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

[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").