So when I was thinking about doing this episode on the Manic Street Preachers, I was reminded

of reading the comments of an American philosophy professor in an introduction to a collection

of critical essays on Ein Rand, in which he remarked that although the book was highly critical of

Rand, that even to take her up as a sort of suitable subject for scholarly inquiry was

potentially damaging to his reputation, because except for sort of libertarian cranks,

she's absolutely not regarded as a serious thinker in any reputable philosophy department.

And, you know, before anyone gets upset, I'm not comparing the Max Street Preachers to Irond,

but they are, you know, as you write about in your article, they're a bit of an embarrassing

band to like. You know, you don't gain any cred by talking about them or expressing any liking

for their music. There's a lot of music writers who express a great deal of disdain. Simon Reynolds, and I think you mentioned this in the article, described the Manix as not having a musical bone in their body. And when it comes to the piece that you wrote, partly for that, you know, sense of sort of embarrassment, although I knew that, like myself, you'd been a teenage Ralex fan,

I was pretty surprised to see the piece in The New Left Review. So I guess my first question is,

you know, why now? The most honest answer to your question is middle age. And I guess something

that comes with that, which is, I think as one gets older, and as kind of music's obviously

could have consumed in a different way now,

there's a kind of thinking a lot about what pop music as it sort of existed,

and it's sort of supposedly golden years, particularly in the UK, what it actually was.

Like what was this thing, you know, connected with sort of clothes and writing and the press and the media and ideologies

and so forth from the way that music was tied to that?

What actually was this thing?

This thing where you would assess music not necessarily by the degree to which it slaps,

but by the degree to which it tries to do something

in wider society using music as the tool for that thing. And the man looks really interesting

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