Manic Street Preachers. Cardiff.  21st May 2011. 

I love this band SO MUCH!

And they were utterly fantastic. 23 songs - a good mix from all the albums (though nothing from Journal For Plague Lovers), including a couple of more 'obscure' songs that the drunk idiots causing chaos in the mosh pit obviously didn't recognise.  Ha!

Points worth noting:

• James doing Can't Take My Eyes Off You with a towel on his head
• getting the Welsh national anthemn as an intro to Motown Junk
• Nicky reappeared wearing an obscenely short Welsh flag skirt (the front row got an eye full when he was jumping about doing high kicks, that's for sure!)
• I was 6 or 7 rows from the front, in the thick of it. Apart from one strange moment near the end (during Masses.., perhaps?) where the pit kind of just... vanished, leaving us with loads of space
• A Design For Life (and thus the gig) ended with confetti cannons showering us in red, white and green confetti. 
  This is a lot more amazing than it may sound

Support was The Joy Formidable, who were very good.  I liked how they had an extra drum on stage apparently just so they could kick it around a bit at the end, hehe.

tags: music