wahay

Having another listen. Still great lyrics. Some alright tunes. Really, really, REALLY annoying forced scansion on Bradfield's part.

I used to get the thing of thinking it was a waste as a rock album, but I'm thinking the lyrics don't quite work as rock lyrics but wouldn't carry as poetry. But then I read too much of that these days. Leonard Cohen's shit as a poet as well.

The central tension of this album is that James Dean Bradfield (It is his real name btw, his parents just loved James Dean) and Sean Moore somehow managed to fit the lyrics that Richey Edwards wrote into rock and roll songs.

That will be where your issue with JDBs voice will come from, its pretty hard singing "Dont Hurt Just Obey Lie Down Do As They Say May As Well Be Heaven This Hell Smells The Same" and making it sound like its your average conversation.

The lyrics are mostly in blank verse - tricky, but not impossible to fit into rock songs. The Fall do it with no problems in free verse. It's odd the Manics stick to straight rock 4/4 throughout the album. It's the extending of non-stressed words and the subsequent compressing of words across stresses that irritates me - it feels like Bradfield doesn't really like the lyrics but likes his own melodies and is determined to subordinate the lyrics to his idea of what they should be, rather than what they are. The big tension for me is less about 'fitting the lyrics in' but why he did such a shoddy job of it.

WHY FUCKING STRESS THE 'I' AND THE 'THE' BUT NOT EXTEND THE 'AND' SO THE FINAL FUCKING LINE WORKS? Dickhead.

Also, stressing definite articles - poor, poor form.

Youre missing the division of labour that the manics had.
Nicky Wire and Richey did all the lyrics and JDB and Sean Moore did all the music. Mark E Smith has always been intimately involved in the music of The Fall whereas Nicky Wire and Richey Edwards proudly proclaimed their inability as musicians. Whether JDB liked the lyrics or not was never an issue for me, i always saw it as two teams doing two different jobs.

Do you honestly think The Holy Bible would be a better album if James Dean Bradfield listened more to Richeys musical ideas and Richey listened more to JDB's lyrics?

Maybe I'm explaining myself badly - JDB should go nowhere near lyrics (I heard his solo album - it's shit). Lyrics and music aren't two separate things - the lyrics aren't in straight poetic form (sonnets, terza rima, quatrain etc) but they are close enough to form to keep within a rock meter (again, odd to keep the 4/4 for a lot of it but I'll let that pass). The point is that the lyrics already lend themselves to stresses that JDB perverts, rather than using the relatively straight form of the lyrics. Again, stressing a 'the' is really poor form unless it's a rhythmic effect in the lyrics (in this it's strictly a definite article, off-stress).

The division of labour is definitely interesting, and plays into the earlier comment I made (years ago) in this thread. But my irritation is that JDB's rendering of the lyrics actively pushes away from their effective delivery - which plays into a postmodernism that seems entirely at odds with Richey (but not Nicky's) general take on things.

Oh, and yes - effective delivery of lyrics is always preferable to actively making the lyrics difficult to understand and removing/ eliding poetic stress (see T&B's earlier points).

Just as an aside to this semi-serious conversation, it is still the case that the overwhelming majority of my sexual partners have been (or continue to be) Manics fans.

I have nothing but goodwill towards you. I wish id have known teenage female manics fans when i was a teenage male manics fan, but there werent any, alas :(

You must be younger than me - there was a point around 96-2000 or so where just saying 'I quite like leopard print' in a shit indie dive would pretty much guarantee you... well, usually a conversation about cutting, but sometimes not.

JDB's lyrics are not all that - we all know that, JDB knows that which is why he devolved that role to Richey. The Manics are a special case when it comes to this because their main lyricist disappeared and the band carried on afterwards, but personally its hard to be harsh about a group who still write really good pop songs even after all that.

I think im 5/6 years older than you then, the richey acolytes never sought me out :(

Fair shout. I'd disagree with their writing good songs after that but... well, whatevs, innit?

DRE remains Wales' finest ever lyricist though, innit?

"Fy nhad yr wyt yn Aberteifi
Daniel yw dy enw a'r teledu dy deyrnas
Nid wyf am ddim yn dy ewyllus
Ac rwy'n methu ar y ddaear hefyd"

Who is DRE? its not the bloke from Datblygugugu is it?

Datblygu, aye.

No they don't.