The Smiths

[Troy]

Thanks, Woebot, for reminding me...

Some music you enjoy. Some you dance to. Some boggles the mind with sonic sophistication. Some fries brains, sets moods, or fills you with the glory of rock and roll.

And then there is that other music, that connects with you and becomes you and loves you like no other.

For me that band was the Smiths. And for millions of others that band was the Smiths. If they didn’t touch you in the same way then I hope the band of your youth at least tried to provide you with some of that same magic.

For a Smiths fan, any criticism of the band is so laughably ridiculous. They are beyond criticism. Not punk enough? Too white? Vane? Come on, you can surely do better than that.

Don’t you know what Love is? Or what it is to dream of Love?

 

[D7_bohs]

.

For a Smiths fan, any criticism of the band is so laughably ridiculous. They are beyond criticism. Not punk enough? Too white? Vane? Come on, you can surely do better than that.

Don’t you know what Love is? Or what it is to dream of Love?

see now, that's the kind of thing I mean...

 

[bruno]

and i had thought Italy had welcomed him with open arms

really? well i'm not italian, i'm chilean.

but for the record over here you have kids feeling sorry for themselves and applying bandages to their foreheads and commiting suicide to the sound of the smiths, too. there are parties where they worship morissey and by extension the smiths every weekend. you don't see that happening with throbbing gristle. it seems they tapped into an eternal well of pathetism (is that the word?), and there probably isn't a country free of their music (except maybe for north korea).

 

[jenks]

really? well i'm not italian, i'm chilean.

you don't see that happening with throbbing gristle. it seems they tapped into an eternal well of pathetism (is that the word?), and there probably isn't a country free of their music (except maybe for north korea).

sorry, i just saw plaza italia in location

as to devotion inspired - i think maybe TG is the wrong comparison - i can remember going to an all dayer at the hammersmith palais - the feast of the ever flowering light(or summink) which was just a mad Genesis P love-in - the devotees far more scary than the fey mozzer acolytes. people were bragging in the toilets about how many times the video projections had made them throw up!!!

 

[Troy]

Originally Posted by D7_bohs
I thought the self- absorbsion, vanity, conceit and milk toast whiteness of the music betrayed everything we fought the punk wars for.

Can you tell me why, exactly, did you (personally) fight in the punk wars? Who were you fighting against and what were you fighting for?

 

[bruno]

as to devotion inspired - i think maybe TG is the wrong comparison - i can remember going to an all dayer at the hammersmith palais - the feast of the ever flowering light(or summink) which was just a mad Genesis P love-in - the devotees far more scary than the fey mozzer acolytes. people were bragging in the toilets about how many times the video projections had made them throw up!!!

haha. well in the case of TG they sort of looked down on followers (sort of, because it was still 'let's laugh as we dress up as nazis and have a following'), whereas in the case of PTV they wanted to be followed. but yeah it's not the right comparison, except for the sad spectacle of fans (though some look very cute in their costumes).

 

[D7_bohs]

Can you tell me why, exactly, did you (personally) fight in the punk wars? Who were you fighting against and what were you fighting for?

Personally, I tried not to fight anyone, being then, as now, a complete physical coward, but it didn’t stop me getting a few slaps from the outraged populace in Dublin and a scary encounter with a few NF skin types in Notting Hill tube station in early ’78. In Kulturkampf terms, we fought against the valorisation of subjectivity in the singer- songwriter model of the time – what Greil Marcus called the ‘Survivor’ syndrome the belief that because you had come through outrageous self- indulgence with your self- regard intact, you were deserving of some kind of medal, we fought against those we perceived as dinosaurs – the Stones, Who, Zep and their ilk, with their heritage ‘rebellion’, we fought against the idea that to be a musician absolved you from understanding your position in the process of cultural production and your complicity therein; we fought against love songs, because we saw such things as a way of elevating a pseudo- subjectivity as a substitute for a freedom ‘objectively’ denied, (though we loved the Buzzcocks); we fought for a space – a world – in which the means of cultural production and the politics thereof were immanent in the product rather than ‘backstage’ – finally, we fought for a place where rock wasn’t just played by young white men and owned by older ones.


A glance at the charts now will illustrate the success we met with……

 

[stelfox]

Personally, I tried not to fight anyone, being then, as now, a complete physical coward, but it didn’t stop me getting a few slaps from the outraged populace in Dublin and a scary encounter with a few NF skin types in Notting Hill tube station in early ’78. In Kulturkampf terms, we fought against the valorisation of subjectivity in the singer- songwriter model of the time – what Greil Marcus called the ‘Survivor’ syndrome the belief that because you had come through outrageous self- indulgence with your self- regard intact, you were deserving of some kind of medal, we fought against those we perceived as dinosaurs – the Stones, Who, Zep and their ilk, with their heritage ‘rebellion’, we fought against the idea that to be a musician absolved you from understanding your position in the process of cultural production and your complicity therein; we fought against love songs, because we saw such things as a way of elevating a pseudo- subjectivity as a substitute for a freedom ‘objectively’ denied, (though we loved the Buzzcocks); we fought for a space – a world – in which the means of cultural production and the politics thereof were immanent in the product rather than ‘backstage’ – finally, we fought for a place where rock wasn’t just played by young white men and owned by older ones.


A glance at the charts now will illustrate the success we met with……

honestly, i find all this stuff about punk wars and kulturkampfs etc just as daft and self-important as morrissey.

 

[big satan]

and make you feel brutish if you dont 'get it''

well in that case i'll revel in my brutishness, it's better than being a pussy who likes the smiths.

 

[Grievous Angel]

The Jarman smiths vids were fabbo.

I liked the Smiths. Don't mind a bit of Morrissey. Love the way he winds ppl up to, evidently working here

 

[Woebot]

And I pretty much detest everything he's ever done; I saw the Smiths just after Hand in Glove came out and then - and through the subsequent 23 years - I thought the self- absorbsion, vanity, conceit and milk toast whiteness of the music betrayed everything we fought the punk wars for. In the meantime I've gotten to know loads of people, otherwise exemplary, who go all weak kneed for the old poseur, and make you feel brutish if you dont 'get it''; well I don't get it; he's a pretentious autodidact, borderline racist with a bratty adolescent neediness unbefitting a man in his late 40s; only Bryan Ferry comes close in the all round annoyingness stakes...

ha! lol!

 

[Woebot]

don't particularly remember the videos at all......
i do clearly remember witnessing morrisey on totp prancing around with a load of daffs in his pants in about 1982, i was utterly appalled, but remember having the distinct impression that it was the shape of things to come...
was i not perhaps with you that evening matt?

i wonder if u was eddy. i always remember you liking them *before* me though.

the videos are hilarious. two of them were done on the same shoot. loads of moz-a-likes following him around salford on racers, it's just terrible!

hatful of hollow is the one, the production elsewhere could get in the way. i completely reject neo-rockist dogma here (man like stelfox in full effect, lol) and admit to being totally enraptured by them.

i can't believe everyone is so synth-bound! did ye not have lives before acid house!

 

[mms]

i can't believe everyone is so synth-bound! did ye not have lives before acid house!

not really synth bound - there was so much great music around then that took you away from the drudgery of morriseys miserable self obsessed lyrics that it just seemed like a waste of time, stiff dry and victorian. plus his fans at school were stiff stuck up misanthropes.

 

[D7_bohs]

honestly, i find all this stuff about punk wars and kulturkampfs etc just as daft and self-important as morrissey.

point taken

 

[Woebot]

me i popped straight out of my mum's womb into a shopping centre spinning on my head to mantronix mate

 

[owen]

right then. i'm as 'synth-bound' as anyone here and i would like to come out and say- I LIKE THE SMITHS. i've said it now (sighs. it's like a weight off my shoulders!)
my reasons being-

-yeess, so the smiths were 'retro', so you might have been better off listening to jam & lewis or marshall jefferson. but their retroness was so ostentatious it couldn't help saying an enormous amount about the 1980s- proposing, instead of all the clean functional sexuality, chrome and currency trading, an aesthetic based on guilt, sexual anxiety, a fetsishisation of grim industrial bleakness rather than post-industrial gleam; reynolds' 'against health and efficency' is totally key here

- the self-indulgence/narcissism/miserablism question- well one of the fun things about morrissey was (note, was- am no fan of most of his solo stuff) the luxuriating in misery- the degree of wallowing where it becomes almost a perverse pleasure that you get in something like 'i know it's over', all these beautiful twists of the knife

- partly it's a question of style. the record covers, and the 'canon' of the likes of shelagh delaney, albert finney, viv nicholson are v interesting- the (re)creation of an entire self-reliant aesthetic of pre-pop northern working class popular culture

obviously all bands 'influenced' by the smiths are de facto rubbish. but rather than stress their affinities to various kinds of jangle-pop guff, i'd argue they had more in common with say, magazine, or the pet shop boys...

 

[IdleRich]

I guess that, like so many bands and artists that take themselves very seriously and have a very obvious image or ethos that they believe in completely and unselfconsciously (see also Roxy, Bowie, Suede etc) they are very annoying if you don't buy in to it but can be captivating if you do.
It's pretty much impossible for people in different camps to agree because one camp really doesn't "get it" in that they hate the very thing that the others like. Bands like this are so easy to parody but that won't alter the opinions of any of the fans as they almost have a different world view.
Another point, it also seems from reading this thread that for a lot of people it was something that you had to make a decision on during your school days because it decided what group you were in or, more than that, what type of person you were.

 

[ripley]

I too loved the smiths

and was into punk as well (although late and in the US).

but one other aspect of him that appealed was the very different view of masculinity (not that John Lydon wasn't a weedy little art school whiteboy as well) - which I found appealing in contrast.

and there may have been punkwars (though I fully agree w/stelfox on that one) but the wars against fey men continue to this day - not much safe about camp in masculinity for most teenage boys (or older) I think.. I appreciated the contrast in presentation even then.

and, stylistically, the contrast between the feyness of the music and the viciousness of the lyrics was probably the first thing that grabbed me, coming from the stomping-and-screaming music.

 

[Troy]

Of course Morrissey is self-indulgent, miserable, milqetoast-y and needy... but it's not like he doesn't know this! "The story is old, I know, but it goes on..."

I especially love the way he mixes up the irony, wit, sarcasm, sensitivity, hatred and humor.


So tell me then, for all the fans that is, what is the best Smiths LP??

I like the way much of Hatful of Hollow swings like crazy, props to the rhythm section, but personally I love Meat is Murder the best... The Headmaster Ritual!!!!!!!

 

[jenks]

has to be Queen is Dead for me - title track, never had no-one ever, there is a light, some girls are bigger, i know it's over, big mouth, boy with a thorn - a perfect encapsulation of time and place for me. remember listening to Janice Long the week before the album came out as she played pretty much the whole album over the course of the week and just knowing it was the best piece of music released at the time

i also really love louder than bombs but don't really count it or hatful as both are compilations which mop up b sides, peel sessions and non- album tracks (although jeanne is on none of these). Louder has things like asleep, half a person, london, panic, shoplifters (loved the promo gift for that single - a plasic carrier with the word SHOPLIFTER in huge letters) which are all perfect smiths moments

in the end i felt meat didn't quite work over the whole disc - well i wonder always has been the stand out track but i find barbarism and headmaster unsuccessful

the pseuds answer is, of course, the troy tate produced first album that never got released!