Morrissey is a racist

oh lol just scrolled up to find the perpetrator of that uttermost claptrap and I'm not entirely shocked!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cd/Morrissey_Autobiography_cover.jpg/220px-Morrissey_Autobiography_cover.jpg

I'd be interested to see which Elizabethan writer it would be like cancelling if you were to give a summary dismissal to other shit British indie-rock bands. Maybe Ned's Atomic Dustbin for C Marlowe? jesus can't even name another Elizabethan writer without going to wiki, but shamefully my mind is like a skip full of the names of shit British indie bands!

I once saw a rousing production of Edward II at sheffield crucible starring Fiennes the younger, that was better than any indie rock shite!

Thinking about this this morning and for me the discussion above isn't so much about Morrissey or the "ethics of cancel cultures" or even the art/artist separation (which christ knows we've done to death) but more the culture clash with a certain group of people who are mainly in the USA, let's call them the Freeze Peach Posse - these are youngish angry men who identify as libertarian and view absolutely everything as an issue of free speech. We have plenty of awful people in the UK, but they seem to be of a different (not better) sort. I mainly know the FPP from their relentless commenting on my US friends Facebook posts, every American I know on there seems to have at least a couple of friends or relatives like this. The presence and tolerance of these people seems to lead to an expectation that artists (particularly white male musicians) are likely to be "free thinkers" who are going to come out with all kinds of outrageous things, but "hey, that's all part of being a rock star, I'm here for the music," etc. But this is bullshit, he is putting out this stuff and feels emboldened to do so, buying a ticket to his show let's him know that you are on-board with this stuff and encourages him to do it more.

Like, you guys who are proud that he wouldn’t headline a festival in the UK anymore… What’s your excuse for 1986 to whenever?

― Mocha Sauce (morrisp), Thursday, 13 February 2020 03:28 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i', mot going to link it for like a fourth time, that seems cheeky, but (as a writer who was "there" in 1986) i did actually wrestle with this at some length in my patreon/freaky trigger piece: i think there were institutional reasons it didn't land with permanence in the 80s which go beyond "everyone is as racist as everyone else, get over yrselves" -- a big deal was immediately made of it in the uk music press in 1986

"i', mot" = "i'm not"

i mean my explanation could be wrong! but the effort has been made

Yeah the NME famously covered his Finsbury Park gig with the Union Jack in it critically(92?), and were subsequently proven correct in doubt so.

that's one of the things I was thinking of re Black people started major efforts to cancel Morrissey in the UK in 1992, as well as Cornershop doing a photo shoot burning pictures of Morrissey and talking about how offensive his lyrics were.

(sub "brown" where appropriate - De1e Fade1e was the NME writer.)

Like, you guys who are proud that he wouldn’t headline a festival in the UK anymore… What’s your excuse for 1986 to whenever?
― Mocha Sauce (morrisp), Thursday, 13 February 2020 03:28 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i', mot going to link it for like a fourth time, that seems cheeky, but (as a writer who was "there" in 1986) i did actually wrestle with this at some length in my patreon/freaky trigger piece: i think there were institutional reasons it didn't land with permanence in the 80s which go beyond "everyone is as racist as everyone else, get over yrselves" -- a big deal was immediately made of it in the uk music press in 1986

― mark s, Thursday, February 13, 2020 4:07 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

just want to say that this is a great piece and everyone who's interested enough in this to post in this thread should read it

I'll link to it again so mark s doesn't have to

https://www.patreon.com/posts/other-jacksons-18720007

Eh...despite Morrissey’s sincere attempts to fuck it up by association since, the Smiths’ rep is still a million miles away from the late 80s/early 90s UK indie herd

Not quite on a par with Shakespeare though. His sister maybe.

sounds just as bard as all the other indie shite to me!

The smiths’ best songs rule, come on

I went from being a slight Smiths fan over time, to loving them a couple of years ago, to being unable to stomach them anymore when I read Mark's article. I mean fuck Morissey sideways.

This was on a past revive, not just now.

Marr does a credible job singing the good Smiths song live so you can enjoy them without direct Morrissey stink, at least

i'll read mark's article

I imagine he never told Mozza that "How Soon Is Now" was inspired by Hamilton Bohannon's "Disco Stomp" either.

― High profile Tom D (Tom D.), Wednesday, 12 February 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Lol, amazing

See this article is doing the rounds on Twitter again

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-42050512

https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4634-stop-me-if-you-think-you-ve-heard-this-one-before-a-study-in-the-politics-and-aesthetics-of-english-misery

Owen Hatherley on Morrissey as paragon of English boomer miserabilism

i've seen a couple of attempts to rehabilitate Morrissey this year. one asks oneself why.

this is a very good piece

It's OK, feels like he wasn't entirely convinced by the conclusions he's drawn and crammed them into a little paragraph at the end though.

i think he understands the essence of morrissey, i guess borrowed from simon reynnolds, that morrissey is really longing for the "lost limits" of a vanished social order, even as he tries to make it seem like he's railing against them. these are odes to repression. that's why the music is so distinctive, but it also means his ukip sympathies shouldn't be a surprise.

a lot of people sussed this a long time ago treesh, which is why i think the only thinkpiece worth anything about Morrissey now is "fuck this racist"

ppl sussed everything thousands of years ago yet here we are

lol truth

A minor quibble maybe, but why did he chose to single out Lulu alongside Joe Meek and Billy Fury 'rather than psychedelia or soul'? Her first hit was a Isley Brothers song! Shouldn't it have been Helen Shapiro or someone?

Alma Cogan?

hackney massive reprazent

let's assume he's limited by the extent of his own record collection

(alma is whitechapel, helen is hackney)

no suck up but mark your history of Morrissey is gloriously correct

v mildly peeved owen doesn't cite it since i *know* he knows it, all my attempts to turn ancient weak-tea beef w.simon r into MASSIVE CLOUT are doomed to fail

no suck up taken

I do think the idea of generational nostalgia for misery is p interesting, though I agree with Tom that it could be developed more strongly.

people with grudges are like that -- stuck in the past, but not because they liked it. because it formed them. it takes courage to break free.

They seems to be stuck in someone else's past though - Morrissey in the late 50s/early 60s and all of these clowns who go on about the war and the Blitz when they weren't even born yet.

yeah. he obviously likes feeling sorry for himself. i think the politics emerges from the psychology.

Morrissey nostalgic for a past his parents were fucking not a part of and would have been excluded from. Fuck this prick.

It's almost like these people think they have suffered enough, in fact.

... sorry, HAVEN'T suffered enough!

it takes goots to be gentle and kind

https://pitchfork.com/news/the-simpsons-morrissey-inspired-song-everyone-is-horrid-except-me-and-possibly-you-gets-officially-released-listen/

lmao this is great

this is going around on twitter but can't find the source

Impossible to tell if these song titles are some ones Twitter made up. pic.twitter.com/SwOTeCNu1y

— Justin Lewis (@WhenIsBirths) May 31, 2021

https://www.morrisseycentral.com/messagesfrommorrissey/morrissey-new-album

appears to be real

the source of the twitter screencap is morrissey-solo

album artwork by the "united states of whatever" guy