In reverse chronological order...
In a matter of minutes a crowd had gathered and within half an hour all #25,000 had gone.
The catch? The results were being secretly filmed for a pop video by the band Mansun to promote their record, Tax Loss.
Clive Fraylich, who saw the incident, said: "All I saw was a guy dressed in a black bomber jacket throwing all this money. It was absolute madness. One guy pushed an old lady as he tried to grab hold of some money."
A spokesman for Parlophone, the band's record company said: "It was a comment on human greed. People were on their way to well-paid jobs yet they still all wanted something for nothing."
by Carole Cadwalladr
In any case, it seemed frustration suddently got to Paul Draper, frontman of British band MANSUN. First off the stage went the beer bottle, then the mic stand, finally one of the guitar monitors. Only after a struggle did staff manage to restrain Draper from clearing the stage of equipment.
But even before Draper, began to trash the stage, things were already looking bad. As the audience waited for MANSUN to appear, the in-house tele screens flickered w/ a selection of what seemed to be its favourite videos. Lenny Kravitz, Smashing Pumpkins.
Yes, maybe sometimes some things are too cool for HongKong to take. The setting at the Hard Rock Cafe might be another proof-- the stage that distanced the performers from audience by serveral metres.
Not that the distance mattered a lot. While a fraction of the audience reacted wildly to the quartet's music, the majority stood rooted to the floor, playing the arms-crossed pedrestrian. Even the opening strains of should-be crowd-stunning tunes like Stripper Vicar and Taxloss failed to ignite the crowd.
The nature of the showcase concert--which was simultaneously broadcast live on radio --has forced the band to trim down their seven-minute epic meanderings into condensed four-min gems. The band pulled out all stops--most of their chart-topping debut ATTACK OF THE GREAT LANTERN was in, including the heavily-rotated WIDE OPEN SPACE and SHE MAKES MY NOSE BLEED, as well as tracks such as DRASTIC STURGON and TAKE IT EASY CHICKEN.
The performance was competent but a bit non-chalant--with drummer Andie the exception with particularly spectacular knack of performing extented drum patterns---but basically everything flowed according to plan. Until the common sense, of course.
by Clarence Tsui
by Oliver Poole
Mansun have seriously short attention spans. Their debut album, a UK No. 1, whizzes from James Bond theme-style opulence to dirty pop to hip hop beats and turntable scratching and lush keyboard sounds. And thats just the first five minutes.
Diverse by design, "Attack Of The Grey Lantern" sounds more like your favorite compilation tape than the work of one band.
Featuring most of the lead tracks from their five EPs tp date makes the album a virtual greatest hits that boasts the panoramic rock of "Wide Open Space" (their first US single), the sonic pop of "She Makes My Nose Bleed", the addictive "Egg Shaped Fred" and the funky rock of "Stripper Vicar" ("should I grass on him, report him to the Cardinal or should I egg him on to turn professional?").
Elsewhere on mighty album tracks like "Mansun's Only Love Song", "Dark Mavis" and "Taxloss" influences run from "The Beatles" to "Tears For Fears" to "Radiohead" and back again, bypassing almost everything exciting that's happened in music.
Self-produced and full of highs and lows, Mansun are all over the place and all the better for it.
by Cameron Adams
Opener The Chad Who Loved Me starts off like some James Bond theme (string section, general lush-ness) before being hijacked into the pop world for a few minutes. Then after a slight return its an electro breakbeat not out of place on a Grandmaster Flash record before the loping grace of Mansun's Only Love Song (their confession not ours) kicks in like a house-trained mule with more strings, strange keyboard effects and turntable scratches. The album hasn't even graced five minutes of your time and already Mansun have become some amazing jukebox cum tardis.
Taxloss, the next single, is the obligatory Beatles reference point but drawn into the 90's rather than the 60's. You, Who Do You Hate? is the first real rock moment, tempered with some acoustic flair. All this and the single hasn't kicked in yet. They start with Wide Open Space, said panoramic rock epic handled with suitable cool. Stripper Vicar mixes cross-dressing and religion in one action-packed pop treat "should I grass on him, report him to the Cardinal or should I egg him on to turn professional?".
Disgusting is of another time, 1986 to be precise, and could have probably swapped its position here for the noticably absent Take It Easy Chicken, another EP highlight. There's two more of those left - She Makes My Nose Bleed mixes sonic pop with more dance flirtations, Egg Shaped Fred is the na-na-na-fuelled singalong that pricked up ears that Mansun might have it in them. On the epic closer Dark Mavis thay expel it in one big operatic burst. Even their hidden track is better than most bands' singles, and thats one of those songs about songs "they lyrics aren't supposed to mean that much they're just a vehicle for a lovely voice", throwaway with a killer tune. But thats Mansun. Hard to pinpoint, easy to love.
by Cameron Adams
Stove is apologetic for his laziness about not getting out of bed to conduct our interview. His excuse is more than pardonable. After an extensive sell out UK tour, the band has gone straight into the studio to lay down some b-sides for the upcoming single, Taxloss. This kind of lifestyle appears to be favoured by the band and has become their method of success. As Stove explains the band has achieved a sort of balance between recording and touring that he feels keeps them from fatigue and always wanting more. "Touring is definitely the best thing, going from hotel to hotel, being in different places. When you are in the studio doing two weeks to record for the Lp you get a bit sick, sort of bored being in the same all the time. You enjoy it but at the end you are ready to get back on the road. Then when you go on the road for a month, towards the end you are probably getting a bit stale too and keen to get into the studio to record new stuff. It is a good balance really, with probably a little bit more favouritism towards the touring side."
It is no surprise that touring would be a favourite within the Mansun camp. Since the band's formation in early 1995 Mansun have received a plethora of glowing reviews to their live shows. With such a high expectation set for a Mansun show I asked Stove if he felt that the band's recent UK tour had met all his own expectations. "Yeah, it was probably a little bit better than I had hoped. Before the album we were playing all bits and pieces from EPs and people are responding a lot better now, with the album out. Since we have released the album we have been playing gigs to 1,000 seater venues, which has been the next step up from the 500 seaters we were doing last year. It has been really good to play with the album now out, the crowd is a lot more responsive to the tracks we now play. We all love playing live, it is the best thing we love doing."
If judging by Mansun's reviews via the internet on the numerous Mansun dedicated pages [I bet she's talking about this site! - Mark Carter] is any measure, the band's live shows are something quite special. As Stove explains, the development of Mansun's live shows was unplanned, yet of significance to the band in terms of forming Mansun's whole identity. "Our style live came naturally. But importantly it is really different from what you hear on the LP. If someone had heard our EPs or the album and then came to see us live, they would really notice the difference and it would be a bit of a shock; it is more aggressive, it is verging on punk rock live, we just sort of go mad. The whole thing about the album or the EPs is that we didn't want to be just another band with another album with ten tracks. If you listen to the album and then go to a gig to hear the same thing there seems little point to it. We want people to come and see something different. You wont be able to recognise the tracks until the lyrics start, and also we link a lot of the track into sort of medleys."
As if being the darlings of the press wasn't enough, Mansun have recently been adorned with several titles including, the British REM and the next Stone Roses (with a bit of Radiohead thrown in for good measure). Ludicrous declarations in the press are nothing new, but no man lives in a vacuum. Mansun are firm in their conviction to ignore media beat ups, yet in their short life as a band they have not escaped completely unscathed.
"I don't really read the press to be honest. Whatever I hear is second hand through friends or parents telling you this and that. It goes over my head really. The REM thing doesn't really bother me, like we got really slagged off when we first got into the press and they are not really interested in the music, just interested in your clothes and your haircut. Once we were seen as having a bit of success they probably thought they had to support us. The press is quite shallow and we don't really take any notice. People think that because we come from up North we belong to a certain stereotype of a character; the lad with trainers, who goes to the pub every night, gets drunk and starts fights. People think thats all we are about but with a guitar. A guitar yob rock band. We are all quite quiet people who had good educations and we are definitely not yobs."
Mansun are far from a band of half witted yobs. In fact the band have achieved considerable admiration and notoriety for maintaining their autonomy when signing their deal with Parlophone. The details of the deal in question specified that the band would not allow a producer to work on their debut album, prefering to do the job themselves. As Stove tells the story, their stand for independence was more of a case of youthful exhuberance than intellect. "We were quite naive when we started out and we weren't sure what a producer did, we are still not sure to be honest. We went into the studio, banged a load of ideas down and it just works. When we signed we didn't want to work with a producer and they (Parlophone) were quite happy with that. They had heard a couple of demos we had done ourselves and they liked them for what they were. We didn't want to use a big producer because he would rub off on us and we would sound like someone else."
As Stove explained, Mansun are all quite eager to visit Australia. He did admit, however, to some trepidation that perhaps our television exports were a reliable measure to judge us by a nation. In an attempt to quell Stove's fears that real Australians were nothing like Kylie and Jason, I explained that in fact I myself had spent my tender years only blocks away from the street where Neighbours was filmed and survived to tell the tale. Stove seemed somewhat relieved by this news and perhaps slightly less inclined to make my acquaintance upon his arrival.
by Kate McMillan
by Finn D. Trembath
by James Delingpole
by Cameron Adams
by Cameron Adams