Manic Street Preachers - Street Preaching (1996)

It's been five years now since my trip to London, but I remember most of it like it was only yesterday. The buzz on the street was for a band that many were calling a cross between the Sex Pistols and the Clash. The British music media was raising a clamor, as well, with such stiff-lipped rock & roll stalwarts as New Music Express and Melody Maker waxing ecstatic over the band. Intrigued, I spent most of that week trying to hunt down the handful of singles released at that time by the Manic Street Preachers.

Half a decade later, the Manic Street Preachers are one of rock's great "might have beens." Hugely successful in the U.K., throughout Europe and Japan, their blend of hardcore punk and British pop – or "popcore" as my former colleague Jesse Garon has termed it – never quite caught on in the United States beyond a small cult audience. Just as their American record company was about to release their third album, titled The Holy Bible, guitarist Richey James disappeared. Vanished, gone, dropped off the face of the planet entirely. That was a year or so ago and to the best of my knowledge, he's yet to be found.

'Tis a shame, actually, given that there seems to be a minor Brit-pop fever spreading stateside what with bands like Oasis, Pulp and Blur catching on, commercially, at different levels. Had their third album not been shelved by Epic, who's to say what MSP might have achieved? For fans of the band, there exists a handful of live discs from the band's short-lived career. Street Preaching, on Italy's Kiss The Stone (or KTS) bootleg label, is a fine documentation of MSP in a performance atmosphere. Culled from 1992 tours of Europe and Japan in support of Generation Terrorists, the band's debut, Street Preaching includes many of the band's early English hits, cuts like "You Love Us," "Crucifix Kiss," "Stay Beautiful" and "Slash And Burn." A few songs are included twice ("You Love Us" three times!), represented in slightly varying forms from different shows.

The performances captured on Street Preaching may or may not be typical MSP. Never having seen them myself, I can't say for certain. This seventy-minute disc does a fine job of showcasing the band's electric appeal, however. Vocalist James Dean Bradfield's charismatic delivery mesmerizes the various audiences while James' guitar burns and blisters through every song. Bradfield's between song patter is keep to a minimum, what is presented illustrates a swaggering, confident rock & roll frontman. Given another shot, I feel that the Manic Street Preachers could have been a big band in the U.S. Instead we've got Street Preaching, a musical snapshot freezing the band forever in time. (KTS Records - bootleg)

Rage Against The Machine - Who's On First? (1996)

Rage Against The Machine's debut album literally exploded onto the American musical landscape, its energetic hybrid of hard rock, molten metal riffs and rap-inspired vocals as deadly as a gutshot, as powerful as a police officer's nightstick to the head. RATM are unapologetically political, musically radical and overall a great band to see live.

A favorite among tape traders and bootleggers, there are a number of RATM performances circulating among the collectors community. One of the better collections, taken from the band's 1993 U.S. tour, is Who's On First?, released by the Hawk bootleg label in Italy. The songs compiled on Who's On First? represent some of the band's better performances, versions of "Bombtrack," "Bullet In The Head" and "Killing In The Name" offering extremely energetic musical and vocal gymnastics. Zach de la Rocha's spoken rendition of Alan Ginsburg's "How To Be Played On A Jukebox" is particularly potent, tying together the FBI, CIA and the Mafia in the world drug trade, fighting against Democracy in Vietnam and elsewhere under the aegis of multi-national corporate capitalism. Underscored by darkly threatening instrumentation, it is a fiercely venomous rendering of the song.

Altogether, Who's On First? runs nearly fifty minutes in length, offering a fine live set of Rage Against The Machine's most popular songs. With the band's recently-released Evil Empire tracking quite well on the charts, a summer tour and a handful of guest appearances at Lollapalooza, Rage Against The Machine will continue to increase its fan base with an incredibly monstrous live persona. Until the inevitable live recordings from their upcoming 1996 tour start to appear, I'd heartily recommend Who's On First? to the band's rabid fans. (Hawk Records - bootleg)