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]

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.