I've wanted to see the Manics live for years but after fulfilling this mini-dream last night, I left the concert slightly disappointed. The choice of venue didn't help of course - it's hard to generate much excitement or intimacy at the inhospitable Wembley Arena where you find yourself craning your neck and inevitably drifting your sight towards the video screens (showing an excellent mix of the live music and the band's promo videos) rather than the small figures of the band themselves. It's a bit like watching a gig on television at home without the comfort of an armchair and a nice cup of tea.

Although the band played well and put everything into the gig, the choice of material was slightly disappointing as well. This tour is to promote the Manics' Forever Delayed singles compilation but they played far too many of the minor singles from their patchy first two albums (Roses In The Hospital, Life Becoming A Landslide, Motown Junk and more) nothing from Know Your Enemy (not even the moving Ocean Spray) and nothing from their superb, frightening Holy Bible LP except Faster. Still they did play all four singles from Everything Must Go and the underrated This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next and the melancholy but uplifting Everlasting were highlights from the latter LP whilst the closing socialist anthem A Design For Life from the former has got to be one of the best songs of the last 10 years - especially for the opening line Libraries gave us power!

Other highlights included the non-album single Theme From M.A.S.H (Suicide Is Painless), a beautifully melodic and particularly poignant song given the band's history as well as the opening anthemic Motorcycle Emptiness - one of the early Manics singles which definitely did deserve its place in the set.

Special support for the gig was by Ian Brown. I'm not a fan of Brown's music but his set did have its moments. His band are excellent musicians with his guitarist playing some fine lead parts when he was allowed to shine. It was also nice to see a tabla player in the band whose work came nicely through the mix at times despite playing in an unsympathetic venue for such intimate instruments.

It's quite hard to categorise Brown's music - the nearest I could get was a more cosmic Happy Mondays without the fluid, melodic instrumental work which often supported Shaun Ryder's similar semi-spoken, often out-of-tune vocals. Yes, Brown's singing was its usual wayward self though, apart from an abysmal cover of Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, this didnt matter too much. The waywardness of his material almost added an interest to his performance - the headliners by contrast played the songs very similar (too similar?) to the recorded versions with James Dean Bradfield's faultless singing and excellent guitar work being particularly impressive. This is of course a quite remarkable and praiseworthy achievement though a few more variations to the recorded versions would have added more interest.

All in all then, it was worth going to see the Manics but not the fantastic experience I was hoping for. They have recently added an extra gig at Brixton Academy tonight - I wish I had held back and snapped up tickets for this rather than being so on the case to get my tickets for Wembley Arena!

8.12.02