Oh Man. Twenty Years. Where The Hell Did That Go?

It has come to my attention that the third Manics album, The Holy Bible, was released twenty years ago today, on the 29th of August 1994. I have a clear memory of catching the bus into Southport, as a spotty 16 year old, to go and buy it from Our Price. It was the first CD that I ever bought with my own money. Of course I’d bought records before — so, so many embarrassing…

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I’m Not Doing Requests

This is a bit weird, innit? You all sitting down like that… So says Mr Gallagher, three songs into his set, to his hitherto entirely seated audience at St Kilda’s The Palais theatre. Do you have to sit down? I mean, have they told you that you have to sit down? <pause> Well stand up then… <audience rises en masse…> Thanks Noel. Someone had to say it. Thus began an entertaining hour and a half…

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Neither Here Nor There…

I was struck by a wave of nostalgia the other day, when my mid-afternoon-lull/boredom-alleviation strategy at work saw me tuning my iPhone to BBC 6 music, only to find Damon Albarn mid-way through a performance of his The Good, The Bad, And The Queen “concept album about modern life in London”, recorded at The Roundhouse in Camden in 2006. Ah. 2006. When I used to live just down the road. Suddenly I wasn’t sitting at…

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