‘A Design For Life’ and the song you dedicated “to all Australians”, ‘Australia’ all from the album ‘Everything Must Go’ and all of which resonated with my young self and still hold a special place in my heart.
Even after that when you became quite commercial, you still managed to write brilliant songs. ‘If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next’ and ‘You Stole The Sun From My Heart’ sounded just brilliant tonight, and that solo acoustic version James Dean Bradfield did of ‘The Everlasting’ was sublime.
James, you were right when you said the M*A*S*H theme ‘Suicide Is Painless’ was “a great lyric” and “a great song” and you proved it when you played it tonight and Nicky, your recollection of writing songs with the presumed dead Richard James Edwards was truly touching and reaching all the way back to 1990 to pay tribute to him with ‘Motown Junk’ was just great.
Ok, I admit it. Usually a band that has been around for two decades have a bunch of songs that captured a majority of their fans early on in their career and, since you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, said band will have a hard time teaching their fans their new tracks, but when you play them like that, they become hard to ignore. I’m sure fans who had been missing ‘Postcards From A Young Man’ are inspired today to go and get themselves a copy.
So why am I writing this letter to you? Well, I wanted to ask you a favour. Please don’t take another decade to return to Australia. We still love you, even if you have neglected us for so long. We’ll come back to see you if you come back to play for us. I know you’re much bigger in the UK. I know you can probably make more cash playing to bigger crowds there. I know we haven’t sent nearly as many of your records to the top of the charts as your homeland has and I know you probably aren’t that interested in spending a full day and night sitting on a plane, but believe me when I say we still love you, and if your fans were beginning to doubt your ability to play, you don’t have to worry, because tonight, you showed you’re still up there with the best.
Sincerely yours,
Tim Cashmere
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