Live Music
In the Beginning, When We Were Winning, When the Smiles Were Genuine
All rock all the time: The Manic Street Preachers Live in Vancouver
The last time I had an opportunity to see Suede (or the London Suede as they are required to be called in North America), was as the last act on the last day of a four-day music festival in Mexico City in November 2016.
The preceding three days had torn it out of me. So I didn’t make it then, and I didn’t make it last night, six Novembers later.
That’s how I originally planned to write this article about a show that I went to the other night.
As a result of their co-headlining status with their partners on this North American tour that they’ve just embarked on, they played last.
Which was going to be fine with me, since it was a school night, and based on the previous setlists, there would be about two songs I would have recognized. Why do bands whose high water mark was years ago insist on playing new material? One or two is fine, but everyone is there for the hits and a good knees-up singalong.
And I was there for the opener anyway.
The Manic Street Preachers were a powerful force to be reckoned with in front of about a thousand people at Vancouver’s fabled Commodore Ballroom. The show had been moved at the last minute from the cold and impersonal 4000-seat barn way out on the edge of suburbia that they had been originally scheduled to play at, and thank fuck for that.
I wonder what it feels like for bands like this to play to massive festival crowds in the European summers and then come to North America in the fall and play to a relative smattering of die-hards on a rainy November night.
Anyway, it kicked off with “Motorcycle Emptiness”, an absolute storm of a melody, this song from 1992, and sure to attract anyone in 2022 with its theme of the jaded urban ennui caused by the capitalist system. But when you are preaching to the long-since converted, there is really no other way to begin your show. This song's swirling and incendiary power set the tone for the rest of the night.
If you already know it, right now is as good a time as any to listen again and loudly. If you don’t know, here’s an article I wrote about a few months ago. Get in.
From there, it was a non-stop tour de force of everything you wanted to hear from their (and your) 90s salad days: “Everything Must Go,” “La Tristessa Durera,” “Ocean Spray,” and “You Stole the Sun From my Heart.”
A cover of “Suicide is Painless,” which I’ve never liked, slowed things down, but then we were right back at it with “From Despair to Where.”
They didn’t cross the Rubicon into this century until midway through the show with “Autumnsong,” “Walk Me to the Bridge,” and “Your Love Alone is Not Enough,” but then it was right back to our glory days with “The Everlasting” and the absolutely necessary “A Design for Life.”
And then it got really interesting, with a ferocious rip through the Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary,” which they fucking nailed. Pardon my Welsh, but there are no other words for it, and really, either they could have finished there or played a few more before and ended with it. I’d have gone home happy.
But no, there were four more. A bit of minimal chatter from Nicky Wire on bass and James Dean Bradfield on guitar and vocals and a nod to the more present again with “It’s Not War, it’s Just the End of Love” and then back to the 90s with “Tsunami” (my favourite of theirs), “You Love Us” and “If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next.”
I know…great song titles.
The Manic Street Preachers have never fucked around. Their music always meant something and was never let to veer into U2-faux bullshit and shut-the-fuck-up-already-Bono political pronouncements. They let the music and lyrics do all the talking that needed to be done. They stayed real, and we believed them. It’s thirty years now, and times have changed, and so have we. But their live show makes you think that this music’s impact will never change.
Everything is different now, but nothing is better than standing in a crowd of like-minded people, sharing a common energy, just twenty feet from your rock and roll heroes, and absolutely belting out the hits until your throat cracks.
And that was it, right? Home to bed?
Well, not so fast. Suede deserved a look at least once and for all. And after Brett Anderson exploded onto the stage like he’d had an 8-ball to himself backstage, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
His energy was instantly visceral, and he kept it there and held the crowd in his hand for the next hour and a half, prowling, prancing, and commanding the stage. Fifteen songs later, of which I knew exactly three, I left feeling completely entertained.
As it turns out, it makes no difference how well you know the setlist. A true rock and roll band like the Manics will keep you wanting more because you know all the songs. Another true rock and roll band like Suede will do the same because you don’t.
The next day, my throat was raw, my ears were ringing, my head was buzzing, and my heart was still pounding, the same way it did when I was 20. What else do you want music to do to you?
