Twittergem: The One Show

Is Nicky Wire @Manics really on The One Show's sofa with John Major tonight? Either best, or worst, booking ever. #whatcouldpossiblygowrong

— Simon Price (@simon_price01) July 9, 2014

It's true: Manics and Major are both on The One Show this evening.

I suppose Wire and Major have more in common than you'd think: both found themselves having to keep things going after a popular and charismatic leader unexpectedly vanished in the 1990s.

What the pop papers say: NME at sixty and a half

With a multitude of covers to choose from, this week it's the NME's 60th birthday.

Only it isn't, is it? As the free facsimile of issue one inside shows, the magazine launched in March 1952. Were you looking for a metaphor for "slightly behind the curve", turning up six months late to your own party would be a pretty good one.

So, who do we get on these multicovers? There is a nice surprise - a Patti Smith variant, meaning that at least there's one woman given front page prominence. A fifty per cent drop in the number of women who appeared on the front of issue one, but - hey, who said progress would always be a straight line, eh?

Smith is a slightly risky choice for the anniversary - she's not been considered worthy of a cover for over thirty years and so, unlike some of the other cover stars is a bit less grateful, a bit less eager to please. She tells an anecdote about how, to punky New Yorkers, NME was too expensive, so they'd read the content but not buy the magazine. Ah, for the days when that was just a problem in overseas markets, eh, IPC?

Other covers- well, obviously there's not one but two Gallaghers.

Liam is reminded that the NME in the 1990s was "practically stalking" him every week - imagine that, eh? Asked why the NME is important (a leading question) he burbles out something almost incomprehensible that they transcribe anyway:

When I go and do my weekly shop I get NME and I read it while my misses is putting all the gear in."

Ah, the magazine of choice for boorish middle-aged men; such a quick read you can get through it while someone lobs a couple of foccacias and a bottle of merlot into the Bag For Life.

Noel, meanwhile, makes a more spirited attempt to justify the NME's existence:

I don't read about things in the Daily Mail, or a Sunday supplement, or the fucking Guardian. I read them in the NME.

Me, Liam, Noel. Is there anyone in the actual demographic that NME sells to its advertisers buying the thing?

Talkingnof demographics, there's an inadvertently revealing quote from Noel when he's talking about his brother's covers:

I'd go into the shop, and me two Asian mates, they'd be reading it under the counter.

"Me two Asian mates", Noel? Apart possibly from David Cameron, who mentions irrelevant ethnicity in the middle of an anecdote?

Paul Weller awkwardly tells a story about the Melody Maker (hey, how is that Meldoy Maker website coming along, IPC?) but does spark a wonderful admission from Gavin Haynes, that the Preston from The Ordinary Boys interviews his hero Weller piece was a bit of a sham:

[Preston] wasn't even a fan, despite claiming to be. [...] He only didn't because that was the feature that would get him in the NME.

Really? Preston pretending to like someone just to raise his profile? Hard to imagine, innit?

Weller helpfully announces that he, too, reads the NME rather than blogs. The advertising department must have been screaming "can you find someone who doesn't wear trousers with elasticised waistbands who reads the bloody thing?"

There are some teenaged readers in the Arctic Monkeys piece, but, erm, they were the teenaged Monkeys.

Nicky Wire actually has something interesting to say, recalling a time when NME spoke confidently about Roth and Amis and - wonderfully - singling out the Sing Me To Sleep Youth Suicide issue, which normally gets pointed to as an example of what the NME shouldn't have been doing, despite it coming from an era of more solid sales and a more creative product.

John Lydon out of the estate agency business gets a front, too - I think he's the only person to mention Sounds, and as far as I can see, there's not a single mention of the fourth power, Record Mirror, anywhere in the issue.

The sixth cover is The Killers, who use their platform to announce that Razorlight get a bad rap. Which is true; Razorlight are no worse than The Killers.

Perhaps what's more interesting than the people who turned up is the people who didn't - most notably, no Bowie, who was something of a God for the 40th and 50th anniversaries and used to hold the record for most covers back when you had to wait for a while between reappearances. I wonder who fell out of favour with whom.

And there's barely a whisper of Pete Doherty.

What else do we get? There's a collection of "crazy covers" which ignores Wire's genuine enthusiasm for a time when NME was interested in the culture that created music rather than just rerunning old Lennon interviews. An arch eyebrow is raised for the Karen Grant and Blind Date covers - imagine, eh, the NME putting TV on its front cover. What were they thinking? It'd be like, say, half the 2012 NME website being given over to film and telly, wouldn't it? That would be crazy.

There's a two-page history of the magazine, which runs thought the well-trod path: Accordian Times, singles chart, Beatles, swinging London, falling sales, Tony Parsons, indie pop, lion rock, The Arctic Monkeys.

Alright, it might not have mentioned Lion Rock. But the is a namecheck for shrromadelica.
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Rather awkwardly, the history starts with an error, suggesting it was a merger between the Musical Express and the Accoridan Times which created the NME - a "fact" which the Guardian repeated this week.

The reprint of issue one is lovely, although to be honest, I'm more curious to see what the final Musical Express & Accordian Times looked like. It's interesting to see a tension as to what the magazine might be known as back in March 1952 - there's a small lobby for The New ME, and NME appears only once. The page given over to Accordians mentions the first ever electric accoridan. Dropped from the masthead and electricity - it must have been a worrying week for accordianists everywhere.

Perhaps the most heartening thing in the issue, though, is a short bit by Matt Wilkinson setting out a manifesto for the next 60 years. Part a diagnostic on what's gone wrong in alt rock - no stars, no spirit - and part a pledge for the future:

Personally, I'm for smashing the whole fucker wide open

Next week's cover is Palma Violets. That's a start. But only time will tell if this really is a new rallying call, or merely the new music ed doodling in the corner while the churn of Gallagher - Beatles - Gallagher - Clash covers roll on.

Nicky Wire: It's like the olden days

What's this? Nicky Wire making an intemperate attack on a smaller band? Such a historic move, it's surprising it's in the NME and not the National Trust handbook:

"When I seen bands like The Drums being fawned over, it makes me feel ill," he added. "There is literally no soul in that band. They've taken nothing from the depth or poetry or amazing lyrics of Ian Curtis, they've just taken his kooky dance. The whole generation is attired in American Apparel, there's no individualism any more."

When the parents criticise the behaviour of the children, it might not be entirely the children's fault, right?

Cuba cracks down on punks

There is a place where punk still threatens the status quo, then: Cuban authorities have arrested Gorki Aguila, singer with Porno Para Ricardo:

Gorki Aguila is 39 years of age & has been visited by his father according to Elizardo Sánchez of the Cuban council for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) a group which has in turn argued that there is no legal basis for the charges and reiterated their hope that popular support will see those charges dropped. Accordingly an open letter from a cross section of 150 Cuban artists and musicians has been published and a petition has begun on line. The group CCDHRN are already pressurising for the release of an estimated 300 political prisoners.

The Associated Press reports that he's facing trial for "social dangerousness" - behaviour contrary to "Communist morality".

Curiously, the Manic Street Preachers - who, at least once, were quite punky and attempted an aural and lyrical assault on social norms - were welcomed with open arms by the current regime not so long ago. Perhaps Nicky Wire might like to have a word with Havana...

NME plays hotornot

It's Valentine's Day. Oh, you'd heard?

The NME is marking the day by inviting readers to rate pop stars on sexual attractiveness. Well, they're actually asking you to rate people on a 1 to 10 scale on how much you'd like to spend Valentine's Day night with, which we guess you might interpret as anything from 'sitting in a pub bemoaning the whole Hallmark-induced fantasy of romantic love' to 'dangling from the ceiling dressed in a rubber bitch-suit as they prod you in every orifice with pneumatic sex toys'. So it's not clear exactly what the voters have in mind when they're voting, but there's some early results, anyway.

Apparently, NME readers would like to spend Valentines Evening with either Kate Nash or Nicky Wire.

Mind you, the choice of men to rate could send a bisexual bloke straight - click! D'you fancy Liam Gallagher? click! How about Serge Pizzorno? click! Pete Doherty...?

Nicky Wire doesn't like the Radioheads

Nicky Wire is angry. Angry, angry, angry, with Thom Yorke, who is conspiring to kill music:

"Fair play to Radiohead for doing something different. It's certainly great for publicity but I think it kind of demeans music.

"Music used to be a market, now it's all gone digital. It's worrying and it seems to be the way of the world at the moment. Sales are doing well everywhere else. Cinema is doing well, video games are doing well but music isn’t. The free download phenomenon is ruining the industry."

It's interesting that Wire thinks sales in music are doing poorly compared to films and video games because of "free downloads", rather than the other possibility that perhaps people are happier to pay for video games than music. That maybe - given the choice between having the family round the telly flying off to Saturn with Mario Galaxies on the WII, and the Manics last bloated album, packed with Davroesque impressions of their younger selves, the music will always struggle.

We never had Wire pegged as a company man, but the band have been with Sony a very long time, and clearly he's comfortable with the industry. That's the only explanation for the RIAA-tinged view of In Rainbows as being part of the problem rather than an interesting attempt to find a solution. It's obvious that - in years to come - historians of music aren't going to see an experimental pay-what-you-like download in 2007 as the point where the music industry imploded; that happened years ago.

And since when was "music a market", Wire? Do you really think that in the 70s and 80s there was something organic about pop music, that we would nip down to Woolworths, choose from thousands of albums and haggle a price? If anything, the old pre-digital world was more like a petrol station shop than a market; a limited range of mostly inedible sludge offered at artificially high prices. The digital world allows the people who make the music to deal more-or-less direct with the people who consume it - it's potentially a farmer's market of the music world. It may be a world where large consumer electronic companies cease to subsidise old bands to make disappointing albums simply to ensure the band keeps the lucrative back catalogue with the label, but why would that worry you, Nicky?

Hang about though: actually, it's not Radiohead who are killing music. It's TV:

"I can't bear the X Factor judges and the shit they put out every year. It's just a load of talentless fuckwits that destroy the industry."

Up to a point, you'd have to agree with him. But he's also moaning that nobody buys records - and yet they're buying Leona Lewis in shedloads. Isn't that what he wants? If he fetishises markets so much these days, doesn't the market speak and say 'we sort of like this stuff, and will at least buy it in fairly large quantities...'?

Wire launches XFM South Wales with word puzzle

At the end of terms when I was a kid, we'd sometimes be given a light-hearted word game where words and phrases on a theme were not-very-convincingly worked into a longer stretch of prose. See how many you could find, of course.

Nicky Wire knocked up something similar to mark the launch of XFM in South Wales, forcing in some Welsh pop titles into the sort of empty, echoing honkfest you'd expect to launch a network designed to bring the great sound of the Shine albums to FM in Cardiff:

As the great man said 'This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours',

Let this music speed through the geography - criss cross the
Rain ravaged rivers and wild winds of our tiny massive country.

This is a 'Liberation Transmission' this music welcomes all skins,
All voices, all languages - for music bridges all divides.
This new 'Comfort In Sound' this new beginning.
'So God Show Me Magic' - 'Thank The Lord We're Welsh'-

Creation, inspiration a new generation..
'Maybe Tomorrow' the 'Local Boys' and girls of the future will make their own 'Design for Life'.

'For the art of playing music is the art of playing and listening
- One enhances the other"

We shall be one made of many, we are making history 'U Knows It'!!!!

Into the valleys out to the cities do not go gentle into that dark night.

XFM a 'New South Wales', 'What's That Coming Over The Hill, What's That Coming Over The Hill'

'What's That Coming'!!!

We understand that the 3AM Girls are hiring right now; with these skills Wire would be shoo-in.

Credibility?

The Manics are definitely going to do a Christmas single, and don't care about the consequences:

"I think people take music too seriously. We are cross that Radio 1 don't play us. But we'll do a Christmas single to completely shred any possible credibility we have left.

"A Christmas single is a creative institution. But we haven't quite decided which way we will go with our attempt for the Christmas No. 1 just yet."

Don't worry, chaps: your credibility disappeared years ago. A Christmas single? We wouldn't be surprised if Nicky Wire popped up on Celeb Love Island...

Wire cutters

It's been quite a while since one of Nicky Wire's predictable but amusing attacks on his fellow musical toilers, but he's back on form for the V festival:

Of Snow Patrol he says: "They are utterly deplorable, there is something irredeemably shit about them, you can't quite put your finger on what it is.

"It's a desperate form of music, the endless repeated lines, over and over, the same drab fucking little thing on and on.

Even Snow Patrol fans might feel a little aggrieved at being accused of repeating lines endlessly from the You! Love! Us! You Love Us! You Love Us! Oh, You Love Us, Yeah You Love Us bloke, but Nicky is already moving on to The Killers:

[B]randing their second album "truly dreadful," adding: "There's no authenticity in that record at all, extremely false and calculated.

"People might like it, but people with brains don't."

And how do the 3AM Girls describe Wire in the piece?

He would be :

"the eye-liner wearing bassist"

Describing Nicky Wire as wearing a bit of eye-liner is like saying Danny La Rue sometimes wore heels, surely?

Thirteen years of tumbleweed

After Nicky Wire's 1994 fallen-flat call for "someone to build a bypass over this shithole", he's finally trying to mend fences. Or, at least, environmental-aware managed hedgerows.

"It was a joke", he's offered:

"As I was saying it I thought, 'This is going to be really funny'. Then this deathly silence descended on the place."

It's weak when an instant response to, say, being turned down when asking someone out is going "well... I was joking, anyway." To try and explain away a clunker made during the Major government in the same way is like announcing that scientists have discovered a whole new strain of feeble.

Besides, wasn't the whole point of the Manics that they said outrageous things like that? What next: a formal apology to the boards of NatWestMidlandsBarclaysLloyds?

XFM heads to South Wales

A very, very long way from its pirate origins: XFM has won a regional FM licence for South Wales. Its bid was guided by an advisory panel chaired by Nicky Wire - curious that someone claiming in the Guardian last week to have rediscovered his punky roots is also doing consultancy work for GCap Media, isn't it?

Manics set music free

The Manic Street Preachers are gearing up for a new album release, and by way of coughing politely to help us go "oh, yes, them", they're going to give away the first single.

Nicky Wire says the freebie is quite good:

"All out punk metal - Alice Cooper - Stooges guitar outro. Could have been on Generation Terrorists. A celebration of the unique, a post 'Everything Must Go' address to the fans 10 years after the first time we did it. In a Britain dominated by generic, one diametrical multi branding, let us embrace the difference - the downtrodden - the losers and the opposition. Let us fall in love with individuality again."

Although how much individuality there is in sounding like someone else, The Stooges or not, is debatable.

You'll find the track on their website from March 19th.