02.06.09
Motorcycle Emptiness
One of the first CDs I ever bought was the debut album from the British band, Manic Street Preachers. At the time, there were a few songs I liked but essentially didn’t “get” the album until much later on, when my musical tastes matured some. To put this into context, I bought three CDs as my first very-expensive-at-the-time imports, namely the aforementioned, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger and Snow’s 12 Inches of Snow. Yes. I bought that. And yes, I can “sing” “Informer.” It was a former party trick of mine.
In the last year, I dug through my old CD collection and found one of the Manics’ CDs and ripped them to the computer. They stand the test of time. “There By The Grace Of God” is perhaps one of my favourite songs ever though it’s hotly contested by “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next.” Both songs came out in the late 90s, and the latter debuted when I was last in London, in ’98.
You can listen to “There By The Grace Of God” here.
Other standout tracks if you choose to delve further are “Motorcycle Emptiness,” “Suicide is Painless” (their cover of the theme song from M*A*S*H) and “La Tristesse Durera.”
