A kung fu fighter in a disco

Hmmm, yeah, the 'humour' thing was always a little bit of a red herring, in that few people first fell in love w/the Smiths because the band were funny.

There was a Taylor Parkes piece once where he said that he hated the Smiths and Smiths fandom (speaking I think as a former fan) because it seemed an admission of defeat, a glorification of a certain kind of loneliness. You can take this analysis too far but there's definitely truth in it (and it applies more widely than the Smiths). However Smiths fandom - like most indie fandoms - was usually INTENSELY social, so the idea was more "how to live happily and morally without a backbone" rather than "oh woe is me i haven't got one".

How Soon Is Now is a great record because it bothers to actually sonically dramatise the singer's loneliness, rather than just stating it.

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yeh, the big hrashy guitar twang is like a stroppy teenager going "Aaooorgggh! S'NOT FAIR!"

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

I am with the Lex on this one. I find Morrissey's voice nigh on unlistenable and it puts me off anything he's had anything to do with. Despite the fact the backing to HSIN is really kind of great really.

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the solution is to just listen to Soho's 'Hippy Chick', or the TaTu cover maybe.

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morrisey's voice put me off teh smiths too. you get over it.

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not compared with the tatu cover it's not.

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haha there the trouble is that I first heard the tATu version which is approx 9999999 times as dramatic as the Smiths version!

i give more credence to the humour thing because the 'humourless'/'depressing' accusation is one often levelled at Tori, and one which as an obsessive i Knew To Be False, though possibly that was more allied to identifying so closely with the performer that you start laughing along with her private in-jokes.

I would agree with Taylor Parkes based on the Smiths fans I knew.

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The problem with smiths fandom from my POV - and again this goes for a lot of indie fandoms - is the shift from

"Hurrah us backboneless people can band together with pride!"

to

"Let us disdain the backboned scum and their crass vertebrate ways"

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the logical thing should surely be "i am backboneless because i am not self-confident and feel alone" => "there are other people like me" => "i am no longer alone and am more self-confident" => "I HAVE GROWN A BACKBONE"

this sort of happened with me (although i always had a BACKBONE, it was more general teenage angst) but it does not happen to many other indie fans! backbonelessness is perfectly acceptable when you're 15 but not after you've graduated.

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Yeah but - this is a really key thing about 80s indie - if you associate having a backbone with lots of hugely unpleasant things viz sexism, racism, Toryism, then yr loneliness takes on a somewhat political angle and the easing of that loneliness by joining with the similiarly lonely begins to acquire a utopian angle.

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So what did stuff like Madonna, Jacko, Prince etc signify politically? I can well see how they might be representative of KAPITALISM but surely sexism and racism and so on couldn't be tied into that?

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com

... where no side had a defensible position >:(

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This is an excellent question! Indie when I got into it (c 1989) was a lot less ideological (cos various luminaries i.e. David Gedge! had attempted to SELL OUT) but the basic motor of lonely-people-attempting-community was still kind of there (I think MADCHESTER may have ruined it though).

There was a sense that the Pop Machine was inherently bad and corrupt - I never really fell for this but it was there in some of the fan discourse - but at the same time Prince was officially A Genius, Jacko and Madonna also quite respectable things to like (the NME gave Like A Prayer a big fat 10 as lead review).

I'm guessing - can Tim help me out here? - in the Smiths' heyday (84-86) Prince especially would have been OK within the indie community, the "some of my best friends are pop" candidate, but pop and soul were the music listened to by the backboned 'enemy' and tarred with his brash brush.

A complicating factor is that Morrissey himself - whose words carried unfortunate weight - was VERY VERY AGAINST soul, reggae and videos.

As I say though I wasn't "there" so only caught the distant end of these conflicts.

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Yes what few pronouncements on music I have read from Morrissey have all had me foaming at the mouth with the word RACIST on my lips. (Talking of racists I have some v amusing news which is not for the internet!)

Outkast really are the new Prince! I guess Jacko might be equivalent to Justin now and Madge to Xtina (though Justin and Xtina still very much baby versions of them), in that they have widespread public acceptance, by and large they're critically successful as well, and many people seem to be OK with them without compromising a general anti-pop stance.

I was thinking the other day that part of the thrill of finding an indie community back in these days (and in the 90s too) would have been the difficulty in finding it: the necessary period when you were the only person you knew who liked a certain band. And now this can't possibly apply!

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It was surprisingly undifficult to find it! You saw a band you liked on the front of the NME or Melody Maker, started buying it, and then could get as much or little involved as you like via the classified ads, fanzines etc. Finding the records was more difficult if you lived outside a big town, I think.

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com

the war against soul was waged more by MELODY MAKER than morrissey -- i think the post-punk landscape was very open to soul 84-85 (as it was to afropop and jazz and ... ) but c86-ism vs the hiphop hitlers w.their "soul-cialism" shut this down totally

Re: hiphop wars (further observations)

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chezghost.livejournal.com - Date: 2006-09-21 03:02 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: hiphop wars (further observations)

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com - Date: 2006-09-21 03:34 pm (UTC) - Expand

Yuppie Wars

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katstevens.livejournal.com - Date: 2006-09-21 03:37 pm (UTC) - Expand

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is it just a logical extension (in the same way you could argue that extremism is the logical or rather inevitable conclusion of any faith/belief if followed intently enough) to turn to hate or can it be avoided completely?

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I don't know. "Can you create a strong and distinctive community that doesnt come to despise those it excludes?" is the $1,000,000 question really!

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I'm not sure you can. Although The Lex has not been ordained as the official Poptimists mascot yet so we might be okay!

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much as i like the tatu cover, no.

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The tATu cover is more dramatic yes but that's not really the 'point' of the Smiths song.

i.e. when I said 'dramatises the loneliness' I meant 'brings the loneliness to life' rather than 'makes it dramatic' (the vocals are doing that). The counterpoint of the big guitar swoops like giant sighs or shoulder shrugs and the grinding undercarriage like the monotony of his everyday loveless existence ect ect.

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i spose it all depends on what you consider dramatic. i find the way morrisey delivers the words more dramatic if "pulled" (as in punch). tatu (while punchier) just don't seem to "get it" in places. there's my smiths rockism i guess.

srsly tho, i rly didn't like smithsband for ages cos i hated his voice. i would say about the time they split i relented.

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

Acting vs overacting, basically.

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