“It was quite a surprise to find the lead singer was this five foot nothing acolyte of Alex Harvey convinced nothing would stop his band coming through. I thought, ‘Alright you little f—er, show me.’ And they did.”A life of pop decadence remains some way off. Members of the band are currently surviving on less than £100 per week, a situation the Cosmics hope to remedy with the release of their new single “Melanie”.Celebrity admirers are already legion. Paul Weller rang Wylie expressing amazement at their sound and Liam Gallagher paid homage at a gig in London’s Barfly Club.Although bathed in West-Coast influences, Cosmic Rough Riders have yet to set foot in the States. That situation will change in March when they play a music convention in Texas.”Everyone in Castlemilk is behind us,” confirms Wylie “People see us on TV and in newspapers. It would be great to go on Top of the Pops, but I don’t want us to become an overnight sensation We’ve come too far to squander what we’ve got.

We feel privileged to be able to do this and not have to go out digging ditches.”‘Melanie’ (Poptones) is released tomorrow. Getting straight to the point, Eminem is an electrifying performer – a truly mesmeric presence on stage who can play a cavernous arena with the same intimate intensity that a glam thrash group like the New York Dolls would have played a lower East Side cellar. More mischievous than menacing, he minces and prowls along the length of the stage, each foot-fall choreographed with balletic precision to keep in time with the dandified swearing which holds his whole delivery together. In many ways, he comes across like a classic American vaudevillian entertainer – think Jerry Lewis or Groucho Marx – only swapping the bullet-point of the wisecrack for a scatter-gun rap which affirms him as the latest embodiment of nihilism. Getting straight to the point, Eminem is an electrifying performer – a truly mesmeric presence on stage who can play a cavernous arena with the same intimate intensity that a glam thrash group like the New York Dolls would have played a lower East Side cellar. More mischievous than menacing, he minces and prowls along the length of the stage, each foot-fall choreographed with balletic precision to keep in time with the dandified swearing which holds his whole delivery together.

In many ways, he comes across like a classic American vaudevillian entertainer – think Jerry Lewis or Groucho Marx – only swapping the bullet-point of the wisecrack for a scatter-gun rap which affirms him as the latest embodiment of nihilism.
From the very beginning, Eminem, his group of five black rappers, D 12, and his special guests X-zibit seemed to get on very well with Manchester; on both sides, in fact, it was love at first expletive. Somewhere en route, Eminem et al had got wind of the fact that Manchester is a poorer city than London, a former industrial centre (like Eminem’s home town of Detroit), and this singled out the capacity crowd – who were almost entirely white, and predominantly male – for the highest compliment X-zibit could pay: “We’ve been round the whole of Europe, and we hear things. Like this is the real ghetto; like Manchester is the motherf–kin’ ‘hood.”The day before Eminem’s sell-out show at the Manchester Evening News Arena, rumours about “the bad boy of rap” had been ricocheting around the city like bullets off the concourse of a Salford service station. Rumour number one had the homophobic star staying in the Malmaison hotel – perilously close to the “gay village” district of the city.

Rumour number two had Eminem actually spotted in Canal Street (where all the gay bars are) before Rumour number three (which turned out to be a fact) had him checking out of Malmaison before he’d even arrived. But it all added fizz to the occasion, and the point was – as the Manchester Evening News bulletin billboard displayed in flashing orange letters: “Extra security drafted in for Eminem show.”While we hate Eminem for his misogyny and homophobia, he is a truly disruptive presence in the format-dominated world of corporate controlled, branded popular culture. On the day that Pepsi Cola announced that they’re paying Britney Spears $65 million to plug their product, there’s an official Eminem t-shirt on sale at his concert bearing the simple statement: “Britney Swallows”. The fact that Posh and Becks, the ultimate neo-conservative couple, stalked out of his Manchester concert (not failing to give a few interviews as to why) simply pointed up the way in which the sheer scale of Eminem’s notoriety is managing to puncture the self-satisfaction of a culture fixated on vacuous celebrity.In this much, Eminem takes his place – in terms of his ability to shock – more as a Johnny Rotten than a Marilyn Manson. At the climax of the show, to the nursery rhyme Gothic backing track to “My Name Is…” Eminem’s line, “There’s a million more who dress like me, talk like me and jus’ don’t give a f–k like me” has the same power – as a rallying cry – that you heard at a Sex Pistols concert in Rotten’s drawn-out snarl, “And we don’t care…”Having won the crowd over before he set foot on the stage, Eminem’s entrance was built up through the showing of a slasher-style movie, in which two kids are attempting to break into a house. The house turns out to be Eminem’s house, and suddenly, wham, there’s the man himself – a hillbilly weirdo in denim dungarees and face mask, standing on the porch of a real shotgun shack (rebuilt on the stage) and wielding a chainsaw. “This is the house on the cover of my album,” he announced, “this is the house I lived in when I was 13-years-old.