Pixies, Idles, Manic Street Preachers and the returned joy of ‘being there’
We’ve all been inside too long — get out and do stuff
Word & pics: Gavn Allen
The man in the photograph above is Dom. At least I think he said Dom - Idles were superloud and my ears were ringing.
Dom stood in front of me at The Great Hall on Friday night and, every 10 mins or so he’d put his hands to his head in disbelief. I could see he was having a moment. And then another. And then another.
A few hours before I had a moment too. At 7.37pm Pixes played This Monkey’s Gone To Heaven and I couldn’t quite take it in. I know the exact time because I’d looked at my phone to work out how long I had left to enjoy their hour-long set.
I’m not a huge Pixies fan — not because I don’t like them, they’re great and were on superb form tonight — but sometimes bands just don’t quite fit into your life’s timeline like others do. You don’t need to be a Pixies Stan superfan though.
Pixies songs come to you by osmosis. Their music is just in the ether, floating around in your head rent-free. Idles frontman Joe Talbot later called them “a band most bands are influenced by” and that’s what influence is, something that affects your thinking even if you’re not quite aware of it.
When the ‘ooo-wooo’ backing vocal and guitar twangle of Where Is My Mind coalesced it was transportational. Memories suddenly came to me. Emotions too. This is a soundtrack of life’s moments. The last time I’d seen Pixies was at my first Reading Festival about 20 years ago. I couldn’t appreciate them then, largely due to downing a litre of White Russian. Since then I’ve grown up (a bit) and I have wanted too see them again. I never thought I’d get the chance. And then the chance came. So I took it.
All the 6 Music Festival reviews:
Bloc Party: A banquet of brilliance
Little Simz: It’s her moment
Ibeyi, Porij and Obongjayar: Pure rhythm
Panic Shack : The girl gang you’ve been waiting for
It was the same at Clwb Ifor Bach the previous night when, absurdly, the Manic Street Preachers played their first ever gig at the venue 30 years after releasing their debut album Generation Terrorists. It was overwhelming to hear Design For Life played in the venue I’ve so often indie-disco-danced to it while bellowing the lyrics into the void of noise you only get from really loud speakers in clubs. Ditto Motorcylce Emptiness. Ditto You Love Us. God, I love that band. I’ve seen them play a lot of times at a lot of venues. Over the last two years while stuck inside I wasn’t sure I’d ever see them play again.
Idles too. They’re the last band I got majorly obsessed with. I did them to death live and on record for about four years. I’d had enough of them by that point and let them go off and become world-slayers. I didn’t think I needed to see their instrumental brutalism again. But there they were. And I did need it.
Why?
I didn’t listen to much music in lockdown. It didn’t seem right somehow. Music for me is mostly fun thesedays; it’s about feeling ‘up’, being communal, or shutting out the crowd with my eyes closed just really feeling that one song. I didn’t feel ‘up’ in lockdown and there were no crowds to get lost in, so I rarely pressed play on anything.
On one of my first nights out with my friends after the last lockdown, I got pretty spannered and emotion overwhelmed me. I stood at the bottom of the stairs to the toilets in The Glassworks listening to Design For Life and drowned my trainers with tears. I couldn’t turn off the tap. They had to come out. I felt, at that moment, that I could relax and release some of it. I hadn’t felt able to do that before. People kindly asked if I was ok and I wailed at them, ‘I’m just so happy to be here’. It was weirder for them than it was for me. I knew I needed it.
We all need it. So much complex emotion has been piling up inside us for so long and it needs to be released.
These communal moments carry a weight for me now that they never did before the Spring of 2020. My appreciation of seeing simple things happening in front of me is so much greater. I think lockdown has made me a happier person in many ways. Seeing bands again is a privilege.
At the end of the gig I tapped Dom on the shoulder and said ‘You enjoyed that didn’t you’. Dom casually put his hand in his pocket, pulled out the hearing aid he didn’t need because Idles were so fucking loud, and said, “Yeah, I really did.”
We’ve all been inside too long. Get out there. Even if you are knackered, even if you’ve seen the band a million times before. Even if you’ve got work early in the morning. Go - because you’ll love it once you’re there and the experience might just blow your mind.
Don’t waste your money on things, invest in experiences. They live inside you forever.
