Fantasy Setlists 5th - 6th April

The fantasy selections roll on with two more regular contributors to both the setlists and the top 50s (if twice in a lifetime counts as regular), one of which just happens to be my mother.

Around 7 weeks to go, so still loads of time if you're planning on taking part, but best get some extra "research" in by listening to the back catalogue or these setlists!

Claire @clarahopscotch

1. Me And Stephen Hawking

2. From Despair to Where

3. Futurology

4. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough

5. (It's Not War) Just the End of Love

6. Solitude Sometimes Is

7. This Joke Sport Severed

8. Revol

9. Imperial Bodybags

10. Suicide Alley

11. Dead Martyrs

12. You Love Us

13. This Sullen Welsh Heart (Acoustic)

14. Distant Colours (Acoustic)

15. Some Kind of Nothingness (Acoustic)

16. Little Baby Nothing

17. Archives of Pain

18. Judge Yr'self

19. 30 Year War

20. 4 Ever Delayed

21. Donkeys

22. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

23. Faster

24. Further Away

25. A Design For Life

Jennifer - Mother of @Pyfbrown

1. Motorcycle Emptiness

2. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough

3. From Despair to Where

4. Enola/Alone

5. Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky

6. Gold Against the Soul

7. La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

8. Little Baby Nothing

9. The Girl Who Wanted to be God

10. A Design For Life

11. Be Natural

12. Everything Must Go

13. I Live To Fall Asleep

14. Faster

15. You Stole the Sun From My Heart

16. Send Away the Tigers

17. Kevin Carter

18. The Love of Richard Nixon

19. Further Away

20. Tsunami

21. Donkeys

22. The Second Great Depression

23. The Everlasting

24. Australia

25. Suicide is Painless (Theme From MASH)

Fantasy Setlists 2nd - 3rd April

A couple more fantasy setlists from the last few days to brighten up your Sunday, one of which is clearly going to be the best one *cough* although I may be biased (sorry Nick).

Already we're seeing a few strong, and probably unsurprising, candidates cropping up in a lot of the picks, but still plenty of places up for grabs in the final fan setlist which will be compiled from all the votes cast.

Ian @Pyfbrown

Intro: A Design For Life (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Instrumental Version)

1. People Give In

2. Walk Me to the Bridge

3. Show Me the Wonder

4. Postcards From a Young Man

5. This Joke Sport Severed

6. Imperial Bodybags

7. Empty Souls

8. Found That Soul

9. Tsunami

10. Enola/Alone

11. Archives of Pain

12. Sleepflower

13. Motorcycle Emptiness

14. Suicide Alley

15. This Sullen Welsh Heart (Acoustic)

16. Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky (Acoustic)

17. The Masses Against the Classes

18. Stay Beautiful

19. From Despair to Where

20. Baby Elian

21. Faster

22. This Is Yesterday

23. Motown Junk

24. You Love Us

25. A Design For Life

Outro: Askew Road

Nick Tait @ApolloScream

1. Motorcycle Emptiness
2. So Dead
3. Imperial Bodybags
4. First Republic
5. Found That Soul
6. Judge Yr'self
7. Life Becoming a Landslide
8. Intravenous Agnostic
9. The Masses Against the Classes
10. 30 Year War
11. I Live To Fall Asleep
12. William's Last Words
13. As Holy As The Soil (That Buries Your Skin)
14. Nobody Loved You
15. Ain't Going Down (JDB Solo)
16. I Think I Found It
17. All We Make Is Entertainment
18. Don't Be Evil
19. Stay Beautiful
20. Autumnsong
21. Slash 'N' Burn
22. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough
23. Roses in the Hospital
24. You Love Us
25. A Design For Life

Fantasy Setlists 29th March

It has been a little quiet in terms of setlists since an initial flurry of 12 in three days, so here's the next instalment from a few days ago and another set with a good spread across the various eras.

You're also all cordially invited to the unveiling of my own personal fantasy setlist tomorrow (Thursday) at 8pm on Twitter, where you're welcome to play along with me.  Think of it as a dress rehearsal for when voting has closed, as that will be how the final fan setlist will be announced too, see you there!

Rich Wilkinson @worksop69

1. Sleepflower

2. Revol

3. Prologue to History

4. From Despair to Where

5. Another Invented Disease

6. Found That Soul

7. Of Walking Abortion

8. Symphony of Tourette

9. The Masses Against the Classes

10. Faster

11. Postcards From a Young Man

12. Autumnsong

13. All We Make Is Entertainment

14. Montana/Autumn 78

15. Solitude Sometimes Is

16. In Eternity

17. This is the Day

18. (Feels Like) Heaven

19. Umbrella

20. Suicide is Painless (Theme From MASH)

21. Roses in the Hospital

22. Walk Me To The Bridge

23. PCP

24. No Surface All Feeling

25. A Design For Life

Fantasy Setlists 23rd March

Two more entries takes our total up to 12 now and still loads of people to come currently pondering over their setlists.  Clearly this is important business and can't be rushed.  Top marks for presentation to our first entry this time though, throwing down the gauntlet to anyone else with extra time on their hands at the moment, and with an intro and an outro too!

Feel free to add your own intro and/or outro, they can't be counted towards the final setlist votes but it helps to make your setlist come alive!

Our second participant also had an honourable mentions list for those that got away, I'm sure anyone who has already started knows the feeling!

Mental Jargon @MentalJargon

John Keith @JKgiro85

Fantasy Setlists 22nd March

Another nice round number of 5 fantasy setlists on Sunday took us into double figures already!  So I expect we'll be well on course to blow the total from last time completely out of the water and make us more, er, statistically significant.

A Design For Life is still clearly popular with many people as the immovable set closer, even with the choice of a full back catalogue that particular tradition clearly runs deep.  Although Die in the Summertime also got its turn at the end in one setlist to send everyone out into the streets on a.....high?

And yes, if you send me your setlist in a presentable format I will be lazy and copy and paste it for the blog....weeelllll, saves typing it out.  I am still doing the scoring though, so don't think I'm being THAT lazy.....

Craig Fairlie @CraigFairlie

Ritzy O'Toole @roisinmckeon

Kurt Curtis @KurtMarcECurtis

1. Us Against You
2. Archives of Pain
3. PCP
4. All is Vanity
5. Intravenous Agnostic
6. Sleepflower
7. Judge Yr'self
8. Solitude Sometimes Is
9. The Second Great Depression
10. Journal for Plague Lovers
11. Are Mothers Saints
12. Black Dog on my Shoulder
13. Peeled Apples
14. Imperial Bodybags
15. A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun
16. This Is Yesterday
17. Charles Windsor
18. Motown Junk
19. This Sullen Welsh Heart
20. Donkeys
21. A Song For Departure
22. Let's Go To War
23. Between the Clock and the Bed
24. Rewind the Film
25. Die in the Summertime

Jem @GoonerMetalhead

Mark Cleary @mousecore1976

1. Miss Europa Disco Dancer

2. Ocean Spray

3. 4st 7lb

4. Faster

5. This Is Yesterday

6. Enola/Alone

7. Be Natural

8. Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky

9. Life Becoming a Landslide

10. Found That Soul

11. The Everlasting

12. Tsunami

13. La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

14. Roses in the Hospital

15. Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier

16. My Little Empire

17. Marlon JD

18. Little Baby Nothing

19. Slash 'N' Burn

20. Australia

21. Motown Junk

22. You Love Us

23. Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head

24. Motorcycle Emptiness

25. A Design For Life

Fantasy Setlists 21st March

So here they are, the first batch in the second run of Manics Fantasy setlists, the early birds getting their votes in before everyone else.  And already a pretty wide set of selections, making sure to cover most of the eras in their setlists.  And the first complete fantasy selection so far, with Richard going for an acoustic Proclaimers cover!  I wonder if JDB will have his glasses on for that one......

Kyle @KB2X

Intro - Dreaming a City (in its entirety)

1. Found That Soul

2. Peeled Apples

3. A Design For Life

4. ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart

5. Further Away

6. Drug Drug Druggy

7. Distant Colours

8. Faster

9. Europa Geht Durch Mich

10. Show Me the Wonder

11. Send Away the Tigers

12. If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

13. Can't Take My Eyes Off You (Acoustic)

14. Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier (Acoustic)

15. Stay Beautiful (Acoustic)

16. This Joke Sport Severed (Acoustic)

17. Yes

18. Liverpool Revisited

19. Comfort Comes

20. Condemned to Rock 'N' Roll

21. Your Love Is Not Enough

22. People Give In

23. Suicide is Painless (Theme From MASH)

24. 1985

25. Motorcycle Emptiness

Marc Edison @marcsedison

1. Slash 'N' Burn

2. Jackie Collins Existential Question Time

3. International Blue

4. 4 Ever Delayed

5. Your Love Alone Is Not Enough

6. Motorcycle Emptiness

7. Faster

8. PCP

9. Strip It Down

10. La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)

11. The Girl Who Wanted to be God

12. Donkeys

13. Small Black Flowers That Grow in the Sky

14. Autumnsong

15. All Is Vanity

16. 1985

17. Baby Elian

18. (Feels Like) Heaven

19. Walk Me to the Bridge

20. Sequels of Forgotten Wars

21. We Her Majesty's Prisoners

22. Motown Junk

23. A Design For Life

24. You Love Us

25. Condemned to Rock 'N' Roll

Karen Davies @karenedavies68

Dom @DManto6

1. Motorcycle Emptiness

2. Yes

3. From Despair to Where

4. Faster

5. Kevin Carter

6. Yourself

7. 4 Ever Delayed

8. The Masses Against the Classes

9. The Second Great Depression

10. Suicide is Painless (Theme From MASH) (Acoustic)

11. Stay Beautiful (Acoustic)

12. Builder of Routines (Acoustic)

13. Empty Souls

14. 1985

15. Let's Go To War

16. You Love Us

17. Jackie Collins Existential Question Time

18. Revol

19. Drug Drug Druggy

20. Life Becoming a Landslide

21. The Everlasting

22. International Blue

23. His Last Painting

24. Sleepflower

25. A Design For Life

Richard @RichardE1875

1. The Masses Against the Classes

2. A Song For the Sadness

3. Show Me the Wonder

4. PCP

5. Golden Platitudes

6. A Billion Balconies Facing the Sun

7. Me & Stephen Hawking

8. Autumnsong

9. Imperial Bodybags

10. A Song For Departure

11. To See A Friend In Tears (Acoustic)

12. Sunshine on Leith (Acoustic - Proclaimers cover)

13. The Everlasting

14. You're Tender And You're Tired

15. Elvis Impersonator: Blackpool Pier

16. Everything Must Go

17. Further Away

18. Faster

19. This Is Yesterday

20. Hold Me Like a Heaven

21. From Despair to Where

22. Stay Beautiful

23. You Love Us

24. Yourself

25. Motorcycle Emptiness

Fantasy Setlists Round 2!

Way back in 2014 a small group of Manics fans on Twitter created their own Manics Fantasy Setlist.  Well after 5 years surely it's way past time to revisit that?!  So if you weren't around last time or if you want another go, or even if you just want to take out that one song from last time that you're not as keen on now and replace it with Vivian, this is the place for you.


The Rules!
So, what if you were in charge of the setlist for a Manic Street Preachers gig?  Which songs would you pick?  A greatest hits set maybe, a whole set of songs they never play live, covers, B-sides, all of the above?  For this "chart" of sorts YOU are in charge!!

Select 25 different songs of your choice. This may contain ANY song the Manics have ever recorded or played live.
If you wish to select a fantasy cover that they have never ever played in any form but you would like them to, you may (however, in terms of the overall fan setlist, bear in mind this is highly unlikely to be selected by anyone else!).
With the above in mind, James or Nicky solo songs are valid entries if you would like to see the full band play them.
It doesn't HAVE to be your favourite 25 songs.  Some may not work as well live or you may just want to see certain songs played more than others, the choice is yours.
The order of the songs ideally will be how you want your gig to flow, however the order may not be important to you (see scoring for the effect of ordering).
You may specify that a song is included in a solo/acoustic section if you wish (see scoring for the effects of this).
As an additional option, in true Manics style, you may of course add your own setlist quote.


Scoring (for the overall fan setlist compiled from all of your entries)
No weighting will be applied to songs, each selection will count as 1 vote.
If you specified a song as solo/acoustic this counts against all votes for that song (i.e. there aren't separate entries for full band/solo songs).
For the 25 songs with the most votes, an average placing in the set will be calculated based on the order of your selections so that the final 25 is in the optimal order as decided by you.
If any of the top 25 entries has more votes as a solo/acoustic song than with the full band it will appear in the final set as solo/acoustic.


Submitting your Entry
Once you have your 25 selections, participants are encouraged to share their setlist (like with the top 50s) on Twitter for a lively debate with your followers!!  If you do this, let me know @Pyfbrown so that I can take a look and register your votes.  Each entry will go up on this blog with your Twitter name for anyone that may miss it to study and critique!!  Note: if you came across this blog through a site other than Twitter I will include another name as appropriate.

Some people last time even got extra creative and made their own actual setlist and posted a picture of that instead, I know there will be plenty of creative people out there who will have their own ideas about how they want to go about it.  But, however that may be, make sure you tag me @Pyfbrown so that I can register the votes towards the final setlist.


If you would rather blog your own setlist or just send it by email without counting down on Twitter in this way that's fine too, contact me to arrange this at the time.


The deadline for entries to be considered for the overall fans' setlist is Sunday 31st May 2020. Happy setlisting!!