The American Smiths

I completely buy into the Weezer=Smiths equation. Their music, at one point, meant a lot to me, and I know it still means a lot to many people. I wouldn't underestimate peoples' devotion to the Cult of Cuomo.

"This ain't no party/ This ain't no disco/ This ain't no fooling around". The thing is, you have to work out whether or not the "Wartime" of the title is a time and place that disco was an escape from, or a place that disco ventured to. The actual liner notes basically say "Hey, disco's now called dance, it's great, but it's disposable", which isn't exactly a full blown defence. It's definitely a song you can analyse for ages, and not just inside another thread.

I have to possibly revamp my Weezer judgment a bit if only because I just saw a brilliant e-mail handle: "Motley84 = Weezer02"

Guns n Roses have nothing in common with The Smiths. Morrissey and co. were the finest band that ever existed and their fan base is dedicated beyond comparison and the influence of The Smiths is huge. Plus, and most importantly, what was being said and the way it was being said was new, unique and utterly brilliant.

I don't think REM come close to The Smiths either. I don't think there can be an American Smiths or a British Smiths.

I guess The Strokes are sorta like Menswear or Elastica. Spotty posh kids with some a few corking tunes, but God knows how long they'll last. I think they'll be around for a while due to their richass parents though.

If we're talking place-in-culture I think the mostly-awful Klosterman book nevertheless pegs something: G'n'R and the Smiths both related to their audiences in a particular and similar sort of way, but what they were relating and to whom were, at the time, almost diametrically opposed.

(How would we separate the outsiderism of both Axl and Moz? Axl's was the outsiderism of being inside, of being typical and thus anonymous, and it was the outsiderism of entry, of proving worth and breaking from anonymity by "taking over." Moz's outsiderism was the outsiderism of difference, an outsiderism that theoretically linked all the different into a viable and separate community.)

The difference is enormous and the two have nothing in common. Guns n Roses = bad stadium band, largely seen as a joke.

The Smiths = most important British band of the past 20 years.

Maybe you need to be American to see something in common, but as a British (Scottish) person at the time of the early 90s I can ASSURE you the kids who liked Guns n Roses were denying all knowledge of having any such CD in their collection as they hit puberty and, yes, discovered Nirvana.

Maybe they were welcome in the American music climate at the time, but we had The Stone Roses, Morrissey and The Happy Mondays to brigthen up the charts back then.

I will say this as well - The Manics are not best suited to be compared to Guns n Roses either. A far better band that changed lives and kicked ass on stage. When they were good at least, but that's another thread surely!?!?

Your brother scares me.

So axl ended up being less racist than morrissey

has morrissey ever came out with anything as bad "one in a million"? i mean he's obv a racist but come on.

Bengali in Platforms is probably an obvious one.

I think bengali is kinda worse in a way

haha previous ilm discussion of "bengali in platforms" is sort of weird

It's more smug and paternal and super condescending

And because axl is so emotional and scattershot and troubled than moz, I'm more inclined to believe he was channeling his ugly feelings from when he first moved to l.a., where miz again and again has said out of line shit and always seems really calculating and manipulative in how he presents it

i don't know that morrissey is not troubled, but i guess his persona is lot less volatile than axl's, yeah

nice Morrissey quote:

"Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare?" he said. "Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies."

I think if we're looking for proof or racism, we might have something definitive hidden away in that sentence.

Blue Oyster Cult.

in a better world, perhaps

there was the whole "wrapping himself in a Union Jack in front of a large crowd of skinheads" incident to add to Moz's record too.

'Skinheads' or Morrissey fans?

it was a Madness concert in the early 90s, in Finsbury Park. The way the NME painted it, there were a lot of NF types there.

Right. Far be it for me to defend Morrissey (there's a first time for everything) but it's hardly his fault if some other band's fans contain a few fascists.

Suggs from Madness was like best friends with the dude from Skrewdriver right? I thought Madness had a lot of ties to WP skinhead stuff under the surface

xp But to then wrap oneself in the flag, in the full knowledge of the type of audience you're in front of, seems ill-advised at best, and extremely dodgy at worst.

Suggs from Madness was like best friends with the dude from Skrewdriver right? I thought Madness had a lot of ties to WP skinhead stuff under the surface

Well, there was a rumour that he'd been friends with a guy from Skrewdriver, not the main guy, but who knows? And a lot of Madness' early fans were skinheads so, given that scene at the time, it's likely there were a few wrong 'uns among them.

i'm not gonna post stuff from skrewdriver bio sites, but anyway i found a bunch of wiki stuff that said suggs worked as a roadie for skrewdriver and when suggs moved out to his own house the ian main dude took his old room and lived with sugg's mom in her house for a while

(i guess that was "stuff" i meant links)

Wow.

"Sorry to bother you, Mrs McPherson, but do you think could you turn down that recording of Hitler's address to the Reichstag please? I can't hear what Shaw Taylor's saying on Police 5."

"Oh sorry love, that's the lodger, what's he like? He does love 'is Adolf, bless 'im!"

By the way, from Shaw Taylor's wiki page:

Taylor was a boyhood friend of the writer Anthony Burgess, who published his novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, the same year Police 5 was first broadcast. The novella's central character - Alexander the Large - was said to be loosely based on Taylor, who was interested in violent crime from a very early age and also had a rare gift for the English language, as demonstrated by his "Keep 'em peeled" catchphrase.

... this is surely bollocks? Taylor is from Hackney and Burgess was a Manc for starters.

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.

I'd think American Music Club might fit the bill. Arch self deprecating lyricist over classic melodic rock though there's a lot more country in it alongside Nick Drake and stuff.
Singer even came out of the closet later but is thankfully not a rabid patriot or xenophobe.