I often write on here about records that hugely significant to me, but arguably none more-so than this 7" by the Manic Street Preachers (although it'd be wrong to not acknowledge the importance of Bitter Sweet Symphony and California Burritos at this point too). In fact, I honestly feel that this record played such a huge part in making me who I am now, I'm not sure where to start. With that mind, I'll start at the beginning.
I was 14 when the Manics released If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and shortly afterwards for my 15th birthday my parents bought me a copy of their new album This is My Truth Tell Me Yours. I was just getting into proper music and so I lapped the album up (it was the second album I owned myself, having saved up to buy Urban Hymns a year before). I knew nothing about the band at that point, but wanted to them to be my new favourite band and set about finding out as much as I could; I bought the other four albums they'd released and read books about them. They had everything you could want from a band when you're a teenager - a story of four friends starting a band, an image, a punk attitude and a very dramatic past. I loved all five albums and spent hours discussing the merits of each.
By the turn of the millennium, I'd listened to their albums countless times and needed to hear more of their songs. My goal was to pick up a copy of Suicide is Painless, probably because it was a single I hadn't heard yet but wasn't likely to be as expensive as Motown Junk. Somehow I ended up going to a record fair in Southampton Guildhall one Saturday morning (I think my friend's dad used to go and so we went with him, maybe). Whilst my search for Suicide is Painless wasn't successful (and wouldn't be for a few years), I did stumble across a slightly beaten copy of Motorcycle Emptiness for £3, which I bought along with a copy of Superunknown by Soundgarden on cd. I got home and immediately put the record my parents' turntable.
Of course I knew the a-side very well having heard it on their sprawling debut Generation Terrorists, and I knew it was a huge single. I'd probably also seen the video at that point. Already it felt pretty nice to have this little slice of history in my hands, a copy of one of their best songs on a 7" record that someone else had bought eight whole years beforehand. Already I felt like my £3 was spent well, but the few minutes of music on the b-side were to be the thing that really changed my life.
On the flip-side was Bored Out of My Mind, this beautiful acoustic song that sounded nothing like the other early songs. It was undeniably the Manics, but hidden away was a side of them I was entirely unaware of and it felt like a secret between the band and the people who'd bought the single (the subtitle of the b-sides album always struck me as very appropriate). And on top of that, it was a song I hadn't heard. After listening to their albums over and over again, it was incredible to hear a song that was new, or at least new to me. That was really the life-changing part - there were more songs by this band I adored and they were out there for me to hear if I wanted to find them, kept away in second hand record stores.
From that day I set about finding as many new Manics songs as I could, buying 7"s and 12"s and cds with all the money I could scramble together. There was definitely a point in time when I had every song on at least one format (except UK Channel Boredom - I'm very excited for the Generation Terrorist 20th anniversary boxset), although my Manics collection has grown some holes in recent years. I'm certain that hearing Bored Out of My Mind made me the record collector I am today. Maybe, if the song hadn't been quite so brilliant, or if it'd just been a live recording or a remix, I wouldn't have been so moved by it and I'd just be a guy in his twenties with a handful of cds and an unorganised iTunes full of downloaded music. Instead, I've spent more hours looking through boxes of records in shops around the world than I care to imagine, and I love it. It's a huge part of who I am, and this blog exists solely because of it, not to mention the friendships formed and places visited from a love of vinyl.
I know it might be a bit much to put all that significance into one twenty-year-old, 3-minute song, but I do and it makes me love the song even more.
Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton Guildhall
When: 24/06/00
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
