TS: Morrissey v. James Taylor

Luckily they both seem to be pretty easy to avoid these days. They both wrote better than they sang, as well.

Morrissey fans are so much sexier than James Taylor fans.

One was responsible for the decline of the counterculture into self- absorption and the other one was responsible for UK music never being taken seriously again by anybody interested in playing, singing, music, having a life instead of a stack of cultural objects, etc. Therefore JT is more 'important', Bill Clinton wouldn't have happened without him. The JFK comparisons were all wrong btw because Kennedy at least had affairs with movie stars and Mafia chicks, Clinton (most powerful man in world, remember) lays the charm on a fat secretary. Fish in a barrel, beneath contempt.

Actually Moz's lyrics OK. He can't be held responsible if he was more intelligent than all his fans. Celebrating weakness is bad because it turns other people off and there goes your balance of trade. Honestly, what is the point of making music for people who can't relate to other people? It only encourages them to go on not relating to people! OK some of their music was fine too. I just can't elevate myself from my by-now-psychotic anti-English racism. Anyway JT still wins because he married that rich bitch who did "You're So Vain", which will outlast everything Taylor ever did and maybe everything Morrisey did too

One was responsible for the decline of the counterculture into self- absorption and the other one was responsible for UK music never being taken seriously again by anybody interested in playing, singing, music, having a life instead of a stack of cultural objects, etc.

Not that I entirely disagree with either point -- though I think that (a) Boomer self-absorption was always latent in the counterculture (see generally Christopher Lasch); and (b) folks like Ray Davies, Pete Townshend, Nick Drake, and Elvis Costello beat Morrissey to the bedsitter-whining punch (though I adore all the foregoing and none of them took it to quite the lengths that Moz did). Anyway, the older I get the more I listen to the Smiths more for the music and less for the lyrics (kinda like the way I did when I first started to like the Smiths, so go figure).

Another thing I have against James Taylor, besides the fact that his music bores me to death. It's my adoption of the "Andrew 'Dice' Clay" Principle (as originally propounded by George Carlin, who disliked Clay partly because he thought "Diceman" was a "nickname" he gave himself, ergo it wasn't really a nickname). To wit re Taylor: the Sweet Baby James thing rings just as phony and self-styled.

I'm no fan of James Taylor - a lot of his music is tedious, especially when he got more 'soulful' as the '70s progressed. But there are three or four of his early songs that I like a lot and would take over anything Morrissey and the Smiths did (who I've never liked). I also just like that shaggy hair/hanging around with Carole King vibe of c.1971.

Plus Moz and JT have the kind of fans who say "Their music really got me through some bad shit." This line of thinking often assumes that their idols (would) actually care about them - which may be uncoincidentally related to the fact that said fans seem to have more 'bad shit' to get through than most, though how much of said shit is entirely imaginary depends on the person of course. Role models for people who realy should adopt other role models or get out of the habit of emulating 'betters' altogether for their own sake. Although props to James for being in the nuthouse. Goddamn that traffic jam!

Wasn't Morrissey also hospitalized for depression at one point? Not in any way making fun of him for that -- I'm the last person to do so.

One of the things that unite certain JT and Moz fans -- the need for a hug. And a good lay.

I don't know why I'm posting as no-one except theelectricsoundofjim EVER takes any notice of what I say, but for what it's worth...

I thought that there was supposed to be some brilliantly dark, wry humour underlying the Smiths' lyrical canon although it all sounds like a big old whine to me (although that's what people say about Radiohead and I still love them, in small doses).

My friend Ant claims that "Girlfriend In A Coma" is such a ridiculously sad title for a song that Moz must be taking the mickey, but another friend told me that Moz DID actually once have a girlfriend who went into a coma and so perhaps it is supposed be tender, poignant, heart-rendingly sad etc. I don't know, it all goes over my head except "let me get my hands/on your mammary glands".

There's a Todd Rundgren album cover with a photo of the artist at a piano with a noose around his head poking fun at JT and his ilk. Nick Drake still rules though.

Can someone please respond to this post or I'll go back to lurking.

OK Chris here's a response! 'Wry' - exactly! Goddamnit, life is endless ups and downs and epic passions and tumultous violence and epiphanic redemption and love and hate and mystery and sex and death, so who the fuck has time for 'wry'?

Plus Moz and JT have the kind of fans who say "Their music really got me through some bad shit." I keep trying to find a funny or at least sarcastic way to say this, but screw it: exactly what the f. is wrong with fans who engage deeply enough with music to find uses for it more permanent than that of temporary diversion from the daily routine? Is the problem with these kinds of fans that they're "too earnest," "too naive," ad lib.? Forgive me Dave but that's a terribly English thing to say, if indeed that is what you're saying. I'll take the occasionally overemotive Smiths fan over the chin-stroking "ah, yes, droll, but it's been done innit" back-of-the-club dweller any day. Plus you wrote:

life is endless ups and downs and epic passions and tumultous violence and epiphanic redemption and love and hate and mystery and sex and death

JT's & Mozz's fans share your position here & are distressed by how few people, percentage-wise, also do.

John D - point taken, but I wonder how many 'fans' have stumbled upon this light in their endless darkness, andhow many actively seek out somebody that will reinforce their own world-view and perhaps dissuade them from looking at the problems that get them into said 'bad shit' repeatedly in the first place. And yes, I agree that the chin-stroking response is worst of all, but too many 'engaged' fans remind me of M.D. Chapman. "You were my rock, my anchor, my reason to live, and now you've changed, you fuck. I have nothing to believe in any more and it's all your fault, bye-bye asshole!" (i.e. forgetting that Moz etc are ARTISTS! They're making stuff up and they're AWARE of it! If it gets somebody through 'bad shit', great, but some people think that that the stuff was xpressly designed to get THEM personally thru THEIR personal bad shit andthat's when it gets a bit unpleasant IMHO)

"Morrissey fans are so much sexier than James Taylor fans"

Yeah, but that is kind of like saying that English dental hygiene is much better than that practiced by Barbary pirates.

Who the hell has time for 'music', Dave, in this Eventful Life of Tumult?

But what is the cause and purpose of art? A lot of thinkers would argue that art essentially pathological. The artist explores and transmutes his own sickness in a way that is curative for him and potentially others. A wholly sane and healthy society would have no need for art.

I'm not sure I buy this completely though it often seems to chime with my own knowledge of art and artists. The mere existence of the theory pretty much ensures that some artists will seek to conform to it.

The way the mechanism works may be more than normally obvious with Morrisey and JT. But some theories of aesthetics would hold that they are essentially doing the same thing as many, or most, or even all artists.

Anyway JT still wins because he married that rich bitch who did "You're So Vain", which will outlast everything Taylor ever did and maybe everything Morrisey did too

This is so funny, and so right! Which reminds me, I've gotta get that 45.

Yes absolutely Dave but the onus is on the fans - unless one is unhealthily attached to Derrida, one can't blame an artist for one's fans, esp. not the Mozzer, whose narrator/speaker game is so obviously much more fun when one doesn't insist that they be one and the same - and when one gives him credit for attempting a fairly Dionysiac proposition, i.e., eliminating the gap between audience and performer. Listening to the live version of "Cosmic Dancer" on "My Early Burglary Years" makes me woozy: a singer on a stage singing an ancient & forgotten song by an almost-forgotten glam figure and the audience screaming constant, deafening approval, trying to merge itself with the orator, whose own intentions are unrecoverable - Mozz must must must be credited with raising interesting & permanently pertinent audience/performer questions. N.B. I hated the Smiths for many years until I listened to the first album with some of this stuff in mind

Or to quote the immortal Diskothi-Q: "And I/sure hate those people who/like the Smiths/but I/sure as f*ck/don't trust nobody who don't"

Heh heh. Very P. Hughes, that line.

unless one is unhealthily attached to Derrida

Alex T to thread! As well as half the people I work with.

20 years or so ago, Robert Christgau (of all people) called it right re The Smiths (and their first album) and Mr. Steven Patrick. I quote: "If you'll pardon my long memory, it's the James Taylor effect all over again -- hypersensitivity seen as a spiritual achievement rather than an affliction by young would-be idealists who have had it to here with the cold cruel world."

When Christgau is on...he's on. But usually he's off. B+ So,lets not start a LiLiPUT vs Sleater-Kinney thread,Ok.