The Smiths

[jwd]

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

Funny thing about this is I've always felt this was where the whole Ed Ball/Dan Treacy etc school really came through, that Morrissey picked up on how TV Personalities eulogised this particular side of Britain - you just have to listen to songs like "Favourite Films" (a list of Treacy's favourite actors - Rita Tushingham, Albert Finney, Oliver Reed) or "Geoffrey Ingham" (A Taste Of Honey must have been a very important film for Treacy.)

 

[zhao]

am no fan of most of his solo stuff

just curious... what do you suppose are the differences between his songs now and then?

 

[mms]

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.

ha ha yeah maybe,
my best mate at school was a massive buy everything smiths fan, it was just something he did and i didn't, he liked some of the stuff i liked too ie prince and a bit of hip hop. Props to him as i couldn't do it with the Smiths.
Maybe it was the very British thing in a way, all the music i liked seemed almost to be in full, american or caribbean kind of colour, a different and exciting sexy world to me, even house music which was a kind of transatlantic handshake came with area code 303/212 and otherworldy sonics that either mirrored black american contemporary music in a new way or was re/misenterpreted in the uk somewhat thru the lens of drug culture with a whole new set of terms and reasons for existing that needed further exploring, as well as dub which to fresh ears sounds like nothing else, whilst reggae seemed like strange political church music, a bit dangerous as wellm also hiphop was hightly politicised at the time which was both 'real' rather than just bored angst and extremely interesting sonically and lyrically, and taught me a hell of alot.

British guitar music, at the time was kind of typified at that time by the smiths ,and just seemed to be grey and from the 60's, a kind of kitchen sink drama view of the world, all mixed up overly sensitive boys in grey motheaten jumpers who can barely speak and secretly hate the world but love it so as well.
in someways i looked like the model of a typical teenage smiths fan if i'm to be honest, but the cap just didn't fit.. i didn't want to live or revel in that at all, i wanted escape, surprise and also you can't dance to the smiths.

 

[henry s]

and also you can't dance to the smiths.

the very smarmy Dead Milkmen had a college radio "hit" in the late 80's, called "Instant Club Hit (You'll Dance to Anything)", an aural put-down to those who love dancing and will dance to, well, anything...the word "artfag" was used judiciously, and the singer rattled off a number of then-hot "dance" acts towards the end of the song..."you'll dance to anything by the Comm-u-nards"..."you'll dance to anything by the Book Of Love"..."you'll dance to anything by Depeche Commode"...(ouch!)...and of course "you'll dance to anything by The Smiths"...man, those Milkmen had our number!..

 

[owen]

just curious... what do you suppose are the differences between his songs now and then?

i guess they just seem...tossed off. not nearly as witty as they think they are, riven with pomposity, and musically utterly four-square and drab (as people have pointed out, the smiths did actually have quite a rhythm section-'the queen is dead' utterly thunderous... note also the hi-life influence in 'this charming man' and 'what difference does it make'....though the cult of marr is pretty annoying.)
i think you can hear morrissey losing interest already on 'strangeways here we come', which has always struck me as a very poor album...and with the odd exception his solo career has been similarly inert...

jeanne is on none of these

and neither is the fantastic 'wonderful woman'. ('let's go and trip a dwarf')

 

[henry s]

...and with the odd exception his solo career has been similarly inert...

the odd exception for me would be Viva Hate, which I thought was pretty fantastic, mostly because of the Stephen Street/Vini Reilly presence..."Late Night, Maudlin Street" is pretty contrived, lyrically (as is much of the record..."Ordinary Boys", yeah yeah we get it...you're different, but better, and so you're persecuted), but Vini had never been in such fine form...

 

[robin]

i'm only 24 so liking or not liking the smiths has no social/political element to it really,but i will say that they are one of only about ten guitar based bands that i listen to anymore,and,oddly enough,i wasnt really into them back when i was into indie music-i think i see them much more as pop music than anything else...

 

[jenks]

can i put in a word for vauxhall and i - seems to be the last time he genuinely had his muse working. Less lumpen guitar work and a sense of an aesthetic unity which has only flourished intermittently since.

billy budd, the more you ignore me and speedway are all notable additions and i think on this album he restored his commitment to decent lyrics (something the latest album has far too little of) this shift back to the poetic from the prosaic is maybe what makes the album -'loathing oafs in all night chemists', just off the top of my head, for example (cue lists of cringe making mozzer lyrics from disenchanted dissensians)

not quite inert perhaps

 

[tate]

So Johnny Marr has joined Modest Mouse. (here)

 

[Buick6]

The Smiths were bigger than the Beatles who were bigger than Jesus, and Morrissey needs to do a peace tour in the Arab states, especially Iran, since he's already quite accepted in that oppressive-capatalistic-colonialist state called Isarael.

Also I suggest a documentary about Morriseey be made called the 'Passion of the Moz'.

Woz 'how soon is now?' a Jarman viddy? Yes, one of my fave 80s viddy's I must confess.

 

[swears]

"This Charming Man" is a nice song, never really got them though.
One interesting thing about them is (from what I've read) that they were lost in their own times, being the complete opposite of the mid-eighties pop mainstream which was synthetic, glossy, funky, American-influenced, yadda, yadda...
So now that the mainstream is retro, guitars, "emo" etc, does that mean the next generation defining band will sound like Chaka Khan or Alexander O' Neil or something?
I hope so!

 

[Martin Dust]

Big fan, although I think he's yet to find his true form of late. I doubt he'll ever get over being set up by the NME and choosing not to defend himself but anyone who does just a bit of research will know that the calls of "racist" are just silly.

 

[gek-opel]

Never quite got the fuss either way with The Smiths... at times they seem on the cusp of delivering something revelatory, but then a pathetic conclusion to a chord sequence arrives or sonically un-interesting moment occurs... Funnily enough I avoided them like the plague till well out of my teens (not angst filled ENOUGH, or perhaps the wrong kind of angst, regressive, self-pitying, so in love with a mythical past that never existed anyway, that dubious "tortured rent-boy" schtick, as my Dad memorably puts it...) my assessment of them now? Inconsistent. Strangeways Here We Come their best album, as musically the most diverse (altho has a few shit songs towards the end if memory serves correctly). Morrissey said nothing to me about my life...

 

[Tweak Head]

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

That's the thing that a lot of folks commenting on the Smiths' -or specifically Mozzer's - miserablism seem to have missed: the humour. Listen to the lyrics of, say "This Charming Man". Fantastic. Morrissey is undoubtedly a strange man, but he doesn't take himself as seriously as, say, Elvis Costello (to take a contemporary). Could Costello have written a lyric like "Why ponder life's complexities/when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat"?

Favourite tracks? "Charming Man" and "How Soon is Now?".

 

[martin]

I always used to get them mixed up with the Proclaimers. I thought Morrissey was an idiot, mocking the deaf with that hearing aid on TOTP, groaning <i>Last Night A Bedroom Light Went Out</i> or whatever their big hit was. Wasn't he obsessed with skinheads at one point? Nick Knight must have made a fortune from that book, every bloody page ended up on a Morrissey cover!

I never understood people comparing the Smiths to Suede, they don't sound remotely similar to me, at any rate.

 

[baboon2004]

I always used to get them mixed up with the Proclaimers. I thought Morrissey was an idiot, mocking the deaf with that hearing aid on TOTP, groaning <i>Last Night A Bedroom Light Went Out</i> or whatever their big hit was. Wasn't he obsessed with skinheads at one point? Nick Knight must have made a fortune from that book, every bloody page ended up on a Morrissey cover!

I never understood people comparing the Smiths to Suede, they don't sound remotely similar to me, at any rate.

Morrissey was/is an idiot, but then so are the frontmen of many bands/acts I venerate. Truth be told, it'd be pretty hard to find a pop artist I admire both musically and intellectually... Iggy?

Agree on Smiths/Suede comparisons - very lazy. Suede were always way more glam.

 

[swears]

Doesn't every semi-successful indie band that aren't knuckle-scraping meatheads get compared to the Smiths?

 

[gek-opel]

Smiths/Suede... Suede were more glam rock, but they kept a certain sonic sensibility of Marr going (tho with a much improved rhythm section, and more fx pedals)... I probably prefer Suede to The Smiths, if only cos they delivered a brilliant album with "Dog Man Star" (rest of output is pretty meh) which whilst not being formalistically progressive was a distillation of a very certain essence (somewhere between Bowie at his most evil, diamond dogs-esque, the Smiths at their most crepuscular, and hints of late 60s era Scott Walker, all put through a curiously negative-romantic blender... by far my favourite britpop album...)

 

[Tweak Head]

Smiths/Suede? Don't see it myself. But "Animal Nitrate" is the best Bowie song that Bowie didn't write (not in the "Pinups" sense, but David Bowie songs).

 

[swears]

Pulp are the only indie act I ever really loved. The synths, the wit, the arse-wiggling...those were the days.