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On this day, 16 March 1989, indie pop band McCarthy played Cardiff’s The Venue. The support was provided by East Village. The band had just released their second album The Enraged Will Inherit the Earth
Formed in Barking, Greater London in 1984 by schoolmates Malcolm Eden (voice and guitar) and Tim Gane (lead guitar) with John Williamson (bass guitar) and Gary Baker (drums). Lætitia Sadier later joined the band on vocals for their final studio album.
They mixed a melodic style, dominated by Gane's 12-string guitar playing, with Eden's overtly political lyrics, often satirical in tone, which reflected the band's far-left leanings.
McCarthy were a major early influence on Manic Street Preachers, who covered three of their songs: "We Are All Bourgeois Now" appeared as a hidden track on their Know Your Enemy album; "Charles Windsor" appeared as a b-side on their Life Becoming a Landslide EP; and "Red Sleeping Beauty" appeared on their single "Autumnsong".
Nicky Wire has commented on the band and specifically the album I Am a Wallet: "McCarthy - the great lost band of the '80s they redesigned my idea of politics and pop, it could be intelligent, it could be beautiful. They were frail, tragic, romantic idealists. The songs soothed your body but exercised your brain. They were my education, my information and they are partly to blame for the realisation of the Manic Street Preachers. I still fall in love with this album every six months, it makes me feel guilty because it's so good".
