Difference between revisions of "Some Din For The Weekend - NME, 30th August 1997"

For Manic Street Preachers this is a homecoming of sorts. It is here that they had a farrago with the bouncers when they were chased off-site in '92. It is here, within the irony Of a scruffy patch Of green barely on the outskirts of a nothing town, that they have somehow found a home. There is no reason for the Manics to be playing here tonight - they have toured this set too long; they should be sequestered away working on the next album - but Reading obviously means something to them and they reinvest their performance with all the passion that fatigue had sapped from their most recent shows.

From 'Motown Junk' and 'Roses In The Hospital' to 'Kevin Carter' and 'A Design For Life', the Manics achieve the requisite sense of occasion through a set of greatest hits that does everything great rock should, bonding the crowd through celebration of their disaffection. There is one new number - a tortured ballad called 'Ready To Drown' — and Nicky Wire flounces up to the mike in his dress to ask us, "So what crap have you got to watch tomorrow?". Then it's 'You Love Us' and the Stage goes dark. Too dark even to read 'BE HERE NOW'.