A manic imposter paperback writer
Hi friends,
Let's get the obvious out the way, I skipped last month's newsletter ... partly because I didn't have a great deal to report, partly because I had a lot of stuff going on personally and mostly because I completely forgot until we were a week or so into May, by which point I felt it might be a bit weird. As reliably unreliable as usual and absolutely on brand. So sorry about that. Hopefully there's enough here to make up for it.
Just incase you don't bother to read the whole thing I'll mention this here: there's an extract from the book I've edited, Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album, at the end of this letter. It's okay to skip straight to it if it's more your thing. I promise next month I'll do a London Boys (my in-progress Bolan/Bowie book) extract.
Anyway, onward ...
ADMIN
Just a tiny few points.
1. I found some more hardback copies of The Magic of Terry Pratchett in the back of my wardrobe. I honestly thought I'd run out and hadn't bothered to order more as the paperback's out in a few months. They're available signed for a super sale price of £12 (plus shipping obvs, which I keep as cheap as I can but, well, there's a lot of heavy lifting being done by that "as I can").
2. My wife, the unstoppable writer and poet Nicoletta Wylde, has a poetry collection, The Direction of Greater Courage, coming out in July. She's written an accompanying book for a special edition about her experience earlier this year in psychiatric care and it's honestly one of the most incredible pieces of writing I have ever read. It completely knocked me over. I'm so proud of her. Please do pre-order the book here. And if you're in London I will be appearing at the book launch on August 14 to interview Nico about her work, alongside some amazing performers.
STUFF I'VE WRITTEN/DONE THIS MONTH
Movie reviews: gloriously stupid splatter core adventure Psycho Goreman (★★★★), creepy no-budget horror Threshold (★★★) and the fascinating (and brilliantly titled) documentary Sisters With Transistors (★★★★).
Music reviews: A beautiful way of testing a new pair of headphones in Ed Dowie's The Obvious I.
Other whatnot: I very much enjoyed appearing on the Comedy Arcade podcast, involving the dubious tale of Dizzee Rascal's Spanish Portaloo.
BOOK UPDATES ("bookdates"?)
Manic Street Preachers: Album by Album (published Oct 2021)
Let's get the exciting bit out of the way first! This is now technically finished and is in the middle of being typeset, and what's more WE HAVE A COVER DESIGN ... *drum roll please*
Cover designed by yours truly. First person to email me identifying every person on here gets a free copy!
The book consists of fourteen essays by writers who have been impacted by the band, one for each Manics album. Details are in the last newsletter which you can find here. The essays are linked by a timeline, which I've written and researched myself and has become the classic example of the phenomenon of "mission creep". The original idea was to join each essay with some key dates to put the corresponding album into context; tours, TV appearances, singles, that sort of thing. Unfortunately this is me, and as soon as I wrote the words "1985: In Blackwood, South Wales, fifteen-year-old James Dean Bradfield and his schoolfriend, Nick Jones, begin writing songs together" and launched myself into a stack of old Melody Makers things got rather out hand. I essentially ended up with a fairly detailed biography covering 30 years written in bullet points. The book was 65,000 words before I started the timeline. It's 110,000 now. Still ... more bang for your buck, right?
One slightly maddening development (though as a fan, obviously an exciting one) is that the very day I submitted my comprehensive guide to the albums of the Manic Street Preachers to my publisher, the Manic Street Preachers announced a new album, landing in early September. Since the book comes out in October those pesky boys would have rendered it instantly out of date. Fortunately the band's team has been very helpful and to cut a long story short, I now have another chapter to write. Quickly. I will probably be one of the first people to write a review of The Ultra Vivid Lament, but that review will be one of the last to be published. It's a funny old world.
The book is due out in early October (I think), and will be available in all the usual book places, and directly from me as a special edition, which will include a bonus book (I do love a bonus book!) featuring all the writing I've done on the band, starting with a review of Know Your Enemy I wrote in 2001 for my students magazine, right up to a deep dive I did on Resistance Is Futile for Louder Than War in 2017 (permission pending). And probably some newer bits. That's a lot of album, single and live reviews, three big interviews and some deep-dive essays.
There might be a pre-order link by this time next month. Or maybe not. We'll see.
The London Boys: The Teenage Dreams of David Bowie and Marc Bolan (due mid-2022)
With the MSP book out of the way, this is now my main focus, and I'm elbow-deep in the guts of it now. I love how many new avenues I'm led down. Right now, I'm focussing on researching the London of the early fifties and late forties, when the two stars would have been children. I've been looking at bomb site maps of London, trying to map the devastation near the two homes. I found out that in 1945 a V2 rocket attack struck just 200 yards south of where I sit writing this. It brought the whole story much closer to me. After thinking about the whole subject of wars and cities, I ended up donating to UNICEF's Israel-Palestine relief fund. The war that raged in our city forty years before I was born is, in some ways, still going on. A different war, different issues, a different city with different people, but ultimately all wars are the same war, especially when a rocket has destroyed your street.
The Magic of Terry Pratchett (Hardback out now, paperback coming August 2021)
I'm delighted to say that The Magic of Terry Pratchett has been nominated for a Locus Award, putting it in the top ten non-fiction SF/F books released last year, at least according to Locus, and frankly they should know. I suspect Walter Koenig will win, because, well, who am I to argue with the Mr Chekov? But even so, it's an honour just to be in the mix. Thanks so much for every one who has shown the book support over the last year.
The paperback is on its way, as currently set to be published on August 30. I haven't decided if I'm going to do any special editions or anything, but it'll be available to purchase from my site at some sort of reasonable price. More reasonable than Amazon are charging, anyway.
MONTHLY MUSINGS
Last week I did some training at work around Imposter Syndrome – the innate belief that you don't deserve your own success or position. It was hard to get through. Really hard. Listening to the lecture and the exercises we were taught felt like holding on to a metal rod that someone was gradually heating up. The longer I listened the more painful it got, the more every instinct was screaming at me to let go, I was in absolute agony. My skin was peeling away, exposing the raw nerves, only in this case the metal bar is actually, in some way, good for you. To be honest, as metaphors go it's not my best. You get the idea though.
You see, the idea of "not being good enough" is something I have always struggled with. The first time I remember really thinking about the issue was in 1992, when an episode of Red Dwarf called 'The Inquisitor' aired.
I was eleven years old in 1992, and Red Dwarf was my favorite show, something I was allowed to stay up late to see. The right mix of silliness, sci-fi and smeg to appeal to a nerdy, awkward pre-teen just discovering Terry Pratchett and rock music. 'The Inquisitor' is something of a classic. In the episode the crew stumble upon a mysterious, all powerful being (guess what he's called?) who has dedicated his life to judging every person in the universe, weighing up their life's work to see if they deserve their place in the cosmos. If they are found wanting, he erases them and replaces them with a different person, grown from one of the sperm that didn't make it to the egg when that person's life began. It's a solid sci-fi concept. Eventually the crew realize that it's not about their actual deeds; they're ultimately being judged on their own sense of self-worth. Thus the entitled Rimmer and self-obsessed Cat get away scott-free, while the guilt-ridden, mostly decent Lister is judged unworthy. I was superficially aware of this nuance at the time, but somehow it's not the message I took from the episode. That message was: Oh crap, I would never pass that test. 11 year olds really aren't equipped for existential crisis, but right then and there I had one. It overwhelmed me. I thought about it for months: I am not worthy of the life I have been given, I have achieved nothing. Eleven. Years. Old. Who has achieved anything at eleven years old? The thing is, that feeling has always stayed with me. I've never gotten over it. The Inquisitor has always been in the back of my mind figuratively pointing at my copy of What Bike and plate of Sugar Puff sandwiches.
And this is absurd, right? Of course it is. I have tangible evidence of my achievements. I've listed a lot of them in this actual newsletter. And yet, I have a hell of a party trick: tell me anything, literally anything about my life that you think is impressive, and I will tell you logically and methodically, step-by-step, why you're wrong, until you start to believe me. And if that sounds exhausting, you're absolutely right, it is. It's completely irrational, immune to logic of any kind and entirely exhausting.
Which is why I treasure something that happened to me last weekend. With the UK coming gradually out of lockdown I was offered a stand up gig in the gorgeous village of Machinllyth in North Wales. It was the first time I've performed live comedy in almost a year, and it was an absolute hoot. Lots of laughs and lots of fun. I did fine, to my relief. During that set, which lasted 20 minutes, I had one very small but very significant moment. I was doing a bit of material about my own time in psychiatric care, something that happened to me in my mid-20s, and I looked over at the audience and just for a second, one tiny fraction of a moment, I thought ... "I've got this". I felt in control. Measured. People were listening. I was, at least in that tiny slice of time, worthy. It was a powerful, incredible feeling. And it distracted me so much, I forgot where I was in the story and fluffed my next joke, undermining my set completely.
Still. For that minute, it was nice to know what it felt like to be a Rimmer and not a Lister.
SOUND & VISION: Recommendations
Okay, I'm aware I've gone on a LOT this month so I'll make this quick. If you've not got a subscription to Apple TV+ I recommend getting a trial for two reasons. One is Mythic Quest, the sitcom by It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Meghan Ganz, Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney (who also stars). It's genuinely funny, surprisingly warm and season one includes an episode, 'A Dark Quiet Death' which is one of my favourite pieces of television ever. Season two is unfolding brilliantly, too. Secondly, 1971: The Year Music Changed Everything is an absolutely fascinating deep dive into a single year in pop music with exceptional archive footage and new interviews. It is VERY much up my ally, and may be up yours as well.
Musically I've been enjoying, well, the new single by the Manic Street Preachers, obviously.
Also, check out Self Esteem's frankly astonishing piece of spoken word soul 'I Do This All The Time'. I've always loved Rebecca's stuff, right back to the early Slow Club days, but this is honestly next level. I'm looking forward to seeing her at Camp Bestival in July, where she's sharing a bill with, well, me (my band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing anyway).
Okay, do you know what? I have definitely packed a lot into this one, so I think It's time to leave it.
Have a wonderful weekend, please drop by and say hello on Twitter (@20thCenturyMarc) or reply to this email with any thoughts, ideas, questions, compliments or at a push insults. Not typos though. I'm okay not knowing about those.
Marc
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AN EXCEPT FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO
MANIC STREET PREACHERS: ALBUM BY ALBUM
This is © the author, and obviously is a first draught/work in progress that may change, so please don't splash it about!
Manics fans aren’t like the fans of other bands. Sure, just like any fandoms there’s the dress-code (eyeliner, leopard print, maybe some military chic if you’re feeling adventurous), the encyclopedic trivia (‘let’s all go to Blackwood and find where The Dorothy cafe was! Maybe we’ll meet Flicker!’), the playlists ( ‘Songs About Cities’, ‘Complete Damaged Goods/Heavenly era’, ‘Nicky Wire Sings!’, ) and memes (INTENSELY INTENSE!). That’s a given. Manics fans have more though. We have lists of artwork and poetry. We have superbly referenced quotations and an approved canon of background reading. We have films to see and plays to read ... and you better do your homework. Miller, Mailer, Plath and Pinter. ‘We’ve never inspired anyone really, band-wise,’ Nicky told me – completely wrongly, as it turns out – during an interview for Drowned In Sound back in 2014, ‘but we’ve inspired lots of journalists and academia and people doing PhDs on RS Thomas.’ That last point is undoubtedly true. Manics fans, possibly above all else, like to write. Sometimes what they’re writing is their phone number on someone’s arm in eyeliner. Sometimes it’s the lyrics to ‘Yes’ on the back of their GCSE maths paper , sometimes it’s really, really, terrible poetry on an online forum devoted to teenage depression. Many of us, though, have taken it further. We have become Manics fans professionally.
The Manic Street Preachers, it’s fair to say, punch above their weight in the music press for the simple reason that ‘music journalist’ is one of those professions that attracts Manics fans. Rub away at a Guardian reviewer of a certain age and you will find a ‘THIS IS YESTERDAY’ tattoo eight times out of ten. As a breed we are genetically predisposed to be interested in the Manic Street Preachers and pitch them to our also-Manics-fan editors. Not that the coverage is undeserved; in fact it’s easy to get so caught up in the mythology, history, politics, romance and sheer context around the band that you overlook how genuinely great they are. In thirty years they have rarely delivered an album that didn’t deserve its deep dives. Still, there are lots of great bands … not all of them get 3,000 words in The Guardian for every new album. Not many of them are still having books written about them. Ocean Colour Scene sold as many records in the late 90s as the Manics did, and are still plugging away. When did they last get the lead review in the Sunday Times? The Stereophonics probably still out-sell MSP, but you’ll struggle to find a lengthy thinkpiece on their latest reissue on Pitchfork. Being popular isn’t the same as people really, truly, caring. With the Manics people care. Deeply. Occasionally, obsessively. They inspire imagination en-masse in a way few of their contemporaries did, and almost none of that generation still do. A new Manics record is still an event that generates column inches and reappraisals and, well, books, partly because they inspired so many into careers in writing. Obviously if the band turned in any old tosh, that enthusiasm would quickly fade. Fortunately, they never do. You can write an essay on every Manics album, from Generation Terrorists (1992) to Resistance Is Futile (2018) and whatever comes next. So … we have.
There are 14 essays in this collection; one devoted to each Manic Street Preachers record – and a bonus one about b-sides – covering 35 years of the band’s history; each written by someone who has been inspired by the band and taken that inspiration into their professional and personal life. We’ve tried not to constrain the writers here. Some of these essays are traditional music criticism, some are social histories, and some are personal reflections, all from a range of fans from different backgrounds and with different experiences. Rhian Jones’ piece on Generation Terrorists sets the tone nicely. Rhian has written extensively about the band in the past, notably in her contribution to the brilliant Triptych, which forensically examines 1994’s The Holy Bible. She’s also a historian, with an expert knowledge of protest movements and left-wing politics (her 2015 book Petticoat Heroes, about the cross-dressing would-be revolutionaries of 19th century Wales, is about as Manic Street Preachers as history can possibly get). Here she sets the Manics’ debut into its contemporary context, looking at the impact of class and culture (and alienation, boredom and despair) on Generation Terrorists ... and Generation Terrorists’ impact on class and culture. It’s this book in microcosm. Elsewhere we have true deep dives into the music and biography of the band, as with Andrzej Lukowski’s thoroughly entertaining deconstruction of Know Your Enemy (2001), or Adam Scott Glasspool’s case for the defence of Lifeblood (2004). Dom Gourlay, a man who was there to witness Nicky Wire belting a security guard with a bass at Reading 1992, is the perfect person to write an overview of Manics b-sides, including the ones Lipstick Traces (2003) neglected. I loved Mayer Nissim’s wade through the chaotic, triumphant days of Send Away The Tigers (2007) especially as, for me, it rehabilitated an album I’ve often been dismissive about and made me examine it all over again. The best music writing does that.
Elsewhere we have essays rooted in more personal experiences. Laura Kelly finds the centre of the venn diagram between teenage outsiderdom and the Manics’ probably unique ability to mix feminism and cock rock, and sets it against the backdrop of early-90s Belfast and the Troubles in her piece on Gold Against The Soul (1993). I think Emma O’Brien’s look at The Holy Bible and Phoenix Andrew’s memories of Everything Must Go (1996) work beautifully as a pair (as do those albums, defining one another in opposition), documenting the fan culture of the early on-line era, and the maddening, exhilarating experience of clinging on for dear life as a band which such specific personal resonance is embraced by just-about-everybody; and that’s before we get into what those two essays are able to say about personal trauma, sexual identity and gender. Erica Viola, meanwhile, is that rarest of creatures, the American Manics Fan, a peculiar breed doomed, in the band’s commercial heyday at least, to manifest their fandom by trawling record shops for imports and hoping desperately against all hope that one day, just maybe, the Manics will once more cross the water and embrace them. Her piece on Journal For Plague Lovers (2009) also includes the single most brilliantly Manics-fan sentence in this whole book. I can’t recommend Tracey Wise’s memories of Postcards From A Young Man (2010) highly enough, a beautiful examination of how a new record from your favourite band can soundtrack the emotional peaks and valleys of your life, and how the music and the trauma can imprint upon one another. I’m proud to have been able to include it.
I’m also proud of the pieces that use the Manics to reflect back the themes and the times in which each record was made. I wrote about how This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours (1998) is the quintessential record of the late-Britpop era, capturing a uniquely pre-millennial, death-of-a-party exhausted alienation. Claire Biddles has written a fascinating, inciteful dive into how Futurology (2014) links the band’s Welshness with their occasionally-naive feminism, while Laura K Williams looks at Resistance Is Futile (2018) in the context of the post-Brexit Britain of Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, a time of fake news and divided households.