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

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.