The Futureproof Cuddling Pop Blog By Paul Pious James Deman Giovanni £rd...: SOME NOTES ON CLUB RICHEY

Current mood: STRANGE
Category: STRANGE Music

OK..

Incase you're unaware as to who and why there is a man with 4REAL cut into his arm as my profile shot for these next few days, I'll fill you in on the background.

The man is Richey Edwards and he was in The Manic Street Prachers until he disappeared leaving only his car nearby the Seven Bridge that connects Wales and England.

Richey was instrumental in the first incarnation of The Manic Street Preachers. It was said that he and Bass player Nicky Wire were the philosophical and lyrical arm of the band. They dealt with the manifestos, the image, the sleeve quotes etc

I've never been exclusively convinced that was so, particularly since it seems (from his most recent album) JDB is more than able to write lyrics..

Anyway. the incident in which Richey carved 4 REAL in his arm happenned at the Norwich Arts Centre. The Manics were playing an early gig to 50 or 60 fans. The NME had heard a bit about their noise and wanted to see what was what. They interviewed Richey and suggested to him that he and the band wasn't 'for real'

Richey went off and returned with 4 REAL carved into his arm...

HERE YOU CAN LISTEN TO THE RESULTANT CONVERSATION IN THE OFFICE AT THE NME AS TO WHETHER THE IMAGE SHOULD BE USED

So what was Club Richey??

Club Richey came about as the result of a loose conversation in the early hours of a November evening. Myself and a friend were discussing how lame and dull music was getting. About how no-one seemed to want to suffer for their music anymore. About how Rock N Roll appeared to be dead as any kind of physical force.

My friend said the last great act of that type would have been Richey carving his arm open...

"Shit" he said "That'll be 10 years ago this May!"

We lived in Norwich at the time. My friend told me it had taken place in Norwich at the Arts Centre.

The next day I called up the Arts Centre and booked the bar for the 10th anniversary and we put on Club Richey..

In the months running up to it, we variously panicked and fretted over what we were doing. Were we glamourising mental illness? Or glorifying something that might be better forgotten? Or simply trying to build our own careers on the back of someone elses misfortune?

Well, whatever and whichever (most likely all 3 to some degree or another), we put the night on. Our stated aim was simply to put on a good commeration, bacause at the time The Manics were flying high and it seemed Richeys role had been forgotten a little...

About 50-60 people turned up (from what we can gather, almost exactly the same number as attended the original gig) We were going to re-enact the whole thing and had a lookalike lined up, but we chickened out of that at the last minute and a hasty cardboard cut out was made by a member of the audience..

We had readings and DJayed proper bleeding rock music and that was basically that..

Of course had myspace have existed then, we'd have drawn much more attention to this at the time, but it didn't and the whole night went more or less un-noticed...

So that was Club Richey...Anyone got any thoughts??