Manic Street Preachers: Life Becoming a Landslide

19 January 1994

"Suddenly the room is Wembley Stadium and rock 'n' roll is your salvation. Or something."

— Mark Sutherland

An elephant in the room I've mostly avoided up until now is just what a different magazine Smash Hits had evolved into by the early-to-mid nineties. I've already mentioned how the title of Single of the Fortnight had been replaced by Best New Single but this was one of the subtler changes. The longstanding Bitz section had been replaced by pages of celeb gossip, much of which wasn't even related to the world of pop.

Here is some of what comprised issue 395 of ver Hits:

✔ A teary-eyed editor-in-chief Mike Soutar giving his thoughts on the imminent relocation of the Hits offices from Carnaby St down to Oxford St. Bloody hell, they practically could've carried all the furniture down the road themselves. I bet he regrets chucking away all those Sham 69 and David Bowie reference books now.

✔ Taking the mickey out of actress Juliette Lewis for having hairy armpits. I'd be more inclined to dis her wooden acting myself.

✔ Rating Sting, Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart on how they fare as grandads of rock. Somehow, Mr Peacock Rod comes out with the lowest score making him less of a geezer than his younger compatriots. The Hits makes no mention of their trio single "All for Love" which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it used to be their mandate to keep viewers abreast on the hits of the day; on the other hand, the record is crap so it's no big loss.

✔ A photo of Axl Rose swimming with a dolphin which is taken from the video for some useless single from 1991's Use Your Illusion albums which came out in (checks notes) 1991.

✔ Gossip. Loads of it. A celeb gossip round-up from Leesa Daniels, Hollywood gossip courtesy of Sandro Monetti and Soap gossip from Marc Andrews because Australia. Not exactly a crapton of music gossip but the music coverage in general is lacking so much throughout this issue in general that I doubt many even noticed.

✔ More from Marc Andrews as he interviews a couple of the actors from Home & Away. They aren't Frank, Roo, Emma or Dag Dog so this pair means zilch to me. They even shoot down the idea of doing a Kylie & Jason style duet but I imagine the Aussie-soap-star-turned-pop-star pipeline had gone dry by this time anyway.

✔ Oh for the love of god, must I go on with this task that I chose to do??? Let's skip a bit.

✔ The by-now customary pull out songbook featuring lyrics from the following: Def Leppard, Therapy?, Tag Team, Soul Asylum, the aforementioned Sting/Bryan Adams/Rod Steward throat-ripping team-up, Dr Dre and RuPaul. The Leps aside, this about as 1994 as you can get — unless, of course, you wish to consider the good music that came out this year.

✔ Robbie Williams refuting many of the definitely baseless rumours that had spread about Take That. Someone ought to lie down with him on his bed and see what he thinks of them now.

✔ Alex Kadis follows Bad Boys Inc. on tour. Two observations here: (a) why the hell was 'Inc.' so common in the nineties? and (b) it was good of them to have been the "cheeriest men in pop" considering they played RC Cola to Take That and East 17's Coke and Pepsi respectively, wasn't it?

✔ Sylvia Patterson meets with Winona Ryder. Not a pop star but she once dated Johnny Depp...who also isn't a pop star.

✔ Reviews! Mark Sutherland "does" the singles! Age of Innocence and Mrs Doubtfire: I saw them both! Also, Tombstone and Son-in-Law, which I didn't see and probably wasn't even aware of.

✔ Letters. No Black Type and no correspondence of interest.

✔ Finally, a crossword puzzle and a short Q&A with Louise from Eternal. And a small poster for Wayne's World, another movie I've never seen. Because I've never thought Mike Myers was funny. In fact, I think he sucks.

All told, not much from the world of pop. A common complaint I've heard leveled at nineties' Smash Hits is that it went too far in the direction of "manufactured" groups like Take That and The Spice Girls but it seems more like they just wanted to be all things teen entertainment. Bad Boys Inc and Robbie Williams and Louise Nurding weren't everyone's thing but they were in the charts. But try telling that to Mark Sutherland, a rock 'n' roller who was a man out of time.

Whether by design or by chance, this fourth single dressed up as an E.P. (with it by now the dominant format, virtually every CD single was in effect an extended play) cleverly capped off their early hard rock indie sound while guiding listeners in the direction of the bleak, skeletal work that would appear on their pivotal third album The Holy Bible near the end of 1994. Life Becoming a Landslide's second track "Comfort Comes" isn't up to much but it does suggest that their days of sloganeering might be finally drawing to a close, even if they weren't quite done with their tired use of alliteration. In addition, while third track "Are Mothers Saints" does worringly hint at the Welsh lads going through a Red Hot Chili Peppers phase, it's more considered and philosophical lyrics also point the way forward.

But the title cut has next to nothing going for it. Just another Manic Street Preachers song that sounds just like the one that came before it. While their song titles may have once been a strength — just as they would as they awkwardly moved into their trio years near the end of the decade — by now they had become a signpost for why it's best to avoid them at all costs. "Life Becoming a Landslide": why would I ever need to give it a listen when I already know exactly how it's going to sound?

The Manics always seemed like a band who desperately wished to not to make the mistakes of the groups that came with them, particularly The Clash. Some critics fans have knocked Give 'Em Enough Rope for been far too polished and this was about when there were worries that the so-called 'only band that mattered' were going to sell out. Richey Edwards, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore were well aware of this and made a point that they would never fall victim to the pop/rock machine. Their second album was called Gold Against the Soul for god's sake. Their mostly brilliant first album was then followed by a tepid second release which sounded like they were already running out of material. They had to push on and a good thing too since it resulted in three albums on the bounce at their creative peak — The Holy Bible, Everything Must Go and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours.

With four Singles of the Fortnight/Best New Singles to their credit from just their first two albums, Manic Street Preachers have been well represented in blog. And there may very well be more to come. "A Design for Life", "Kevin Carter", "If You Tolerate This Then Your Children Will Be Next" and "The Everlasting" could all be coming in the months and years ahead (well, except for the fact that I know that at least two of them won't be featured but why spoil the surprise, eh?) Pet Shop Boys and, I suppose, Scritti Politti aside, I tend to get sick of groups who pop up on here this many times and ver Manics are no exception. But in this instance, I'm quite sure I would've been mildly fed up with them at the time as well. All that shouting, all that seriousness, all those predictable tunes. I wasn't about to be pretending it was Wembley Stadium with my air guitar while listening to their stuff; doing Hollywood gossip column for a once-great pop mag doesn't even seem so foul by comparison.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Charlatans: "Can't Get Out of Bed"

In addition to the Manics, Sutherland also approves of the latest from Inspiral Carpets (they were still around in '94?), Red Hot Chili Peppers, Therapy? and The Orb — so you might say he digs his indie. Pop and hip hop acts don't do so well but he also isn't terribly fond of new releases from Soul Asylum and The Charlatans, so I guess not all guitar bands were to his taste. I've always kind of liked Northwich's favorite sons but I will admit that the country-ish "Can't Get Out of Bed" isn't one of their stronger efforts. It took them a long time to shake off the overstated claims that they were just inferior Stone Roses clones but they were beginning to find their way. The fact that ace organist Rob Collins was coming to the end of a spell in prison couldn't have helped their progress. A firm fan favourite but since when was a group's cult following any kind of authority? Like the Manics, they'd soon be back and better than ever.

Manic Street Preachers: "From Despair to Where"

26 May 1993

"James' whispered opening lyrics and strummed guitar mark the polite return of the Manics to the music scene. Then they kick the door down and take the joint over."

— Tony Cross

It wasn't all that long ago that found myself growing sick of writing about The Cure in this space so many times. In the case of their mid-eighties' indie-pop trilogy of UK hits "The Lovecats", "The Caterpillar" and "In Between Days" this wasn't much of a problem since it presented me with a welcome reminder of how good they could be when Robert Smith and whoever he deemed fit to join him were at their best. "Jumping Someone Else's Train" (which, full disclosure, I was in no way obliged to cover since this was pre-Single of the Fortnight era) is a perfectly acceptable early Cure number though not among the true high spots of their goth years. But by the time I got to "A Letter to Elise" I had had my fill of them. It wouldn't have mattered if it had been one of their finest moments (even though it isn't) because I had covered a band I'm not all that into more than enough by that point.

I'm already reaching a similar stage when it comes to Manic Street Preachers. This is now their third time on this blog and I know for a fact that they'll be coming up at least one more time. Because online scans of nineties' issues of Smash Hits are incomplete, I'm dreading the prospect of eventually having to blog about them a fifth, sixth and even seventh time. It actually makes me feel well-disposed to a once great pop mag for going too far down the road of disposable pop because at least it might help curb the numbers of times I have to deal with this band who I did enthused over a little too much the last time they came up. (Granted, I was blogging about a hell of a song so no wonder) My usual indifference is turning into a faint sense of loathing for this lot — a statement which could easily be confused for a Manics' song title.

"Motorcycle Emptiness" had been the first obvious sign that there was far more to these Welsh oiks than met the eye and they used much of second album Gold Against the Soul (I always think 'God Against the Soul' would've been a catchier title) reaffirming this. The intention is there but they are aren't up to the task of repeating what made the most acclaimed single they'd ever release able to imprint itself on seemingly an entire generation of British youths. You want passion? James Dean Bradfield has got it nailed and he's going to hammer it home. You want angst? Lyricists Richey Edwards and Nicky Wire could put pen to paper and make Siouxie Sioux look like Debby Boone, all the while talking at their audience at least as much as they talked to them. You want a powerful indie rock foursome that made no bones of their debt to punk and metal? Oh, their chords could rip your grubby old jean jacket given half a chance. You want subtlety? Look someplace else.

The Manics at their absolute best were always touching. "Motorcycle Emptiness", "La tristesse durera", "A Design for Life", "The Everlasting": these are the four songs of their's that I genuinely care about and I'm not alone in this regard. John Aizlewood's perceptive review of their 2001 album Know Your Enemy points to at least three of these very same tracks ("La tristesse..." being the one possible exception: I don't have the source to consult or provide a link to, I'm just going on memory) as examples of when the group truly was "4REAL". The Q Magazine wit and Lightning Seeds fan also pointed out that they could be their own worst enemies.

Thus, "From Despair to Where", a classic example of how there's a fine line between getting it just right and ballsing it up big time. (Manics are unique in the sense that while I feel largely indifferent to them, I seldom feel non-pulsed by any of their individual songs: either I love them or I have no used for 'em) A rational rock fan might find plenty to enjoy and I would agree they're in there, only they don't mesh well at all. Bradfield can't tone it down, the words are just the sort of thing that a pair of university graduates would come up with while play acting as though they're bedsit anthems for the young and the passion just never lets up.

I wouldn't have made this charge at the time (even though I've never really taken to Manic Street Preachers) but they really do represent the rock and roll con job at its finest. Have guitar, will turn heads. It doesn't matter that much of what they had to say was tosh or had been so poorly communicated as to mean precisely nothing. I used to scoff at Meat Loaf for putting his entire (and considerable) frame into his recordings but how is this Welsh foursome any different? "From Despair to Where"? How about, I don't care!

Critics and fans will sometimes lay into the likes of XTC and Talking Heads for being "too clever by half" but somehow or other Manic Street Preachers have managed to avoid such a charge, particularly in the early, Richey period. No doubt being a blistering old school rock group helps in this regard. That shouty Bradfield voice also plays a significant role. Yet, music that sets itself up to diagnose teenage moodiness is really the ultimate in clever-clever pop. It's easy to laugh at The Clash being the "only band that matters" but the Manics made mattering into all that mattered. Yes, they could do extraordinary things but this probably only convinced them that everything they did could sparkle. They didn't but at least those rare moments of inspiration remain. Let's have some more of them come up on this blog if I'm meant to continue this Manic love fest.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Willie Nelson & Sinead O'Connor: "Don't Give Up"

One of the more forgotten trends of '93 was the duet album. Elton John's Duets sold very well in spite of some poor material and some not great singing partners for old Reg. Frank Sinatra's, also with the highly original title Duets, was also a big success as it made old Blue Eyes relevant with Generation X. Willie Nelson didn't release his own album also called Duets this year but the first half of current release Across the Borderline — with four cuts suggests the thought had crossed his mind. This rendition of the 1986 Top 10 hit for Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush isn't a favourite of Tony Cross and I would agree that Willie Nelson and Sinead O'Connor's voices don't really gel. Possibly a kind gesture of solidarity from one performer at the previous year's Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert (in which a large portion of the Madison Square Garden crowd booed O'Connor the same way they would have greeted Dylan some twenty-five years earlier) to another but a brave attempt at something memorable can't quite cut it. Two outstanding artists but they can't all be winners, can they?

Suede: "Metal Mickey"

16 September 1992 (with further value judgements in place of actual substantive pop critique here)

"I like his jackets, his haircut, the things he says and the fact that he looks like a rent boy from King's Cross. And I like the bags underneath his eyes."

— Richey James (aka Richey Edwards, aka Richey Manic, aka 4REAL)

I like that Richey's concern is for the state of pop. Not rock. Not self-righteous indie nonsense. Pop. 

I like that he clearly didn't bother to listen to any of the thirteen new releases Smash Hits tasked him with evaluating. I sure fancied myself as the type who could write a masterful book report despite never having read anything but it never really worked out for me. Perhaps it was because I tried to act like I had read Timothy Findley's The Wars or Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries when it would have been obvious to my teachers that I had done nothing of the sort. Richey went in a different direction: he makes a series of broad claims about every act and their role in the pop music scene. He appreciates a valuable contribution to pop and has nothing but contempt for anything that demeans it. 

I like that he doesn't seem to mind The Beautiful South. Paul Heaton "looks like a football player" but Richey is big enough to look past this glaring flaw. A positive side effect of him not having played any of the singles is that we're spared Richey's take on "36d" being problematic. I mean it is problematic but I think there's something nice about wanting to know more about a Page 3 model than simply her bust size. Who's her favourite author? What kind of food does she like? Is she a fan of Reg Holdsworth on Corrie or does he infuriate her? (The fact that he infuriates everyone is precisely why he was such a good character but clearly not everyone agreed) Isn't there more to her than a body? So, what's wrong with that?

I like that he points out the "bags" underneath Brett Anderson's eyes. Save for a five day trip to Jakarta in 2008 in which I stayed at a nice hotel and slept as much as I could, I've spent my entire adult life with periorbital puffiness of one size or another. It didn't make me look too bad when I was in my twenties and was just about what might be called handsome but now that I'm in my mid-forties and look more and more like Gene Hackman, they do me no favours. But hey! A few better choices, plenty of wrong ones as well, a drug habit that would be the envy of Lord Byron, a voice elastic enough to front a solid guitar band and I might have been just like Brett. Or Richey. That said, I'm happy with the mediocre life I've led, bags and all.

I like that he's more than willing to take a giant dump on Pearl Jam and Kris Kross. Bloody hell, American music sucked in the nineties. Even traces of it that I could bring myself to listen to seemed to be made by the worst people imaginable. Not the jocks that Kurt Cobain fretted over but the indie jerks who were really just rock classicists and the hip hop fans who were always going on about rap's "message" but not having anything to say themselves.

I like that Suede never really became the group that everyone had them tipped to be. They never became the "future of British music". Come to think of it, why the hell did anyone think so? Predicting the future seems to doom the prediction. I'm sure if anyone had marked Blur or Oasis or The Spice Girls as future saviours they wouldn't have amounted to much. I also like that Richey doesn't bother with any of this crap. Nor does he bother praising "guitar hero" Bernard Butler (difficult to do so when you haven't heard him play) nor the group's overlooked rhythm section. All that matters is Brett's looks and intelligence and I'm not so sure he's wrong.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Boy George: "The Crying Game"

I don't like Richey's claim that George O'Dowd is a "sad old man who doesn't know what he's doing anymore" (even if he wasn't wrong; I mean he didn't have to say it, did he?) nor his description of the Pet Shop Boys as "mak[ing] the worst kind of English music, like when you're walking home from the pub and you're down on your knees staring at a pile of your own sick". I guess he couldn't bring himself to use tried and tested homophobia in knocking Tennant and Lowe, so that's to his credit I suppose. But I call bullshit. Just as Richey's best mate Nicky Wire wished Michael Stipe would die of AIDS, this is just the sort of "shocking" statement made by someone who doesn't want to own up to having been a fan all along. I will never be able to prove it but I am certain he loved the Pet Shops. Not even necessarily for their music but for the same reasons he loved Kylie, ABBA, The Bee Gees, Duran Duran and, yes, Suede: because of what they did for all things pop. But that's okay, I had to be something of a closet Pet Shop Boys fan myself — even if this was thrown out when I made a Behaviour t-shirt in shop class.

Manic Street Preachers: "Motorcycle Emptiness"

27 May 1992 (with the actual Single of the Fortnight here)

"This finally proves that the Manics are much more than simply a punk parody and that they are capable of occasional brilliance. Deserves to be No. 1 for weeks."

— Tom Doyle

"Our manifesto is, 'Don't do it, kids, never get past the age of 13'."

This was the message that Richey Edwards (aka Richey James, aka Richey Manic) communicated to Sylvia Patterson in the 1 April 1992 issue of Smash Hits. It would have been so easy for the songwriter/mediocre guitarist to evoke The Who with his own take on "I hope I die before I get old" but he was acknowledging that he was already cooked at the age of twenty-four. Given what would play out about two-and-a-half years later, this adds weight to Richey's tragic story though it also reinforces his status as an all-time pop one-off.

I've only ridden on motorbikes a handful of times in my life, mostly in Thailand and Indonesia. Given that I'm uncomfortable enough behind the wheel of a car and I even feel nervous on a bicycle, it will surprise no one who knows me even a little that I was a passenger. A very jittery passenger who took no pleasure in the speed and abandon that is supposed to come with being on the back of a hog; my sole wish was to be off these death traps as soon as possible.

With this in mind, I feel I have a worthy perspective on "Motorcycle Emptiness". They may be symbols of freedom to some but in my mind they only provide the freedom for me to kill myself. Of course, this doesn't have that much to do with the song itself beyond it's most basic level but the best pop is meant to be something we can identify with so that's good enough for me. Where I align with Richey, James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore and Nicky Wire is in recognizing the illusion of this supposed freedom people evidently get from gunning it well over the speed limit, recklessly weaving between vehicles, running red lights and riding down sidewalks whenever the mood strikes (this is what I observe motorcyclists doing on a daily basis). One might expect these throwbacks to glam rock, punk and metal to be sympathetic with the biker element but this was a quartet of Welsh lads who went to university and were keen to opine on anything they felt like and hated rock 'n' roll cliches. Like motorbikes.

Tom Doyle expresses some surprise that Manic Street Preachers have something so accomplished in them but if we go back to the Patterson interview, it's clear they were deep individuals who liked to cosplay as moronic rock stars. The piece starts with an anecdote from the Irish Music Awards in which they behaved so boorishly that a rep from their own record label denounced them, the irony of which wasn't lost on them ("They signed us up for loads of money for being what we are and now they expect us to start dressing like them and looking as chronically ugly and boring as them with their crap haircuts and no brains," reckoned an ever perceptive Richey). Their manifesto of kids remaining kids for life free from "wanting things, acquiring things" and the fallacy that "your life will be better if you get a new video game or a new bike, etc, etc".

We look at famous and/or wealthy people and often take pity on them for only caring about their riches and their possessions but this mindset affects many of us living on far more modest means. Richey was probably even being naive in implying that we're done for by the time we hit our teens; kids, too, get obsessed about getting more toys or treats or getting to go to a movie theatre rather than renting a video or having dessert even when they barely touched their dinner. Sure, kids aren't as corrupted as adults but the majority of them are well on their way before they even start going to school.

I'm not the biggest Manics' backer but I will admit that they're strength was in ideas that are seldom broached. Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker are lauded for capturing youthful tedium but the greater achievement is in making a point that transcends the diary entries and school poetry journals. The very idea of "Motorcycle Emptiness" would never have occurred to me at the time and I daresay I wasn't alone in that regard. This is how to become the voice of a generation.

With soaring melodies, crunchy guitars, those subtle strings Doyle alludes to, Moore's powerful drumming and Bradfield's trademark voice you can't quite sing along with, "Motorcycle Emptiness" was quickly identified as a classic and a big step forward for a band who many had been quick to underestimate. They only ever got it right some of the time but when they were on no one could touch them. Manic Street Preachers: easily the best band that I'm not a fan of.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Crowded House: "Four Seasons in One Day"

There were a lot of those bizarre El Nino summers back in the nineties. We'd get afternoon showers at ten in the morning. It could be warm and pleasant one day and then be wet and miserable the next (though it never seemed to go the other way). Songwriters Neil and Tim Finn likely didn't have this in mind, even though it had been written in Melbourne, a city notorious for weather that can throw everything at a person in just a few hours. Crowded House sure had the market cornered when it came to songs about meteorology as this followed "Weather with You" into the UK charts and they even carried it forward somewhat a year later with "Distant Sun". Doyle isn't keen, thinking it sounds like the kind of thing "your long-haired hippy art teacher" would enjoy. (I'll have you know, Tom, that Mr. Coutts had really good taste in music) Granted, "Four Seasons in One Day" isn't one of their bangers but it's nice all the same and reliably good fare from the band you quite like but really ought to love. 

Manic Street Preachers: "Stay Beautiful"

24 July 1991

"To some, this is a tacky attempt to hang their coat on the peg of 70s punk rock, to others they're merely a bargain bin Welsh version of Guns N' Roses. But as long as it's just as tuneful, cantankerous, boisterous, guitar-filled and jolly as this, then who cares?"

— William Shaw

ARE KIDS INTO MANIC STREET PREACHERS

OR ARE THEY HORRIFIED BY THEM?

Hailing from Monmouthshire (it's in Wales, fact fiends), Manic Street Preachers are the latest group of guitar gods set to conquer the charts with their latest single "Stay Beautiful". But we here at Smash Hits haven't the faintest idea quite what to make of them. Aren't they just an old hat rock group? Aren't styles like metal and punk meant for dinosaurs? And who dresses like these four blokes? Bitz has admitted defeat and we have found some youngsters to guide us through a band that is either (a) the future of music, (b) the sort of thing everyone will forget about by the end of the year or (c) somewhere in between a and b. Let's see if they can edify this bunch of old codgers.

Joanne (15), Walton-on-the-Naze

"Ooh, I like this lot. I think I saw them on the telly last month. The singer's dead dishy, ain't he? I'm glad he's not one of those blokes who works out too much and has lots of muscles. I like slim guys. This song's good but I don't think it'll be a hit. I don't think it's pop enough for the charts. If they do some slushy love song then they'll have a hit but I won't like them as much."

Grant (16), London

"They're all right, I suppose. I reckon they're trying not to be clever but they all went to uni so they must know more than they want us to think. I do like what they're about but the records just don't connect with me. It would be nice if they had a laugh from time to time. The best indie bands are those that have a lot of fun when they're playing. I prefer The Wonder Stuff."

Natasha (15), Hull

"I've never heard of them. It's not really my thing but I guess it's all right. You should ask my older brother, he might know about them. They don't shock me though. There's some people in the town square who are much scarier than this bunch. I wish indie bands weren't such snobs. I bet they're always slagging off Kylie but they love miserable groups like the Inspiral Carpets. Indie groups are all the same."

Tracy (11), Poole

"Do you have the new Chesney Hawkes? I got his tape for my birthday. My friend Jane went to see his concert but my mum wouldn't let me go because we had to go visit my nan in Reading. (Bitz puts the Manics on but Tracy isn't paying attention) Chesney has a sister called Keely and she's dead nice too. Did you know that his brother is also his drummer? (Bitz admits that we do know this fact before we direct the conversation towards the band that is playing) Could you turn that down a bit? I want to sing "The One and Only" for you." (Bitz proceeds to turn the Manics up to full volume)

Steve (14), Ambleside

"Is the drummer a girl?"

Francis (18), Leicester

"They sure put a lot of themselves into such empty material, don't they? I mean, some people I know think their lyrics are really good and moving but I think they just put a lot of passion into them. Don't get me wrong, their songs are exciting and I'm sure they're good live, it's just that it's not as profound or radical as they'd like you to think it is. Other people have said this all before and a lot of them have said it better as well. They do have some skill so they might get better. There again, we'll probably have forgotten all about them in a year from now. Not like Ned's Atomic Dustbin, they're built to last!"

~~~~~

A MESS OF EYELINER 'N' SPRAYPAINT!

Those are the tools the Manic Street Preachers use for designing their famous handmade t-shirts. (Well, maybe not so much the eyeliner) And this is your chance to win one! Impress your mates! Be the envy of your neighbourhood playground! Make your granny nervous! Manics James, Richey, Nicky and Sean have each designed a one-of-a-kind shirt that they have kindly donated to your favourite pop mag (ie this one). They won't reveal exactly what will be written on each shirt but they promise it will be something like FASCINATING (a good 'un!) or CHARMING (another winner!) or UNWELL (uh, not so good) or ATROPHY (?????). The band have also promised not to use any naughty language either, much to the relief of grannies the world over.

To win a custom Manics spraypaint shirt, answer the following question: what did Richey carve into his arm as a message to people who questioned him, (a) 4TUNE, (b) 4REAL or (c) 4TOPS. Answers on a Cornflake packet to: Smash Hits Manic T-Shirt Competition, 147 Holkless Rd, Orton Randgate, Peterborough PE2 SNB. Get 'em in by August 19 or you'll have to make your own bloomin' t-shirt!

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Shamen: "Move Any Mountain"

Simon (23), Croydon

"Nah, I don't wanna listen to no Manic Street Peaceniks. Why would you want to play a guitar when you can turn on a synth and let them do all the work. I got a band with me mate Jez. We're called Toe Jam on Toast but we used to be called Blu Tack Soul. Have you heard of us? (No, I don't think we've had the pleasure) We do big beats. I wanna sample some beats but I don't know how to work this sampler thing so I just do the sound of those beats meself, like this: umph, umph, umph, umph, umph, umph (Simon keeps the umph's going for much, much longer). Good, ain't it? My favourite record these days is this one called "Move Any Mountain" by The Shamed Men. It's got some solid beats. Umph, umph, umph... (Oh do stop it!) "I can move, move, move any mountain...": I'm gonna read those words at my wedding some day. (Er, cheers for that Simon. We at Bitz are looking forward to writing about the Toe Jams one day. Might want to give the name a rethink though mate)