Nicky Wire

Nicholas Allen Jones (born 20 January 1969), known as Nicky Wire, is the lyricist, bassist and occasional vocalist with the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers.

Biography

Early life

Born Nicholas Allen Jones in Blackwood,Wales, Wire is the younger brother of poet and author Patrick Jones. He attended Oakdale Comprehensive School with James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore and Richey Edwards. Wire excelled at football and was captain of the Welsh national schoolboys' team aged 14. Although he was offered a trial at both Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal football clubs, back and knee problems brought his football career to an end. Wire took A-levels in politics and law. He later attended Portsmouth Polytechnic, and after several months transferred to the University of Wales Swansea, starting his course a year after Edwards. He graduated with a Lower Second-Class Honours degree in Politics, which has led him to comment that he may have pursued a career in the diplomatic service or the Foreign Office.

Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers are a rock band formed in 1986 in Blackwood, Wales and consisting of James Dean Bradfield (lead vocals, lead guitar), Nicky Wire (bass guitar, lyrics) and Sean Moore (drums, percussion). They are often colloquially known as "The Manics." After the release of their first single, "Suicide Alley", Richey Edwards joined the band as co-lyricist and rhythm guitarist. The band proclaimed their debut album Generation Terrorists would be the "greatest rock album ever" and hoped to sell sixteen million copies around the world, "from Bangkok to Senegal", after which they would split up. Despite the album's failure to meet this level of success, the band carried on with their career.

The group later became a trio when Edwards disappeared on 1 February 1995. Bradfield, Moore and Wire went on to gain critical and commercial success. The band have released twelve albums and three compilations, Forever Delayed, Lipstick Traces (A Secret History of Manic Street Preachers) and National Treasures – The Complete Singles. Their early combination of androgynous glam imagery, critical social lyrics about "culture, alienation, boredom and despair" and a furious rock sound gained them a loyal following over the years and assured them a cult status. The band's later albums retained a leftist politicisation and intellectual lyrical style while adopting a broader alternative rock sound. To date, they have sold more than 10 million albums worldwide.

Wire

A wire is a single, usually cylindrical, flexible strand or rod of metal. Wires are used to bear mechanical loads or electricity and telecommunications signals. Wire is commonly formed by drawing the metal through a hole in a die or draw plate. Wire gauges come in various standard sizes, as expressed in terms of a gauge number. The term wire is also used more loosely to refer to a bundle of such strands, as in 'multistranded wire', which is more correctly termed a wire rope in mechanics, or a cable in electricity.

Wire comes in solid core, stranded, or braided forms. Although usually circular in cross-section, wire can be made in square, hexagonal, flattened rectangular, or other cross-sections, either for decorative purposes, or for technical purposes such as high-efficiency voice coils in loudspeakers. Edge-woundcoil springs, such as the Slinky toy, are made of special flattened wire.

History

In antiquity, jewelry often contains, in the form of chains and applied decoration, large amounts of wire that is accurately made and which must have been produced by some efficient, if not technically advanced, means. In some cases, strips cut from metal sheet were made into wire by pulling them through perforations in stone beads. This causes the strips to fold round on themselves to form thin tubes. This strip drawing technique was in use in Egypt by the 2nd Dynasty. From the middle of the 2nd millennium BC most of the gold wires in jewellery are characterised by seam lines that follow a spiral path along the wire. Such twisted strips can be converted into solid round wires by rolling them between flat surfaces or the strip wire drawing method. The strip twist wire manufacturing method was superseded by drawing in the ancient Old World sometime between about the 8th and 10th centuries AD. There is some evidence for the use of drawing further East prior to this period.

Greatest hits album

A greatest hits album, sometimes called a "best of" album or a catalog album, is a compilation of songs by a particular artist or band. Most often the track list contains previously released recordings with a high degree of notability. However, to increase the appeal, especially to people who already own the original release, it is common to include remixes and/or alternate takes of popular songs; even new material (previously unreleased). At times a greatest hits compilation is the original release for songs that have themselves been released as a single and charted successfully.

Notable compilations

Madonna's The Immaculate Collection is the best selling greatest hits compilation by a solo artist; all of the songs on it are presented in different versions than the original hit versions. The Eagles' Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) is the best selling greatest hits compilation by a group and also one of the ten best selling albums in history. Greatest hits albums are typically produced after an artist has had enough successful songs to fill out an album release. Some artists, such as Mariah Carey, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Kenny Rogers, Aerosmith, Kiss, U2, Dolly Parton, Journey, Los Tigres del Norte, Queen, Kylie Minogue and Billy Joel, have released multiple greatest hits albums through their long careers. Some greatest hits albums are released only at the end of the artist or group's career. For example, My Chemical Romance released a greatest hits album after they disbanded. Other artists, like Eminem have released hits albums in the center of their success. He released Curtain Call: The Hits in 2005 and then Shady XV as a compilation album in 2014.

British Masters

The British Masters is a professional golf tournament. It was founded in 1946 as the Dunlop Masters and was held every year up to 2008, except for 1984. Dunlop's sponsorship ended in 1982, and the name sponsor changed frequently thereafter, with the word "British" usually also in the tournament's official name.

The tournament was not held from 2009 to 2014 but returned to the schedule in 2015. The 2015 event was held at Woburn from 8 to 11 October and was won by Matthew Fitzpatrick.

History

The Dunlop Masters was first held in 1946 and was a continuation of the Dunlop-Metropolitan Tournament which had been held before World War II. Like the Dunlop-Metropolitan, the Dunlop Masters was a 72-hole end-of-season event with a restricted field. The Dunlop-Metropolitan was first played in 1934, the same year as The Masters.

During the 1980s the British Masters was one of the most lucrative events on the European Tour with a prize fund that was as high as third among the tournaments on the schedule, but its status, or at least its relative level of prize money, has declined considerably in recent years.