Kinky Machine Going Out With God. I thought about this record for the first time in a light year today because I was thinking of a time I saw, my beloved, Manic Street Preachers on 15 October 1992 at Leeds Polytechnic. The support band were a young group I had never heard of called Kinky Machine, so as I used to in those days, I bought their latest single, 12″ in this case, to see what they were like.
Going Out With God looked the part, the circuit board and composite bike/head/strange device* cover. Indeed live the band looked the part too, all skinny mod-ish and lairy, the skinny singer wore a track suit top and was a bit shouty. They weren’t very good, their songs with a couple minor variations were all a bit samey for me and were just your normal pop/rock songs overlaid with some aggressive mod overtones. Unfortunately, I’m left with exactly the same impression tonight after playing the 12″, nothing at all memorable I’m afraid. One of the B-sides, ‘Counting Down To Zero’ is probably the best track here, a bit slower and more cocksure.
I do want to add my usual caveat here, that this is a far better record than any I’ll ever release and hey, they got up there and did it and I didn’t. I’m the loser.
Now it may come as a bit of a surprise to y’all but I used to keep a diary of gigs I went to, who/when/where and a single line review, here’s theirs from that night :
The other thing I remember from that night over 23 years ago? the singer kept staring at a hot ginger chick who was standing front and centre against the barrier wearing a mesh top and cut-off jean shorts with black tights and a Jack Daniels belt, I mean really staring. Ironically, she was already ‘Going Out With God’ by then anyway … it was the first gig we ever went to together in fact, (the future) Mrs 1537 and I.
606 Down.
PS – The Manic Street Preachers were just spot-on incredible that night, but you probably guessed that bit already.
PPS – Thanks Geoff for making me think of them again.
*from almost long-gone distant memories of my friend’s dad’s bongo mags I think the device in question was called a butterfly(?) and was designed to stimulate a lady’s nether parts, and thus her, into paroxysms of ecstatic lust – personally I always thought it just looked a bit medical at worst and that it would chafe like hell at best – but what do I know? I’m only a man. (I’d just like to point out that thanks to the parental lock I put on my PC (and forgot the password of) I can’t Google this, if you do, don’t tell me, I don’t need to know.