SOUNDTRACK: MANIC STREET PREACHERS-“Die in the Summertime” (1994).
I really liked the Manic Street Preachers in the late 90s. Perhaps ironically, I learned about them after the strange disappearance of lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards, and really liked the first few albums that they put out without him. I went back and listened to their older stuff later, but I still prefer Everything Must Go.
Nevertheless, The Holy Bible (where this song comes from) is a pretty great album. And “Die in the Summertime” is really cool. It opens with tribal drums and a nifty almost Middle Eastern sounding guitar riff. When it kicks in after a brief intro, it’s more raw and heavy than their later stuff–was that Edwards’ influence?
I listened to this song a few times and will clearly have to dig out The Holy Bible for another listen.
Obviously Edwards looms over the band and clearly looms over this story.
The guitarist vanished on 1 February 1995 and is widely presumed to have taken his own life, but a body was never found and there is no definitive proof that he died by suicide.
[READ: May 31, 2021] The Forevers
This was a fairly simple (and familiar) story, but it was told in a very interesting way.
Ten years ago seven friends (or maybe not friends exactly) made a pact. They performed a ritual asking for fame and fortune. And it worked. They have all become very successful.
Each chapter has a title from a song. The first is “Die in the Summertime” (3:07) [by Manic Street Preachers].
Ten years later we cut to Jamie Ashby–a strung out superstar singer (who looks an awful lot like the Irish guy from Lost, who was also a strung out rock star). He is in a bad way.
Then we meet Daisy Cates. She is a successful model, But the person who takes her home does not have good intentions for her.
I liked the way their two stories paralleled on the same page with a different background wash of color.
Jamie does a show and when an old geezer says he’s washed up, he punches the guy and makes tabloid headlines, We find out in the next chapter that the geezer was Robert Plant–ha!
Chapter 2 is “The Drugs Don’t Work” (5:05) [by The Verve]. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: COLDPLAY-Viva la Vida(2008). 
I have a very vivid memory of listening to Coldplay for the first time. I was driving a very annoying person to her revolting house in upstate New York. I was delighted to be getting her out of my life, and I was listening to Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes. I knew “Yellow” from either the radio or from some Britpop fascination of mine. AT the time, Coldplay were considered the next Travis, whose “Why Does It Always Rain on Me” had just soared up the charts. “Yellow” was described as Travis-like and something of a rip-off (a claim thrown at Coldplay to this day).