Does melancholy music sometimes make you happy?

@Burnley123 excellent band could always late and discovering the Manic Street Preachers and I never taught them live which is unforgivable but I did see the Smiths twice and I was a huge Smith's fan. Morris use a bit of a twat but he did write some brilliant songs and Johnny Marr is one of my favourite guitar players of all time. Neil Finn 6 simply put it play my Johnny has a beautiful way around the fretboard. ☺

@Burnley123 another brilliant Manchester band is the chameleons who again are criminally underrated as are the blue aeroplanes. And yes I know they're from Bristol. Hehe

@NigelDoes I was [i]relatively[/i] late to the Manics. I discovered them as a fifteen-year-old when they made it big during the design for life era. The more I heard about them, the more they intrigued me and the story of the band was always at least as interesting as the music. So I got into their back catalogue, read the biographies of the band, saw them live a few times, read books that they quoted from... I was an intelligent outsider with leftwing politics so they were probably the perfect band for me LOL.

@NigelDoes I haven't actually heard of those bands. If you are interested in Manchester Music though, Manchester England by Dave Haslam is great. It really captures the place too.

@Burnley123 I can definitely see why they would be the perfect man for you based on your very well-thought-out politically flavoured posts and threads here.😉

@Burnley123 Ta. Never heard of Dave Haslam but I will definitely check him out. 👌👍

@NigelDoes LOL. I didn't think namechecking them would shock anyone in the know that much. Yesterday I met Owen Jones. He's Britain's biggest left-wing journalist and has about a million Twitter followers. He's also in his 30s and his favourite band growing up was The Manics. 🤣

Yeah well, I related to them on a personal level. It was the time after Thatcher and when the cool people thought we'd reached the end of history with New Labour. Melancholia and left politics were a logical mix in that period.

Also interesting about the Manics is their story of personal tragedy. Their early stuff was really intense, especially the Holy Bible. The HB is one of the best alternative rock records of that or any other era. After Richey committed suicide (he must be dead because we would have heard something like that) they did Everything Must go which was really powerful in its themes of renewal and moving on past troubled times. The band and their music seemed to age (and mature) by a decade in the eighteen months between the records.