The Miracle of the Smiths

Can someone explain all this stuff to me about Morrissey in the present. I know very little about him or the Smiths but I always hear about some vague racial thing but never get a clear cut idea about what people are talking about.

Morrissey has always had a fetish for tough boys because they are so different from him. Also, fear stimulates the adrenals in the same way as arousal, so perhaps he's mixed up the thought of getting his arse kicked with the thought of getting his arse...well, you know. This became a lot more pronounced after he left the Smiths. I've never believed he has a problem with racial issues, just that in certain areas a guy like him who is literate but not terribly disciplined or qualified in his education might try to comment on certain Matters Of The Day and cause misunderstanding. A lot of his writing is about Difference, but when it's not about being a little bit strange/outcast/ queer I think it's clumsy.

Fetishising tough boys as the Other is a BIG part of the aesthetic of gay men who grew up in the 70s and 80s; if you look carefully at the personnel of fashion shoots etc. in Brit magazines you'll soon see that most of the skinhead/hooligan shoots are put there by gay guys of un certain age. In America, the peachfuzz mullet pickup boy serves the same function to designers like Jeremy Scott and writers like Dennis Cooper.

Morrissey now lives in Silverlake in LA, big home of fanciable cholo boys. Most of the gay guys I know who've lived there think they're cute because of the unattainable aspect. Note to LA cholo boys with a sensitive side: if you fancy a sugar daddy, you'd have thousands to choose from.

On to The Smiths. I'd say the single biggest 'miracle' about the Smiths is that somehow Johnny Marr firstly 'clicked' with an oddball like Morrissey, and secondly, that he was able to find a way to accomodate and harness Moz's eccentricities within a viable working band. This is based on evidence from Johnny Rogan's book (Morrissey and Marr : The Severed Alliance) and a few conversations with Smiths/Morrissey insiders. Marr's genius as a guitarist and arranger is evident, but I think it's even more incredible that he managed to work with Morrissey for 5 prolific years before the inevitable falling out.

Part of this is in the basic practicalities of song-writing. By all accounts Morrissey's words would often appear in different places in the arrangement to where Marr had expected (verses became middle 8's, or Moz would sing across a transition...etc). This may account for the way that many Smiths songs don't have a normal structure or easily identifiable chorus, especially the earlier material. This lack of concern for (or lack of knowledge of..) conventional forms (on the part of Morrissey) helped a great deal to set them apart from the rest. It probably loosened-up Marr from some of the more trad. influences which he might have been tempted to copy. So, I'd say that in terms of FORM, little was planned, at least initially.

Of course we wouldn't be bothering to think/write about this if it were not for the startling subject matter and language of Morrissey's lyrics. In some ways it's quite amazing how you can make such an impact by speaking so directly. Then again think how contemporaries like Ian McCullough were still largely using rock-trad language inherited from The Doors, Lou Reed etc.

Possibly Morrissey's most staggering achievement is to draw on so many largely untapped sources of language to weave togther his words. Camp humour, pathos, Northern dourness, everyday sayings ("The devil will make work for idle hands to do"), heroic superiority (" We may be hidden by rags, but we've something they'll never have"). Sure, you can find examples of each of these around the place before the Smiths, but no-one had ever integrated them into a coherent WORLD before.

Someone asked what initial impact the Smiths had. I remember listening to a 7-inch of "Hand in Glove" when it was released and liking, but not loving it, immediately. I remember spending a lot of time with it trying to figure out exactly WHAT was so different about it, as did a lot of my friends. It definately made an impression, but didn't knock us flat. I guess it was just a tantalising glimpse of Morrissey's world. I saw them live at the Lyceum with Howard Devoto (3rd London show?) and it was clear that something big was coming, even though the set still relied too heavily on B-grade stuff like Miserable Lie and Hand That Rocks The Cradle. When "This Charming Man" was released my friends and I hated it! Friend NG's comment "They've turned into The Farmer's Boys" summed up our initial response to the chirpy hi-life guitar, the jaunty swing of the beat, and the camp lyrics. I still think of this comment every time I hear TCM. I'm not sure whether the album came next, or the "What Difference Does It Make" single, but from that point you couldn't ignore them.

I can't dispute that The Smiths were, as Pinefox puts it, a major incident in pop history. Somehow, I rarely play them these days, and I struggle to enjoy them as much as I once did - I get the impression that history has not been totally kind. I'll dig out a couple of albums tonight and try to make sense of these thoughts.

This wasn't the first time that the music papers branded Moz a racist. During The Smiths heyday, NME soul boy Paolo Hewitt ( IIRC) claimed that the song 'Panic' was racist, because the line "burn down the disco, hang the blessed DJ" was implicitly an attack on black musical forms like disco and funk, and talk of hanging recalled the language of the lynch mob. Moz also famously said that "All reggae is vile".

More generally, Moz has always lamented the death of England - or his vision of England, shaped by kitchen sink dramas, camp comedies, mods and rockers violence, images of rundown seaside towns etc. An England corrupted by outside influences, chiefly American consumer culture (ironic considering that Moz now lives in the USA). In this way, Moz can be seen as part of an English socialist tradition that streches back at least to Orwell - the working classes have been seduced by the empty, gaudy trash of an imported culture that has cut them off from their 'authentic' roots and 'heritage'. Yet at the same time, Morrissey worshipped The New York Dolls...

Basically, the contradictions are endless... 'For what it's worth', I don't think Morrissey is or was a racist, but his obsession w/ the nature of Englishness, his indifference to dance music, and his previously mentioned homoerotic fascination/loathing for the bully bad boy, did drag him into some pretty murky waters. But Ironically, at the height of Moz's flirting with fascism period, he was booed off-stage by racist skinhead Madness fans who hated seeing their beloved Union Jack soiled by Moz's poovery...

I always had the idea that Britain in the 50s and 60s had this nice can-do attitude when all the trad class distinctions were starting to erode (well, if you were a clever working-class angry young man). If you got involved in the music biz in the 80s you'd have been seriously disabused of the notion that Britain was on its way to better, more egalitarian times.

It disappears by the next record, though ...

1. I like the qualified points that Nitsuh and Suzy have just made - that sounds about right to me.

2. Like I said, this is not meant to be a thread re. the Smiths = grate or rubbish - so with respect and all that, I don't see Jack R's, or Dave Q's comments, as very relevant really. (There's a C/D for that.)

3. I like Cockfarmer's post. Also DG is on the money here.

4. Martian: yes, I saw the programme - which has never been very highly rated - years ago. You seem to be saying that I don't have a clue about the BASICS about the Smiths. What I'm trying to say, rather, is that once you have all those basics, it's still hard to make it all add up.

5. Suzy is right re. otherness, boot boys, etc - in detail.

6. Dr C: fantastic post: I agree with almost everything you say (until towards the end), and I (think I) know what you mean about initial reactions and the way you go back to them later (ie: still thinking about 'TCM' in terms of initial rejection). (Maybe initial reactions have something going for them.) I totally agree with you re. Marr holding things together (ie, how did he cope? etc), and the ('accidental'?) oddity of the structures (*this* is the kind of thing that no-one ever seems to get to discussing, for one reason or another - though it's BASIC to what the band had to offer).

I don't really have anything else to say, except that I'm playing "The Headmaster Ritual" at the moment and it still sounds pretty special to me, though obviously intensely related to a social set-up now long vanished.

God, "Panic" sounds stranger with every year that passes: I don't know whether the Pinefox will agree with me, but I find it their strangest, weirdest, most pathological single, their most passionate yet their most doomed. But I don't think it would have sounded like that in 1986: it's just that the more Britain changes year by year, the more cosmopolitan and hedonistic it becomes, the more it seems like an anthem raging hopelessly against the tide. Time has made "Panic" sound vainglorious: the question is - from someone far too young to understand these things 15 years ago - did it *always* seem like that?

A few years later, of course, the clubs were in thrall to dance music which did say something to people about their lives.

"Hang the DJ" referring to Smashie and Nicey gang - yes, absolutely, but that doesn't detract from the essential nostalgia of "Panic" as a song: a call to arms, absolutely, but also a rather pathetic, blunted one, the children's choir sounding like a vainglorious echo of post- war formality, and I can't help but hear a desperate fear for the future behind the line "Could life ever be sane again?". The strange thing is, though, I think the song is *brilliant*, but what it is based on (broadly, to my ears, desire for a unified working class not indulging in hedonism and love for American pop culture) could never be recaptured, and that is where the brilliance comes from: the desperation to achieve something that could never actually happen, never more perfectly expressed in pop. It isn't that nobody would write about provincial towns now but that provincial towns *just aren't like that anymore*: even compared to 15 years ago, they are as given over to hedonism as anywhere else and totally unresponsive to any remaining echoes of puritan socialism (or puritanism or socialism in any form, really). This is, I think, why Morrissey lives in LA: he would rather not live in Britain than in a Britain unrecognisable from his idea of Britain.

Essential ambivalence is what I love best about the Morrissey of that time, and his worst moments ever have been his most obvious: I personally think of "A Rush And A Push And The Land Is Ours" (specifically "It has been before / So it shall be again") as referring to the Wilson government / social democratic leadership compared to the Thatcher era, but I can quite see why certain people after the Union Jack / "NF Disco" episode interpreted the song to mean something rather less positive (I don't think that interpretation is *right*, of course ... the ambivalents of pop have to be prepared for occasional stupid misinterpretations: it goes with the territory).

Robin C:

>>> mid-80s Smiths fandom as I see it was the *last breath of Hoggartism*

In large part, yes, this is right. Maybe the M thing about 'illness' (hearing aids etc) stuck out, though? Also re. gender - cos M was 'sexually ambiguous' - and Hoggart's book doesn't have much place for that. (This is the puritan vs bohemian split in M, if you like.)

>>> I don't know whether the Pinefox will agree with me, but I find it their strangest, weirdest, most pathological single, their most passionate yet their most doomed.

Yes - kind of. But like you, I don't think that detracts from its enjoyable fascination. A strange thing, rarely mentioned, is that it's VERY SHORT!

Suzy:

>>> A few years later, of course, the clubs were in thrall to dance music which did say something to people about their lives.

Well - different perspectives here, surely. From the POV of dance fans (or whatever) in 1986, dance music presumably *did* say what they needed; just like (I imagine) it does for dance fans now. It doesn't for me, of course - but you knew that.

Dods: I like the points re. rockism (personally I *love* guitar solos, of course).

>>> The echo of the provincial towns sounds rather quaint now, I can't imagine anyone else singing the praise of Carlisle when you've got the delights of London or NYC to write about.

Well. Just you wait. One day.

>>> It isn't that nobody would write about provincial towns now but that provincial towns *just aren't like that anymore*: even compared to 15 years ago, they are as given over to hedonism as anywhere else and totally unresponsive to any remaining echoes of puritan socialism

Hold on - there seems to be an assumption developing re. M's attitude to provincial towns (which as said in past I find fascinating - the towns, I mean, not the attitude). I don't see it that way. I think he is just *listing* for PANORAMIC EFFECT: it's ALL ENGLAND APOCALYPSE.

>>> The other thing is the provincial towns Morrissey loves may have existed at some point, but they had already disappeared, or were disappearing, by the time Panic was written.

But those towns are still there! Yes, they've changed - but for the better *as well as* the worse, I'd guess (like most things: dialectics as usual).

Back to 'strangeness': this is still the key thing for me. Robin C pinpoints an aspect of it re. the children's choir - an element of sinister otherworldliness, or whatever. Plus, the comic (and retro) eccentricity of Marr's *music* (cf Nitsuh earlier) as well as the unseemly violence of the lyric (M as embarrassing ranting party guest - back to Nitsuh earlier, again)...

It would be interesting to know if 'Panic' could ever have gone another way - if there were more elaborate lyrical drafts that spelled things out more fully (a la 'Queen Is Dead'). But I'm clutching at gladioli, I know (I know, I know...).

Billy: the other Mancunian axis that comes to mind as more representative of genuine latter-day (i.e. post-Thatcher, or rather *irrevocably-changed-by-Thatcher*) Northern working-classness is the Roses / Mondays (the Mondays especially) wing which was in the ascendancy as Morrissey's solo career declined (held back, as I saw it, by long gap between first two proper solo albums causing loss of momentum: instructive that none of his four 1991 singles, from the Our Frank era, made even the Top 20 whereas the first four solo singles all went Top 10). For some reason (and I was actually thinking about this before I knew this thread existed!), I associate "Madchester Rave On" outselling "Ouija Board Ouija Board" five to one in Manchester HMV with the fall of Communism and the emergence of MTV Europe: not only concurrent, but a similar, definitive (or so it seemed) victory of hedonism over any remaining hints of, perhaps foolhardy, ideological conviction.

Provincial towns already changing rapidly by 1986 - well, exactly, kind of strengthens my argument that the central theme of "Panic" is nostalgia and longing. This is, also, its central fascination.

Pinefox: shortness of "Panic" something that occured to me earlier. I personally relate it to the classicism / nostalgia of the song: write a song that evokes provincial towns as they perhaps were around 1963 and make it the length of pop songs of the time (during the British New Wave cycle of films from 1958-63, it wasn't unknown for songs of less than two minutes in length to make Number One: Adam Faith's "What Do You Want?" springs to mind).

The towns are still there, of course, and what is fascinating is just how much they have changed, as anyone who makes a habit of visiting places that feature in old films, TV series, photographs etc. will know. One of the great fascinations of modern Britain is comparing the general informality and hedonism of these places *now* (main exception that comes to mind: Winchester, especially in winter) with images of how they once were. Peter Hitchens was, perhaps for the only time in his life, spot on when he said that traditions can be destroyed just as effectively when you leave the buildings there but chip away at the ideas and feelings that gave them meaning, as when you tear down the buildings themselves. This is the key to how Manchester - and, I suppose, provincial Britain generally - has evolved in contradiction to and refusal of Morrissey's vision of it.

Strangeness: exactly. Listening to "A Rush And A Push ..." and "Death of a Disco Dancer", what comes out is how great they are *as sound*. I'd previously concentrated on Morrissey's words, but what stands out now is how great a *band* they were. For the first time, "Disco Dancer" sounds to me quite as apocalyptic as the title track of "The Queen Is Dead", an epic melodic grind for long after Moz himself is unheard.

There is much more within this thread, I think.

(Suzy and Nellie are sitting in the hall in front of their opened lockers which are littered with artfully arranged pin-ups from British and Japanese music mags. They are clearly deep in conversation)

PASSING METALHEAD BOY does a double-take when he sees locker gallery full of Men Wearing Makeup. PMB: "What is that faggot shit?"

SUZY and NELLIE exchange glances. Each girl removes an empty shopping bag from their locker. NELLIE: "'scuse me?"

PMB: "I asked you what that faggot shit was."

NELLIE (offers bag to PMB): "Here, take this."

SUZY (offers second bag to PMB): "Here, take this."

PMB now has TWO BAGS. PMB is puzzled.

SUZY: "Now. Put both bags over your head, DUDE. Keep America beautiful, okay?"

...see, they didn't stand a chance so no real hassle. Mallrat girls who had 'hair' comments were encouraged to look five years into the future, where if they had not managed to reproduce with a football player, they might actually HAVE the haircut I was sporting that day. In the same future I would of course be having my hair cut where I would never have to look at their bad style ever ever again. Besides, there weren't enough of US to form an actual Breakfast Club-type subcult so we were very confusing for THEM.

Not sure I agree. Sitting out Madchester was probably a wise move, but the single biggest cause of the decline HAS to be the fact that Kill Uncle was so spectacularly awful. Virtually EVERYTHING which was good about the Smiths had gone by now. (By the way, except for the singles, I really don't like Viva Hate either).

Somehow that knife-edge balance between camp, misery, humour, nostalgia and arrogance, which he kept throughout the Smiths career is out of whack much of the time. Too much or too little of any of these carefully-juggled elements resulted in nonsense like King Leer, Bengali in Platforms, Little Man What Now, Late Night Maudlin Street,Alsatian Cousin etc. Maybe the lay-off before Kill Uncle gave him too much time to think about how and what, rather than doing what came naturally in The Smiths. Working with hacks like Street, Langer and Nevin couldn't have helped much either.

Arthur makes a good point about a possible precendent in Orange Juice, and for the Postcard singles, it makes good sense. Simply Thrilled Honey and Blue Boy in particular have that odd structure and slightly distanced feel which marked out Hand In Glove. I sense that Collins was a much less complex character than Morrissey, and consequently less interesting. The post-Postcard era showed that he had nothing much to say.

I agree, pf. It's funny - I was thinking of posting a thread about Panic a while ago and thought better of it. What I was going to ask was 'what does this song MEAN?' Or more specifically, what do the chorus and verses have to do with one another? But then I decided it would make me look stupid. Of course I understand the connection, but it struck me as a perfect example of Morrissey's (Smiths era) approach to songwriting- so many self-contained lines/notebook fragments/twisted aphorisms that somehow end up constituting a lyric. If someone asked me what situation Morrissey was describing, or point he was making in a lot of Smiths songs I'd have no straightforward answer. He changed style a bit on Meat is Murder ('The Headmaster Ritual' is perhaps his best sustained direct, transparent song) but he never really lost his predilection (knack?) for opaque, ambiguous, cut and paste lyrics (torrents of words falling over themselves) until a little way into his solo career.

A thing that rarely gets mentioned: Mick Middles' book (yes, I know it's terrible) insists that when Morrissey & Marr started out, their plan was to become a songwriting team, not a band. Does anyone know if that's true?

That begs the question what was different about the Smiths. I would tend to argue that, musically, they were *less* strange than early Orange Juice: a fuller sound, less angular and difficult, less scratchy. Which is to say, I suppose, that they were more palatable to a pop/rock mainstream. I recall very well hearing "What Difference Does It Make" and "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" on Radio 1 on the bus to school. I can't imagine any of those first few OJ singles making it onto the breakfast show.

There's also clearly a big chunk of J. Rotten in the Morrissey persona: that ill, contrary outsider bit, handing down his crushing barbs with total disdain. I suppose you could argue that, musically, the Smiths were the first band in a musical generation to consider themselves nothing to do with punk (and punk as just a detail of history). They made themselves palatable to punk-obsessed likes of me by the Rotten-ness of SPM. Just a thought.

btw, I saw the Smiths on their first US tour in NY... which one of you geeks is jealous? :)

If not, no need for jealousy here.

>>> For some reason (and I was actually thinking about this before I knew this thread existed!), I associate "Madchester Rave On" outselling "Ouija Board Ouija Board" five to one in Manchester HMV with the fall of Communism and the emergence of MTV Europe

Put that way, it sounds odd - but I think your overall generational point is valid.

>>> shortness of "Panic" / classicism [60s]

This is a fine point, which goes for other Smiths records too, of course.

>>> Peter Hitchens was, perhaps for the only time in his life, spot on when he said that traditions can be destroyed just as effectively when you leave the buildings there but chip away at the ideas and feelings that gave them meaning, as when you tear down the buildings themselves.

Hm... but was he 'wrong' at the same time as being 'right'? I hope so.

Dr C:

>>> but the single biggest cause of the decline HAS to be the fact that Kill Uncle was so spectacularly awful.

I agree - but Stevie T will tell you, I think, that it was 'Ouija Board' which summarized decline !

>>> (By the way, except for the singles, I really don't like Viva Hate either).

I do. I agree that a balance has been lost, but that record is close enough to the Smiths - close enough to the flow - to retain much of what what M had then, I think. (I still think it the best solo record.)

>>> Working with hacks like Street, Langer and Nevin couldn't have helped much either.

This is true. Actually there is a whole separate discussion to be had re. the influence of Langer & Winstanley on the records of Morrissey, Costello and... Lloyd Cole!!

D Nick: you are very, very on the money - loads of money!

>>> What I was going to ask was 'what does this song MEAN?' Or more specifically, what do the chorus and verses have to do with one another?

This was what preoccupied me after I'd left the thread yesterday. And I realized that I had let myself forget my original sense of the song. What happens in the song - let D Nick take up the point again -

>>> it struck me as a perfect example of Morrissey's (Smiths era) approach to songwriting- so many self-contained lines/notebook fragments/twisted aphorisms that somehow end up constituting a lyric... but he never really lost his predilection (knack?) for opaque, ambiguous, cut and paste lyrics (torrents of words falling over themselves) until a little way into his solo career.

This is terrific stuff - so basic, yet so little recognized (it often seems). Anyway: Panic seems to me to be a *yoking of 2 ideas*:

1. REVOLUTION IN THATCHER'S BRITAIN - it's happening all over, kids! The miners' strike may have failed, but look at this fantasy! Violence is the only answer to our rulers!...

2. WE DON'T LIKE DISCOS / DANCE MUSIC - extended to 'burn down' idea, this seems like the same idea as #1. But really it's a much narrower Morrisseyesque fantasy.

In yoking the two he left the impression that the whole song was really about #2 (which emerges halfway through); whereas really I feel that #1 (very 80s, very Red Wedge pushed to extreme, in a way) is the key, and drags #2 in its wake.

Corroboration of a sort: Steven Wells made Panic his 45 of the week (July 86) cos it was Politickal, like. (Nothing to do with anti-disco sentiment, which would have repulsed him.) Think about it (as annoying people say).

>>> A thing that rarely gets mentioned: Mick Middles' book (yes, I know it's terrible) insists that when Morrissey & Marr started out, their plan was to become a songwriting team, not a band. Does anyone know if that's true?

No... I don't even recall seeing it. Anyone else?

Hopkins:

>>> I think PF's urge to put the strangeness down to such a simple synthesis is perhaps an oversimplification.

Fine. You're probably right. I was only being 'heuristic', or something. There is still a point there. I am not convinced, I think, that OJ were into that *particular* synthesis.

In return, I think your post is perhaps tainted with (by?) your perpetual post-1983 antipathy to the Smiths. To me, OJ sound (yes) original and different in the way you say - but also less fun than the Smiths (perhaps cos so original and different).

Dods mentions Bowie - I wonder whether my whole fixation on 'strangeness' misses out the idea that Bowie had done all strangenesses before? But no, I think, not quite. (Strange Pop Bowie = other thread.)

What does it mean to live vicariously through the Smiths? That you fantasize about being a miserable closeted neurotic?

When he made the comments I quoted, Hitchens was to me "wrong" because, on the whole, I don't think the traditions he cherishes were worth preserving, but also "right" because I thought he put his argument over very well *even though I disagreed with it*. Certainly, on a personal level, Hitchens is more interesting to me than any other journalist of the right, and there are some fundamental truths he has grasped about the anti-traditionalism (despite appearances) of Thatcherite policies, but I wonder how much of his interest to me is down to the endless amateur sociology *and* amateur psychology you can get out of the contrast between him and his brother.

Dr C: that's sort of what I meant to say about Kill Uncle, but it got lost along the way. It wasn't just the delay: all the singles off that album were just SO WEAK: you could not imagine any of them going Top 10 for one moment. I would concur utterly with what others have said about Morrissey losing his essential ambiguity at that time, and his lyrics becoming so much more boring and uninspiring (of thoughts, of possible meanings, of anything, really).

>>> Maybe if the song *had* been longer and more fully-explained, the "REVOLUTION" element might have been given the chance, so to speak, to sound more prominent?

Yes, precisely. Also the disco stuff has been easier for people (journos, whoever) to seize on over the year - where the revolution doesn't really go anywhere. (Is this right?)

Always seemed significant to me that the 45 was released just after Queen is Dead LP: and - more so - that live, they would follow that title track with 'Panic', without a moment's break (cf Rank LP): ie. 'Panic' was an extension of the political analysis of the earlier song. OK, only a pop lyric / tune; not a terribly sophisticated analysis, and tending more to 'adolescent' espousals of rebellion vs the royals / hatred of the Tories than anything properly worked through. But still - not quite the same as the 'racism / anti-disco / reactionary' thing that has been insisted on again and again. Possibly.

>>> I wonder how much of his interest to me is down to the endless amateur sociology *and* amateur psychology you can get out of the contrast between him and his brother.

Sad situation. But CH is also odd and perverse: currently writing articles for Guardian attacking 'liberal twits' who question war / US foreign policy. He's bright and everything, but I think he slightly abuses his position by going for perversity and irritation of readership too much.

>>> It wasn't just the delay: all the singles off that album were just SO WEAK

'Our Frank' - yes. 'Sing Your Life'? Probably. But funnily enough (Nitsuh may back me up here), two non-45s are arguably the most compelling things here: 'Driving Your Girlfriend Home', and 'Mute Witness'. (Thanks to Stevie T for making party tape in June 1997 which brought latter track to my stunned attention in the middle of Covent Garden. Never since abandoned belief that track is grate, though I'm not entirely sure I've even *heard* it since.)

Or I should have said $15.25, so yeah my point stands.

I thought it was a good-humoured "actually it was even cheaper than that!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn9ihX4SBeA

https://i.imgur.com/uU5JsyD.jpg

My actual ticket stubs with some bonus shows I saw. This was the third and last time I saw them and this would be The Queen Is Dead tour. This one cost me $19.50, inflation lol.

There's part of me that regrets missing these shows massively (though granted I was in San Diego rather than the LA area). At the same time, I kinda appreciate how this *wasn't* my high school listening -- college, sure, but it's nice not to have those bands/music tangled up with said high school times. Probably explains why they last for me.

I wish I still had my ticket stubs. I saw them in 1986 at what we affectionately called the "Cement Center" on the University of Colorado campus.

The Smiths
September 3, 1986
CU Events Center, Boulder, CO

Still Ill
I Want the One I Can't Have
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
How Soon Is Now?
Frankly, Mr. Shankly
Panic
Stretch Out and Wait
The Boy With the Thorn in His Side
Is It Really So Strange?
Cemetery Gates
Never Had No One Ever
What She Said
(with Rubber Ring intro and outro)
That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore
Meat Is Murder
Rusholme Ruffians
(with (Marie's The Name) His Latest Flame intro)
The Queen Is Dead

Our seats were pretty far back, so it was hard to get a solid impression of the band. I did get to see Mike and Andy playing with Sinead on her first US tour a couple years later, we were right up front. I had no idea they were touring with her until I saw them. What a magic moment that was.

Meanwhile their music is almost entirely tied into my miserable high school experience to a profound degree. I don’t think I listened to this band for 15 years after hs until it seemed like distant history bc my life had changed sufficiently.

I can find almost no evidence online of that Sinead show, other than these photos from her press conference of the same day. Odd.

https://fairangels.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/sinead-oconnor-in-denver-1988/

xp I can relate, LL. For me, it was the middle of my college career, a time when I felt lonely, isolated and exhausted. I found the Smiths affirming as well as depressing.

Bee OK forgot to mention that the $17.50 Nov 1986 New Order show at Irvine Meadows also included The Fall and The Durutti Column as openers

Bee OK forgot to mention that the $17.50 Nov 1986 New Order show at Irvine Meadows also included The Fall and The Durutti Column as openers

I texted some friends that went to this show with me to see if we were on time. We were and The Durutti Column opened the whole damn thing. My mind is sort of blown right now as I realize that I saw the Fall live.

Thanks ET for taking me down that road for some early memories.

Ah, yes, the "Pumped Full of Drugs Tour."

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2024/09/Smiths-1726093915-1000x1000.jpeg

Johnny Marr rules, he should be the opener for the Oasis tour:

https://www.stereogum.com/2279940/now-morrissey-says-johnny-marr-has-blocked-a-new-smiths-deluxe-reissue/news/

haha, someone in the comments complaining about the death of the comma - know your own culture

https://www.nme.com/news/music/kiss-gene-simmons-on-the-smiths-reunion-if-you-go-down-the-street-and-ask-the-general-person-whos-johnny-marr-they-wont-know-who-youre-talking-about-3793934

Now, Gene Simmons has weighed in on the situation. In an interview with Forbes, he said: “Get rid of the guitar player and get somebody off. Nobody cares. They just want to hear the songs. I keep saying this over and over again. If you go down the street, and with all due respect to Johnny Marr, you go down the street and ask the general person, “Who’s Johnny Marr?” they won’t know who you’re talking about.

“[Hypothetically], saying no to $100 million dollars would be lunacy. What other job would pay you that!? Unless you’re willing to break your back and play football or something…”

I miss the important part:

He continued: “I happen to agree with it. By the way. ‘Wokeism’ intentionally means well, but there’s a lot of garbage and bullshit involved with it and basically browbeating anybody who doesn’t agree with you, you know, like a baker who doesn’t want to make a cake because religiously he doesn’t agree with your lifestyle. At what point do your individual rights stop and you have to bow down to somebody else’s thing? Democracy is a messy thing.

“I say more power to [Morrissey] for speaking up. And by the way, if you want to take advantage of capitalism, which is to have a record company give you money, you can’t blame him.

TIL Gene Simmons knows who the Smiths are.

I wonder how many strangers I’d have to ask before I found someone who knew either one.

🤯

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16u4zWA4tG/

Is Hell freezing over?

https://p.turbosquid.com/ts-thumb/nH/uq0UwW/Cv/magic8ballanswernovray3dmodel001/jpg/1670806609/1920x1080/fit_q87/71db9fc159f4a7dbc7fe37d674eafa08f6c58373/magic8ballanswernovray3dmodel001.jpg

love you Pinefox. But this overweeningly awkward and rather horrible thread title still sucks shit!

I like the thread title

what does the link say

It's a quiz you take to figure out which Smith you are.

"Sign up for The Smiths mailing list"

over an old picture of the band. official Smiths Facebook account too, by the looks.

Favourite opening line of a Smiths studio album

Oh hey I saw Johnny Marr the other week, that was great! He was on at a festival that I went to mostly for other reasons, although I was happy for the chance to see him. I didn't expect to get actual chills hearing him play Smiths songs. Plus of course just a very likable stage presence.

And he played "Getting Away With It," no?

He did!

by the looks.

……….of what? What entity or individual is conveying this officialdom?

He can't keep playing Getting Away With It!

.. ALL ... MY ... LIFE!