Somehow I’ve got into double figures for reviews and not yet posted a single about the Manic Street Preachers. The challenge as always when you’ve seen a band more than thirty times is deciding which concert to write about first, but the 2005 show at the Corn Exchange won out due to a combination of being one of my favourite gigs ever, 2005 being the only year of adult life where I kept a diary so my thoughts at the time are recorded plus I just stumbled on a bootleg of the gig on a long ago burnt CD.
At the time the band felt like they were at a crossroads in their career. The previous year had seen Lifeblood released which had failed to connect with the public and remains, along with debut Generation Terrorists, their only album not to make the top ten of the UK album chart. The subsequent arena tour to promote the album had seen the band distant and bloated and for the first time in their career seemingly lacking a clear direction.
Sensing they needed a change the band scheduled the Past, Present, Future tour, billed as a chance to hear the hits alongside various rarities from throughout their career. And with no new album or release to promote (except for the God Save the Manics EP given away free as part of the tour) it gave the band a chance to revisit what made them such an essential band in the nineties.
The tour has gone down in Manics fandom as one of the peaks in the band’s history and listening back now there’s a certain frenzy to the performance, with a setlist selected that felt like the band rebelling against the norms they had created. James’ guitar and vocals seemed permanently to be teetering on the edge of collapse yet somehow keeping the band on track. Whilst I noted at the time that the band didn’t seem as animated as usual, the focus to perform unfamiliar songs must have played a part in that.
From an incendiary performance of Found That Soul to kick off the show, traditional closer A Design For Life made a surprising early appearance in the set, it was obvious from the beginning that this wasn’t a regular Manics show. Whilst the A-list singles all appeared, live staples such as Tsunami, Kevin Carter, La Tristesse Durera and No Surface All Feeling were dropped in favour of heavier songs from their back catalogue.
Most excitingly several deep cuts from The Holy Bible showed up – the much rumoured tenth anniversary shows to celebrate the band’s most iconic of albums didn’t appear and it was to be another decade until it finally got the retrospective tour. The final throes of Of Walking Abortion, with cries of “Who’s responsible?” ringing throughout the venue, proving an unexpected highlight of the evening.
Another benefit of the rearrangement of the set was how the climax of the show played out. Motorcycle Emptiness arrived as the second last song of the evening, rather than its now normal position in the first segment of the show – a song that glorious needs to be earned rather than used as a warm up for the rest of the performance. After which a rip-roaring thrash through Motown Junk (introduced with a tease of Paradise City) finished the evening as energetically as it had begun. There was a definite reason why I described it as ‘the sweatiest gig I’d been to for a long time’ in my write up at the time.
After this tour the band disappeared as a collective for two years, before returning in 2007 with Send Away The Tigers. Whilst the ‘Future’ in Past, Present, Future may not have reflected the inclusion of any unreleased songs, the attitude and energy that they’d rediscovered in this run of shows continued in their subsequent tour. James in particular had seemed to thrive in the face of performing lesser known songs – I’d love to see the band at this point of their career embark on a ‘no hits’ tour to give them the challenge of not relying on the familiar live favourites, although I suspect it’s a dream that I’ll never see realised.
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Manic Street Preachers performed:
Found That Soul
A Design for Life
Roses in the Hospital
Faster
1985
Everything Must Go
Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier
You Love Us
Let Robeson Sing
Of Walking Abortion
Solitude Sometimes Is
If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
The Masses Against the Classes
The Everlasting (Acoustic)
Archives of Pain
You Stole the Sun From My Heart
Stay Beautiful
Cardiff Afterlife
Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart
Firefight
Motorcycle Emptiness
Motown Junk
Alex Reviews Gigs 
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