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

[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.