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Rating: At sunset in Canary Wharf, alienation is for sale for a few pounds: financiers just out of the towering skyscrapers hit the streets to have a beer with their colleagues, jacket and tie. You see them between the grey of the asphalt and the Thames, which now has the cement color of the sky. The city pulses from afar: here, E 14, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse protect like hens. Getting drunk among them, in good dress, makes the financiers feel like a class. We glide like shadows towards the pier: it is from here that we take the boat to the Millennium Dome, moved further east across the river.
The Millennium Dome, or The O2, is an entire city packed into one square kilometre: the enormous white tent is crowned by tall structures that resemble those citronella sticks you stick into the ground during summer fairs. Either I'm a visionary, or there are mosquitoes here like helicopters. Inside, there are restaurants, cinemas, nightclubs, clothing stores, even an ice skating rink. If we don't consume, Canary Wharf's financiers won't get drunk with their good clothes anymore. A beer might suffice.
Tonight there's the NME awards party. I, who read a copy of NME in '94, am here for the Manic Street Preachers, and that's enough for me, and the DJ playing a Wombats song every ten minutes gives me nothing more than a vague sense of attachment to Toto Cotugno. That the Manics' performance is preceded by those, shorter, of The Cribs, Klaxons, Bloc Party and Kaiser Chiefs, is at least stimulating.
The O2 is invaded by kids. They are all dressed à la Klaxons, with hoodies full of patterns inspired by 80s and 90s video games. It feels like being inside an Amiga, a Commodore 64, and everything is pimples and colorful triangles, with a pervasive smell of adolescence.
One of the things that stand out inside the O2 is that the ratio of boys' to girls' bathrooms is one to five. Since the male, even with some advantages, is a urinating animal, and considering that tonight the male population predominates, it follows that the beer-filled male has to queue to pee. Amen.
When the Cribs start, it's seven on the dot. There will be two thousand people in the arena, no more. They will reach five/six thousand around half-past nine. I only knew the Cribs by name, and I don't regret my superficiality. They are a triumph of British rock, full of "na na na" and "la la la". Evidently, they don't have much to say. Half an hour, thank you and goodbye.
The Klaxons, all in black, look like a cross between samurai and garbage bags. The kids go wild. In the phosphorescent junk shop on the ground floor, they bought bars to imitate the "It's Not Over Yet" video, and now they brandish and wave them, but they do nothing but send their adolescent aroma towards us, perched in the last rows above. But a handful of songs, a minimum reason, the Klaxons have it: "Magic" and "It's Not Over Yet", blasted to the max, do not make me regret the Sanremo episode I'm missing.
The Bloc Party, third, disappoint the part of me that was honestly passionate about "Silent Alarm". They don't find a suitable sound for the arena format, and they lose the sounds like balloons slipped from hand. The guitars of "Helicopter" and "Banquet" don't scratch, "This Modern Love" sounds confused. In compensation, they seem to have realized they've made a terrible second album: they only play "The Prayer, Waiting for the 7:18 and Hunting For Witches", sparing the other dull litanies. They try to make up for the weak performance with pyrotechnics, bangs, flames, smokes, and other scenic amenities, but only their underage fans buy it.
Better, in proportion, the Kaiser Chiefs. Beyond the unjustified protagonistic antics of the singer, who spends half the concert being carried and groped by the audience, it must be said that the five find a good sound balance, and manage to make their pieces much more aggressive (always cheekily pop) without falling into an indistinct magma. They play the hits ("Everyday I Love You Less And Less", "Oh My God", "I Predict A Riot", "The Angry Mob") and a couple of unreleased tracks. Even here, at the end of the fair: more first album than second.
At ten, finally, here are the Manics. Awaited for fifteen years. The feeling is that by now they are a monument, at least here. The hope is that they haven't already said everything. On record, alas, I fear so. But live is another story. James Dean Bradfield uses the word fucking like an old Veneto would swear. It's not a filler: it's a filter through which to view the world. Nicky Wire is dressed in a white miniskirt with purple flowers and long white boots. Sean Moore is not visible, but he's there. There's also a support guitarist. They start with "The Masses Against The Classes", one of the most political pieces, the anthem to unite the inc(k)ensed fans. Yes, it's true, the pro-Castro Manics are playing at the NME awards. Problems, if any, theirs.
This is the evening of successes. The second piece is "Motorcycle Emptiness", and it is a long emotion: Bradfield's guitar works as in '92 when the Klaxonites weren't even born. Pearl of the evening. The latest album is represented with three tracks ("Autumnsong", "Send Away The Tigers", "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough", with Nina Persson replaced by any blonde), the two previous are filed. It especially draws from the past. My choirs must reach the stage during "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next", "You Stole The Sun From My Heart", "Everything Must Go". Even further back: "You Love Us", "Faster". "Motown Junk" is for Richey James. "A Design For Life", in closing, is a choir of 6000 people, Klaxonites included.
The Manics are a monument. Even if they then play "Umbrella" in a rock version like Vanilla Sky, calling it the "best (fucking) song of the last (fucking) year". You forgive them. London forgives. Canary Wharf hasn't heard, with the lights of the buildings still on. Natwest, Barclays, Midlands, and Lloyds watch over: the Manics are a monument also thanks to them.
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