morrissey = the new david byrne

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok usually when i do this kind of thing i frame the question fast and badly (or i wd never frame it at all) and koganbot becomes testy towards my fuzziness

but here is MY "explanation" of morrissey = he brought something to the boywing of britrock = called CAMP -- as in polari, as in an angry bitchy code against the UNSTYLISH USELESSNESS of the STRAIGHTS -- except that, since he wz militantly coy abt his sexuality (korrektly, as "coming out" would have stripped a powerful ambiguity out of what he wz doin), his camp was developed as a kind of MALE HET camp...

ANYWAY -- i have always bin ambivalent abt camp as an attitude (it's quickwitted and funny but it's also a compensatory attitude adopted by those who take themselves to be victims and are sniping secretly back...)

and given the shifts since the mid-80s in fashions in sexuality and within sexuality blah blah, i think morrissey's STYLE (sex! yes! but not for me...) reveals itself as a lot more reactionary a-and larkinesque than it did at the time

(again i feel i have not got at the nubbin of what i'm on about but have at it anyway)

Comments

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

he projected a not specifically gay/bi alternative to the straight self-possessed, comfortable self image, that was common currency in pop heros. like bowie i spose. brett andersons reinterpretation was a self-aware step too far, and he got rightly ridiculed for it.

like that?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

It's the celibacy thing that's the key though - Bowie left no doubt that he was at it all the time, the only question was "with who" (or WHAT!)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I think this captures his appeal pretty well. There was definitely a "turning defeat into victory" thing going on, for me as a fan it was a way of legitimising the fact that I hadn't had sex and wasn't likely to any time soon, without making plainly fake claims about not wanting to. (And for "had sex" you could substitute "become cool" and "had much of a social life" and lots of other stuff)

(The simultaneously sharpest and most indulgent Smiths song is "Rubber Ring", Morrissey asking the fans who will desert him when they get a life to remember him kindly. I think he must have had a pretty good idea of the obsessive regard many held him in by then, though, so it's a little disingenuous if not somewhat cult-leader-ish.)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I only (!) have 2 Smiths albums, both bought for me during uni as presents by a particularly indie boyfriend who shall not be named. I also had Louder Than Bombs on my laptop, thefted off the interweb. Out of these the only tracks I really rated much were Rubber Ring, How Soon Is Now* and the one about the Moors Murders. Whether my general indifference to the Smiths was any relation to my a) having quite a lot of sex b) being really quite confident that I was straight is left as an exercise for the reader.

Though I did once go to a "Smiths party" dressed as Shakespear's Sister. I was Marcella. My chum Andy was Siobhan.

*Used as the bed on Doctor Fox's jukebox show on Capital for a trillion years, minus vocals, looped for eternity. I think I preferred it like that.

burn the heretic!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

having quite a lot of sex

Re: burn the heretic!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Hahaha. I didn't just lose my indie credibility aged 17, clearly...

Re: burn the heretic!

[celentari.livejournal.com]

Yes! I hated the Smiths for years because I would just think "oh go shag someone you daft moose!" but I get it more now. Not that I've stopped having sex, but I think through some of my friends I've seen the appeal of their stance.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

when i said "sniping secretly back" the key is in the SECRETLY -- there was a kind of code built into his chain of kitchen-sink/carry-on/beehive imagery that's at once very tightly coherent and very hard to unravel clearly -- and it's that that i think i in the end balk at

secrecy is fine for a season as a politics -- sometimes you have to hide up and lick yr wounds -- but it's VERY dubious INDEED as a root of yr politics; i think where the spark fails to jump the gap is where the "attractive local smallness of our concerns", which in this case was highly original and oblique to the rest, over time became a kind of dog-in-the-manger crappiness

[mwwhitesf.livejournal.com]

I'm a het guy who's very comfortable with camp and largely due to having been a huge Smiths fan as a teenager (and growing up in the Bay Area) but while I always loved his wit, his attitude about sex seemed terribly reactionary to me even then. I mean if you really can't be bothered why do you go on about it so much?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Moz was reactionary in so many different ways. a lot of the iconography of the smiths is golden age-y in genre

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Something I only realised doing Popular and listening to the early 60s songs was how much the Smiths' musical aesthetic was rooted in pre-Beatles Britain - I was sort of dimly aware of it before but listening to that stuff really brought it home.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

jaunty is right except that it's such a PINCHED golden age! it yearns for and burnishes the days of post-war austerity and emotional stultification! which is an interesting thing to try i think regardless of the reasons OR the results

(i once read -- and have since stolen and used several times -- the claim that manchester missed out being a centre of the 60s pop boom, as compared to liverpool and the midlands, bcz it wz going through the shock of the moors murders and the brady-hindley trial -- w.ian and myra representing the Hip Young Couple to devastating and mummifying effect... anyway it seems a bit bogus now i write it out but i know that the pale young things in the Linder-Morrissey-C4th C4rroll axis back in the day were all very "interested" in such matters)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the regional 60s pop boom got going well before Hindley and Brady were caught, surely?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

murders-trial = 63-66 (i think)

so yes perhaps but the trial def.coincides w.the first strong flood of the "swinging 60s"

the way emlyn williams weaves pop hits on the radio into the narrative of his moors murderers book "beyond belief" is very proto-morrissey

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Did England really swing much outside London though? (even in the big northern cities?)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

hardly at all but even less in manchester

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

haha I read that as "the way Emlyn Hughes weaves..." at first and... well, you can imagine! I really am skimming posts too quickly as per usual today!

On topic: while I agree with most of the posts on this thread, it should also be remembered that there were lots of people (well me anyway) who loved Morrissey's contribution to The Smiths' records for complete different reasons to the ones cited. Which I can't articulate other than to say it's something to do with his really really weird ear for melodies.

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

Re "really really weird ear for melodies": Yes! And tied in with this:

-- Occasionally really really weird phrasing, e.g. rushing a load of syllables faster than necessary and then filling out with la-di-da or something;

-- Frequent repetition of lines, but with small variations -- I believe this has a particular effect even if one doesn't really follow the lyrics closely, ie it works as variations in sound.

[mwwhitesf.livejournal.com]

I can't remember where but I seem to recall reading someone who accused Moz of going LA, of all places, because contemporary Britain wouldn't live up to his prescriptions for it.

So How Is It That The Pet Shop Boys Are Supposed To Be Better Than The Smiths

[koganbot]

Not to change the subject or anything, but how is it that the Pet Shop Boys are supposed to be better than the Smiths?

Re: So How Is It That The Pet Shop Boys Are Supposed To Be Better Than The Smiths

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

who sez such a thing? where i am now i pretty much equate them as being two different expressions of the same thing.

Re: So How Is It That The Pet Shop Boys Are Supposed To Be Better Than The Smiths

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

well an obvious way in which they were not doing the same thing as the smiths = they liked DISCO and therefore used it -- and thus (in the 80s) they did not gather a self-identified band of fans in the same way (i guess bcz their locus of interation was clubs full of clubbers rather than the rock-stage)

if the votes on poptimists are what is bein judged here, psb are "supposed to be better than the smiths" bcz er er more ppl like em more and that's it -- psb are just not very divisive in the UK

Re: So How Is It That The Pet Shop Boys Are Supposed To Be Better Than The Smiths

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Hah my route back into chartpop (which at the time included the PSBs) at the height of my Smiths fandom was the Pet Shop Boys' Record Mirror front cover with the quote "We're the Smiths you can dance to".

Possible other difference in perspective: I don't have sex vs I do have sex but am not very good at it.

Re: So How Is It That The Pet Shop Boys Are Supposed To Be Better Than The Smiths

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

PSB are not as self-pitying to my ears! They can deal with some pretty miserable subjects but they never wallow in them: Neil's voice is always slightly outside the situation even when he is the main protagonist in the lyrics: there's this self-awareness of the miserabilism, the dual knowledge that a) these emotions are sad and all-consuming but also b) it's not the end of the world and I should buck up a bit, and I will soon, after this song.

REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

koganbot: Meat Is Murder [Sire, 1985]: It makes a certain kind of sense to impose teen-macho aggression on your audience--for better or worse, macho teens are expected to make a thing of their unwonted hostility. These guys impose their post-adolescent sensitivity, thus inspiring the sneaking suspicion that they're less sensitive than they come on--passive-aggressive, the pathology is called, and it begs for a belt in the chops. Only the guitar hook of "How Soon Is Now," stuck on by their meddling U.S. label, spoils the otherwise pristine fecklessness of this prize-winning U.K. LP. Remember what the Residents say: "Hitler was a vegetarian." C+
(I had a convo a couple years ago w/ xhuxk where he said he and Xgau had been talking and agreed that the Smiths were a group they'd each missed the boat on, underrated; and I'd have to include myself there. Which isn't to say I've gone back and discovered what was good and what not, but there's actually some authoritative singing/performing there.)
freakytigger: At school they INFURIATED people who didn't like them, more than any other band. I loved that, of course, but equally there is no way I'd have talked to the people infuriated by them to unpick why - I suspect they'd have offered reasons along similar but less articulate lines to Christgau.
The one hater I did talk to at length about them - someone even less cool than me and so not frightening to approach - explained that he hated them because they were technically sloppy players, and as a tit-for-tat made me listen to all of Dire Straits' very long "Telegraph Road".
alexmacpherson: BRILLIANT. That is exactly how I feel.
The Smiths = making a virtue out of being SOCIAL RETARDS.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

personally i'm not a giant huge smiths FAN at all -- at the time or now -- but the issue xgau and tom and lex raise here, and that i independently raised in response to frank above (before i notIced this exchange) is that the smiths are DIVISIVE (as compared to pbs eg), and that this ALONE makes them more than merely negligeable; the lex's response isn't actually enough (bcz it can totally be switched round viz: "making a virtue out of being SOCIAL RETARDS" = WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THEM!!

(viz ALSO "THE BAND I HATE MORE THAN ALL OTHERS" clearly has smfn interestin goin on) (ordinaarily i wd field this with the "you hate them so much bcz you are afraid of yr SEKRIT LOVE FOR THEM" but in this case that is just "the lex=epitome of indie" fancied up by particularity

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(only rockists close brackets dwahling

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was going to post here yesterday but work and then the server crashing intervened.

I am really really really REALLY REALLY REALLY not down with het men being camp. It never transcends the pantomime level of affecation, and in my experience most het blokes who've dabbled in androgyny and camp seem to have used it as an excuse to be even more massive misogynists than other men. There's also this element of "I am too ugly and weird to get girls so...I know! I will pretend that I don't want girls!" to it, except they don't want boys either, and it's just so self-deluding and self-denying and wrong-headed. There is also, you know, get yr fucking grubby indie hands off OUR dressing-up clothes, from the gay perspective.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok i can understand being territorial about camp but to me that does kind of affirm its flaws -- it suggest that what what "indie" is actually doing that is so horrible is holding up a mirror, bcz camp ISN'T a needed weapon to confident out well-sexed gay men, it's a kind of well-wielded victimhood-as-weapon; ie it actually exposes the inner passive-aggressive indieness of some of gay culture (esp.gay culture as of the mid-80s, when social exclusion was much more monolithic) (at which time the passive aggression was possibly more justified)

(also: in the bi male haha "community", esp.of a certain age -- mine -- there are a LOT of very unconfident how you say "social retards" who were actually not bi at all but full-on gay, except really alienated from the enforced manners of the clone-style of the day and unhappy that they didn't accord with the brazen fronting stereotype)

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

also also: GURLS LIKED THE SMITHS?! (and liked guys who liked them too)

this is a list of contradictions btw, not a series of points towards an argument

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes, camp in gay men doesn't appeal either, for exactly those reasons, but at least there are reasons, a sense of history, a communal humour and so on.

"Girls like the Smiths" = "girls have terrible terrible taste in men"! It is the same thing as girls nowadays going crazy for Bright Eyes or someone.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yay that's kind of what i expected (and hoped) you'd say re: camp -- viz "hurrah for tradition but sell-by-date is also always an issue plz thx"

have you ever read dan rebello's "1956 and all that"? it's about the kitchen sink moment in theatre esp., and how it swept in after noel coward and "changed everything" --- i think it's REALLY REALLY fascinating on the pro and con of these various issues

it even sort of jigsaws in w.the brady-hindley stuff -- maybe i should write something abt it one day

:(

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

PSB aren't passive aggressive -- they explore melancholy and loneliness and aleination within a "club context" but MUCH more successfully bridge the homo vs het divide in this regard (indeed deal with it as if it didn't exist)

obv xhuxk's eternal tuff question "YES BUT HOW DOES THIS MAKE THEM ROCK HARDER" still obtains, but i think it goes some way to explaining the fondness many of us have for them

(worth noting maybe: as of 1986 neither psb or morrissey were OUT, and PSB were getting a LOT of flak for it from the activists) (haha not so much morrissey as there was a "you can keep him" sentiment possibly!)

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Haha but hadn't PSB already released 'It's A Sin'??? What did the activists THINK that was about?!

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

well they thought it was "coded" which was not approved of at the time -- this is the era of "outing" as a mliitant weapon

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

"everything i long to do/no matter when or where or who" ===> how is this remotely coded! ah 80s militants and your need for STRAIGHT TALKING.

i have not read that book but it looks interesting!

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

to be (un)fair to the militants - i don't think they were actually PARSING LYRICS much, more like piggybacking on a certain level of fame to make a FASHIONABLE POINT point based on MINIMAL actual attention to content (erm same old same old there, then, marvellous)

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I do not know when I realised N Tennant was gay but it was well after hearing and liking It's A Sin. (admittedly also well before him actually coming out)

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The people who found them offensive and irritating weren't ESPECIALLY socially clued-in or beautiful by the way.

But in general the point is the if you buy into certain ideas of social acceptability, non-retardation, attractiveness, cool, glamour etc. you may well react negatively to people who don't fit those ideas REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY mocking or - worse! - claiming them. It's like how one deep root of slim people's dislike of fat people is the fact that the slim people have often had to work quite hard to be that way and so people flaunting their obvious lack of this body-work-ethic is in some way mocking.

"Your value system is kind of silly" is and always has/will be a devastating critique IF you can do it convincingly and from a position of strength.

i.e. only insecure people hated the Smiths!

(except much as I would have loved this analysis as a Smiths fan and wanted to believe it it wasn't entirely true. There was something genuinely quite annoying about Morrissey in particular - crystallised by the "pinched" comment above I think. The value system he proposed wasnt a glorious polysexual widening of everything but something far creepier and more limited.)

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

And yet still MAGNETICALLY APPEALING (partly cos so many Smiths fans wanted to fuck* Morrissey!)

*erm, ok, hug**

**google image search "Morrissey Wolverhampton 1989" if you dare; I do not.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

to me the whole social retard thing is that most people have experienced it, and then grew out of it/stopped worrying about whatever faux pas they still made/JUST STOPPED WORRYING FULL STOP quite naturally because of that process known as GROWING UP - there is something v juvenile about the Smiths. The angsty music I tended to like - Amos, Harvey, Love et al - tended to be very self-dramatising, strong, cathartic, and they didn't wallow in it so much as try to exorcise it; whereas the Smiths' angst was a low-grade, general chronic one, they weren't possessed by demons or particularly tortured, they were just a bit narked at not getting laid.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a huge Peter Pan element to Morrissey which is very offputting.

That said there's also a big self-mocking element (or there was back then more so) and some of the stuff the Smiths sang to - shyness for instance - is not an exclusively adolescent condition.

The brand of angsty music you mention I tend to find insufferably hectoring so maybe there's a big gulf of taste too!

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

My favourite Smiths songs as a teen were never the really bleak ones, except when I was working through a spectacularly pointless crush, instead they were the later ones - "Ask", "The Queen Is Dead", "A Rush And A Push", "Rubber Ring", and early solo Moz like "Everyday Is Like Sunday" and "Disappointed", where the perspective of the singer includes a sense of his own lameness as well as a promise of strength. These are also the 'funny' ones I guess.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[koganbot]

Potential theoretical defense of Smith's stance contained in the unintended take-down of Cheyenne Kimball that begins here.

Re: REPOSTED FROM ORIGINAL PAZZ & JOP THREAD

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"they weren't possessed by demons or particularly tortured"

well, there's a whole strand about murderers, paedos, perves -- actual real sexual outcasts and pathologues (is that a word): "girlfriend in a coma i know i know, it's really serious"

but what i found odd was that this strand seemed to be a kind of dogwhistle that half the fans were ENTIRELY MISSING, which i, a merely enquiring passerby, was picking up loud and clear

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i'd also quite like to get back to the point jeff and anatol were making: about the nature of morrissey melody -- what story was THIS telling? is it a buttress or a daring subtle counterpoint to the story the lex and xgau respond to?

(i know from experience this is a superhard question which no one will answer)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Part of it is his back-to-before-the-Beatles 'thing' - his la-la-las are basically Ifield style YODELLING!

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

There's also M's use of falsetto, particularly in the early songs ("Heaven Knows..." and, most notoriously, "Miserable Lie") which you could argue was an extension of the yodelling only w/ words I s'pose, but I think was something else again.

This was surely a narrative device tho' I dunno what 'story' it was telling.

[http://users.livejournal.com/xyzzzz__/]

hmm will not answer but that's the thing, I think M (and Marr) had something then (and not now from the little I've heard of their post-Smiths work) in terms of melodies/arrangements. its not the same as Bright Eyes or belle and sebastien or whatever (from the little i chased up).

So you can clearly see this by looking at these compilations, individual tracks you get that sense of humour and some kinda of awesome craft as oposed to album form where you get Morrissey as kinda insufferable "here is my manifesto of living" etc., which got its most Rofflin' response from Steven Wells ("eat meat you grumpy bastard").