The importance of The Smiths

Ha ha, you've called me on it. But that was indeed also alternative culture. alternative music culture (with purposeful little A) neither began nor ended with Nirvana. Though Alternative certainly did. Many of those MBV fans also loved Sonic Youth and Dino Jr, but felt betrayed and compromised by Alternaculture (c) as represented by Nirvana.

hehe, have you got into grading things mark (you on a xgau trip?).

Also, 4AD... wasn't that the record label with the Pixies on it...? I know a lot of good Brittish bands were on it (and no, it wasnt the Pixies label, that's just how I know it)

"Im a child of the 90s, so I wasnt there, but were the Smiths an influence at all?"

If you're talking about an influence on British UK indie-rock, most definitely. But if you're talking about Nirvana/American indie-rock, I'd have to say probably not. Most Americans didn't identify with Morrissey's British wit. His lyrics are pretty friggin' indecipherable to us Yanks. If you ask me, the four primary influences on American indie rock were the Replacements, R.E.M., Dinosaur Jr., and Sonic Youth.

"And they werent really alternative were they?"

No. They weren't. They're only called that because they put their records out on an independent label.

"Weren't they huge in England?"

I think so.

I was that bastard in your school who wore a Smiths shirt every day to class. I wrote "Morrissey" on the board before the teacher arrived. I was the fellow who wrote the birth and death dates of Ian Curtis on the board. Sue me, but The Smiths are certainly up there above the all the bands you mentioned. ILM, it seems.

I remember Morrisey saying in an early interview that rock music was basically dead, in that there was nowhere else for it to go but to keep reinventing previous versions of itself, but that he had found the last little corner of the culture that could genuinely be 'new'. or words to that effect.

It was precicely the uniqueness of the Smiths' approach - and in particular, it's effete, sensitive, poetic, 'old England' 'take' on the contemporary 'alternative' themes of urban bleakness, imminent apocalypse/individual isolation - that made it matter to so many of us.

And it was for precisely those reasons that it was also a dead end. The only ways in which the Smiths had a lasting influence (yes, Johnny Marr's Byrdisms) were those that could 'fit' with a re-entrant rockist conservative macho suffering guitar god 'alternative' music that is really indistinguishable from the mainstream. in other words, Morrisey was right.

you can't a lot of this seriously really.

The only band I can think of who actually sounded like they were influenced by the Smiths were the Wedding Present. It's hard to imagine David Gedge's long song titles and conversational Northern 'wit' without Morrissey.

a distinction between rock and pop and indie required. thanks.

Sonic Youth?
MBV?

What, no double pack, photograph, extra track or tacky badge? We wuz had!

I'd include The Sundays here as well -- at least on their first album. A lot of bands tried the jangly-Marr guitar route, but Gavurin's playing appears to me as a sort of refinement to this style. Meanwhile, Wheeler's take on Englishness in her lyrics are somewhat akin to Morrissey's, although I wouldn't necessarily postulate direct in***ence.

The penguin classics autobiography cracks me up whenever i see it. I was an intern at penguin but before. Wish i could have sat in on a meeting when they were debating which imprint the book should be published under

It wasn't a debate: Morrissey insisted on the 'penguin classics' livery, when they tried to issue it on a more 'ahem, fitting' cover he had a mini-fit and withdrew permission and was going to take it some other publisher, so they acquiesced.

(I'm not an insider, that's from news-stories from around the time)

lol that's the worst thing i've ever heard about morrissey

Between "fits" I can only imagine he is fidgeting in a chair somewhere looking at the clock.

If it hadn't already been done to death, I'd have launched a Smiths website. But too many already. So I decided instead to launch a website around the music of two other great songwriters - Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan. On https://coughlanohagan.com/, I think I'm building up something worthwhile. Hope you enjoy it.

weishite

*If it hadn't already been done to death*

Pity you didn't exercise the same restraint by not bombing loads of threads completely unnecesarily (and making me think The Smiths were getting back together).

Was hoping they were obit bumps

not a good time for garbage fansites with "cough" in the title ... way too soon!

Guy's doing a great job of making people hate Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan.

Can't believe this thick cunt wasn't banned the first time around

weirshite too

when a spamming cunt can't even be bothered to spam the right threads they are beyond beyond contempt

oh I see they spammed the appropriate thread 2 months ago to no avail

I must admit, as a fan of Cough Lanohagan, linking them to the Smiths is doubly irritating.

Suggests the poster hasn't quite grasped what Lanohagan is all about.