FOR HISTORIC RECORD, BEFORE I DIE. - Morrissey Central

FOR HISTORIC RECORD, BEFORE I DIE. - Morrissey Central
June 28, 2019

…the ten most important recordings

1. New York Dolls - New York Dolls
2. Horses - Patti Smith
3. Chelsea Girl - Nico
4. Ramones - Ramones
5. Raw Power - The Stooges
6. The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
7. Kimono My House - Sparks
8. For Your Pleasure - Roxy Music
9. White Light/White Heat - The Velvet Underground
10. Jobriath - Jobriath

Buy these today or drop dead.
-Morrissey.


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As far as the preference comment goes, that’s just conditioning/upbringing.


But on the topic of music...

to put it bluntly.. if you make rock’n roll music then you are influenced by black musicians.

If a young musician gets inspired by a Stones record they are also being influenced by the black musicians that inspired the Stones to make music in the first place.

James Naismith invented basketball, so no black player in the NBA (over 70% of the players on the team rosters) can play the game without being influenced by the white players who came before!

If a young black basketball player gets inspired by Stephen Curry they are also being inspired by the white players like Nat Holman and Neil Johnston who inspired the black players to play basketball in the first place.

Kobe Bryant owes everything to Larry Bird! :rolleyes:
 
Am I the only one thinking that "...before I die" was an odd phrase to use - almost seeming to suggest that he'll die imminently?
Well, if you paid attention these last 35 years you know he has a thing for being overly dramatic :)
 
Well, if you paid attention these last 35 years you know he has a thing for being overly dramatic :)
overly dramatic boys are the best kind :love:
 
Well, if you paid attention these last 35 years you know he has a thing for being overly dramatic :)

Maybe it's just the death of his career he's referring to, then.
 
Maybe it's just the death of his career he's referring to, then.
Now you are being overly dramatic.
And his career, if that’s what it is, just peaked with a wonderful record grossing 7 night-Broadway show. Seems like a good way to end a 36 year career if it were to be the end.
But he will return, I’m sure.

What makes you think it could be ending?
 
a wonderful record grossing 7 night-Broadway show.
Pin the hyphen on the sentence.

Are you saying you have information that Morrissey's recent concerts have been the most lucrative shows in the history of Broadway?
 
You imagine what my motivation could be :rolleyes:. Let me know if you think of anything. I'm sure it will be original. Could it be that I'm a giant racist, perchance? A colossal one? :thumb:

The question was whether it's possible to make rock music without having black influences, my assertion is that it is possible and has been done countless times. Also, just because you've listened to something doesn't mean you're thereafter "influenced" by it. Quentin Tarantino could watch a Michael Crichton adaptation but it doesn't make Inglorious Basterds influenced by Jurassic Park.

Some Beatles music was influenced by black music because they chose to be influenced by it, like they later chose to incorporate Indian sitar-based music into their songs. But then there's 'Blackbird', 'Norwegian Wood', 'Eleanor Rigby'. A lot of the Sgt. Peppers album looks back to Music Hall for inspiration; what black blues act do you think 'A Day In the Life' can be traced back to? Or 'Waterloo Sunset' by The Kinks. 'The Village Green Preservation Society' is distinctively English. I've never listened to The Beach Boys later chamber pop music and thought "this owes so much to black musicians!", either. Elvis was influenced by Arthur Cruddup but then there are songs like 'Wooden Heart' which display no blues influences.

Morrissey heard plenty of black music but consciously chose not to use its influence in The Smiths, the same goes for his attitude toward non-white sleeve stars and literary references. He was making white music for white people (something Billy Corgan later stated he was also doing), even if Johnny Marr wasn't fully aware of it. It was part of the appeal of The Smiths, you and Ketamine Sun wouldn't be here otherwise. 'Back to the Old House' has nothing in common with negro spirituals, and 'Suffer Little Children' doesn't use Son House as a reference point.

There's also Tin Pan Alley where many white people and Jews wrote the songs which filled the airwaves for the first half of the 20th century. Like you alluded to, much of heavy metal has few black influences, and the same goes for electronic music which can be traced to white pioneers of the genre in the early 1900s.

But to pick up a guitar and write songs is not to automatically be influenced by Bukka White or Blind Lemon Jefferson. Outside of the USA, many musicians hadn't heard of them. And many of those old blues guys had been nearly forgotten until white people brought them out of obscurity in the 1950s/60s and got them to make new recordings.
I wouldn't consider a lot of Bluegrass or even some Skiffle music to have black roots either. Working class guys constructing their own instruments and battering out songs on them --there was more English folk influence there than Delta Blues. So Ketamine Sun's most recent "all music is black music" claim is seeming even less coherent with each passing second.

All it amounts to is 'white people have no music of their own', something she'd never say about acts from the Arab world or South-East Asia. She's perhaps the most confused person on this forum. On the one hand she defends Morrissey through thick and thin, no matter what he says. On the other she comes out with these Afrocentric utterances, sounding like Sinead O'Connor after she changed her name and converted to Islam. I don't have time to deal with that!

Anyway my point is that Ketamine Sun's claim is too simplistic and holistic to be correct. Unless she thinks Richard Wagner was somehow influenced by black musicians too? Or Gracie Fields? :crazy:

Maybe she IS Sinead O'Connor!
As far as The Beatles they don't have to sound like delta blues on every song to be "influenced" by black musicians. Like most musicians they had many influences. some of what they played wouldn't be considered rock but rock wouldn't exist without black musicians.
And yes, the need to state that "Morrissey made white music for white people" and "was not influenced by black musicians" does sound racist, but that gets into who you are as a person and we can just move past that. If you want to say you're not or that it doesn't matter and facts are facts, that's okay.
But Morrissey stole a whole song from The Cookies.
Have you ever heard "The Girl Least Likely To?"
If you think The Smiths weren't influenced by black musicians you've never read their interviews. http://www.passionsjustlikemine.com/influence-music.htm

In short you're ignorant and willfully so, and your motivation doesn't much matter to me personally, but it's pretty easy to prove you're factually wrong. My recommendation is to leave out phrases like "white music for white people" and learn to read.
I did not say anything like "much of heavy metal has few black influences." I said that the most classical metal I'm aware of is influenced by a blues rock musician. Ritchie Blackmore was heavily influenced by classical music but you can't separate the influences.
Anyone that bends a guitar string is influenced by black music.
 
I think he's out on the ledge for the twenty-fifth time saying "guys? really, I'm going to jump. really, you guys."
Speaking of ledges...I'll go out on one to predict a cancellation of his tour dates with Interpol, and a reunion with JM after a hiatus.
Of course, I have zero proof of this. Haven't touched a drop today, am chemical free as always. Just an odd hunch from odd me.
 
Speaking of ledges...I'll go out on one to predict a cancellation of his tour dates with Interpol, and a reunion with JM after a hiatus.
Of course, I have zero proof of this. Haven't touched a drop today, am chemical free as always. Just an odd hunch from odd me.
If that ever happens Morrissey will give an interview on the eve of the first date and get the whole thing cancelled.
It seems like there is a pattern. New project announced and then a new interview that makes everyone forget the project and talk about what he said instead. Maybe it's because the music isn't the best he can do but I think if he had The Queen Is Dead Part II in the can he would still say something divisive and ruin its chances.
 
Maybe she IS Sinead O'Connor!
As far as The Beatles they don't have to sound like delta blues on every song to be "influenced" by black musicians. Like most musicians they had many influences. some of what they played wouldn't be considered rock but rock wouldn't exist without black musicians.
And yes, the need to state that "Morrissey made white music for white people" and "was not influenced by black musicians" does sound racist, but that gets into who you are as a person and we can just move past that. If you want to say you're not or that it doesn't matter and facts are facts, that's okay.
But Morrissey stole a whole song from The Cookies.
Have you ever heard "The Girl Least Likely To?"
If you think The Smiths weren't influenced by black musicians you've never read their interviews. http://www.passionsjustlikemine.com/influence-music.htm

In short you're ignorant and willfully so, and your motivation doesn't much matter to me personally, but it's pretty easy to prove you're factually wrong. My recommendation is to leave out phrases like "white music for white people" and learn to read.
I did not say anything like "much of heavy metal has few black influences." I said that the most classical metal I'm aware of is influenced by a blues rock musician. Ritchie Blackmore was heavily influenced by classical music but you can't separate the influences.
Anyone that bends a guitar string is influenced by black music.


Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. White people invented the first electric guitar, google it. It's you who needs to learn to read. I could pick up my electric guitar right now and bend the strings, and I'd have done it without being influenced by any black blues musician. It's a natural thing to do when you pick up a guitar. Black people invented the guitar bend now :rolleyes:? White people invented the electric guitar but they wouldn't have known how to bend the strings if black musicians hadn't shown them? You're a f***wit.

Guitar based music would have evolved without black blues influences. Listen to Helter Skelter. When you're exploring your instrument you start experimenting, adding distortion and trying different sounds. You don't need to have heard blues music to do that.

The fact is rock music as we know it wouldn't exist without white people because they invented most of the equipment used to record it and play it.

Did some pretty decent experts tell you that you can't bend a guitar string without being influenced by black musicians?

I'm not 'ignorant' because after all I already know the generally accepted version of the history of rock music that you're trying to push on me, I simply reject aspects of it. I know you like official narratives and don't question very much, your name is 'The Truth' after all which implies black-and-white thinking which can't be shifted. So keep believing that you know 'the Truth' if it makes you happy, but the truth is that "anyone who bends a guitar string is influenced by black music" is stupid even by your standards.

"Morrissey made white music for white people" is simply a fact of his early career, not a fantasy of mine. And his music was all the better for it. Didn't he even say he wanted his fanbase to be skinheads in nail polish?
I already conceded that black blues musicians were an influence on rock music. I said the Rolling Stones had black influences, some of the Beatles music was influenced by it, some of Elvis. That wasn't good enough for you. In your world white people wouldn't know how to play the guitar if black people didn't walk them through it with baby steps. Black musicians have to be the givers of life, the creators, the sun that white rock bands revolve around. You're full of shit. A lot of white guitar music exists independent of black influences, and would have come into existence without old blues guys sitting on a porch singing about God and women and cornbread 100 years ago. Deal with it.
 
What is that person talking about? I've seen the rumors and innuendo but what's ... The Truth?
I have no idea. Some deranged stalker from ten years ago at a Morrissey concert who clearly is not getting enough attention. I've tried analysing sick minds and I get nowhere.

He may have a point if I could remember this person or what he looked like or if he even made sense but alas I can remember is the concert. He or she is clearly in love with me.

It could be this unattractive russian or polish girl that was pushing her way through the queue. She was a piece of work.
 
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Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. White people invented the first electric guitar, google it. It's you who needs to learn to read. I could pick up my electric guitar right now and bend the strings, and I'd have done it without being influenced by any black blues musician. It's a natural thing to do when you pick up a guitar. Black people invented the guitar bend now :rolleyes:? White people invented the electric guitar but they wouldn't have known how to bend the strings if black musicians hadn't shown them? You're a f***wit.

Guitar based music would have evolved without black blues influences. Listen to Helter Skelter. When you're exploring your instrument you start experimenting, adding distortion and trying different sounds. You don't need to have heard blues music to do that.

The fact is rock music as we know it wouldn't exist without white people because they invented most of the equipment used to record it and play it.

Did some pretty decent experts tell you that you can't bend a guitar string without being influenced by black musicians?

I'm not 'ignorant' because after all I already know the generally accepted version of the history of rock music that you're trying to push on me, I simply reject aspects of it. I know you like official narratives and don't question very much, your name is 'The Truth' after all which implies black-and-white thinking which can't be shifted. So keep believing that you know 'the Truth' if it makes you happy, but the truth is that "anyone who bends a guitar string is influenced by black music" is stupid even by your standards.

"Morrissey made white music for white people" is simply a fact of his early career, not a fantasy of mine. And his music was all the better for it. Didn't he even say he wanted his fanbase to be skinheads in nail polish?
I already conceded that black blues musicians were an influence on rock music. I said the Rolling Stones had black influences, some of the Beatles music was influenced by it, some of Elvis. That wasn't good enough for you. In your world white people wouldn't know how to play the guitar if black people didn't walk them through it with baby steps. Black musicians have to be the givers of life, the creators, the sun that white rock bands revolve around. You're full of shit. A lot of white guitar music exists independent of black influences, and would have come into existence without old blues guys sitting on a porch singing about God and women and cornbread 100 years ago. Deal with it.
String bending may have happened in classical music before the dawn of the twentieth century. There has to be some piece of music that involves string bending as opposed to just vibrato.
But that thing that every white boy rock guitarist does comes from African music. It exists elsewhere, in Asia, for example, but The Beatles hadn't gone to meet the Maharishi yet.
I wonder who you think invented the electric guitar? I'm just curious. Leo Fender? I think it probably depends how you define it and the name of the first person to amplify a guitar has been lost to history.
I think that you haven't really studied this or you have done so quite carefully with an eye towards reaching the conclusion you had drawn before you even started.
Now I did not say all music comes from black people so don't hang that on me. But rock music has a huge dose on black music. It's amazing that you think "some" skiffle was based on black music. Lonnie Donegan is practically a minstrel show.

You can pick up your electric guitar and bend the string and you're not influenced by black musicians? But then you do other things and you are? I'm wondering how the various parts of your brain keep so well segregated?
Once you have heard this music you are always influenced especially if you're improvising. That is part of what makes music "the universal language."

You're correct that I'm an incredibly stupid person and ignorant on almost every subject you could name but facts are facts and this really has nothing to do with me or my "low IQ."
 
String bending may have happened in classical music before the dawn of the twentieth century. There has to be some piece of music that involves string bending as opposed to just vibrato.
But that thing that every white boy rock guitarist does comes from African music. It exists elsewhere, in Asia, for example, but The Beatles hadn't gone to meet the Maharishi yet.
I wonder who you think invented the electric guitar? I'm just curious. Leo Fender? I think it probably depends how you define it and the name of the first person to amplify a guitar has been lost to history.
I think that you haven't really studied this or you have done so quite carefully with an eye towards reaching the conclusion you had drawn before you even started.
Now I did not say all music comes from black people so don't hang that on me. But rock music has a huge dose on black music. It's amazing that you think "some" skiffle was based on black music. Lonnie Donegan is practically a minstrel show.

You can pick up your electric guitar and bend the string and you're not influenced by black musicians? But then you do other things and you are? I'm wondering how the various parts of your brain keep so well segregated?
Once you have heard this music you are always influenced especially if you're improvising. That is part of what makes music "the universal language."

You're correct that I'm an incredibly stupid person and ignorant on almost every subject you could name but facts are facts and this really has nothing to do with me or my "low IQ."

Wrong again but it's nice that you keep trying. They're not facts. A fact would be "black musicians had a lot of influence in the early days of rock and roll", but then we have "you can't bend a guitar string without being influenced by a black musician" which is not a fact. It's an opinion if we can even call it that.

A significant amount of the rock music that we've had over the past 40 years is unrecognisable from the earliest styles of rock. In many cases the blues element has been completely extracted from it. If you reanimated Robert Johnson's corpse and had him listen to The Cure, I think you'd struggle to convince him that they're a black music influenced band. Sure they covered Jimi Hendrix early on who was a pretty decent guitar expert, but aside from him and a few others like Arthur Lee, rock music must have been at least 95% white since the late 1960s.

You absolutely can find innumerable bands who have no blues influences and don't use the blues scale or anything else that can be closely associated with early black rock or blues music. It's a separate entity now, whites commandeered it and shaped it and turned it into something new which became theirs. Whites were there from the beginning too, take some of the white folk songs on 'Anthology of American Folk Music' and add an electric guitar and it's rock music.

You overestimated the black influence while I conceded all along it was a relevant factor in rock's history which you implied was racism because it wasn't obsequious enough.

You're the one who wants to give credit for an entire genre of music, not even a sub-genre but anyone who so much as touches the instrument in question, to one race. It's a shame you wouldn't look at crime statistics by race as closely.

As for electric guitars, every person I see mentioned as having a hand in the creation of electric guitars is white. Early models by Lloyd Loar and George Breed, to the 1930s models closer to what we have today by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker. If white men invented the instrument I fail to see how you can't bend a string without being influenced by a black musician.

If I created a new instrument and handed it to you before I played a note on it, and you composed a song and handed it back to me saying "now you can't play a note without being influenced by The Truth", it wouldn't make it true. An instrument only has so many notes, and whatever sounds you came up with while playing it, I would have found for myself before long.

The person who wrote the first novel in English is disputed, I've heard it credited before to Samuel Richardson. If he did write the first English language novel, that doesn't make Margaret Atwood's latest novel indebted to him and his legacy. She likely would have turned to writing fiction regardless of whether Samuel Richardson had ever existed. And there have been so many novels since then that Richardson's influence has been all but lost in the 21st century. We could say the same for the vast majority of the early 20th century acoustic blues musicians. So she can type up her novel without being influenced by Richardson or Defoe and I can bend my guitar string without having to credit Lightning Hopkins for it.

And like you said "string bending may have happened in classical music before the dawn of the twentieth century." but you close with "facts are facts", after establishing that you're not entirely sure what the facts actually are. :rolleyes: :guitar:
 
Obvious tribute to Urbanus who died at the swiss suicide clinic just the day before this statement.
 
Wrong again but it's nice that you keep trying. They're not facts. A fact would be "black musicians had a lot of influence in the early days of rock and roll", but then we have "you can't bend a guitar string without being influenced by a black musician" which is not a fact. It's an opinion if we can even call it that.

A significant amount of the rock music that we've had over the past 40 years is unrecognisable from the earliest styles of rock. In many cases the blues element has been completely extracted from it. If you reanimated Robert Johnson's corpse and had him listen to The Cure, I think you'd struggle to convince him that they're a black music influenced band. Sure they covered Jimi Hendrix early on who was a pretty decent guitar expert, but aside from him and a few others like Arthur Lee, rock music must have been at least 95% white since the late 1960s.

You absolutely can find innumerable bands who have no blues influences and don't use the blues scale or anything else that can be closely associated with early black rock or blues music. It's a separate entity now, whites commandeered it and shaped it and turned it into something new which became theirs. Whites were there from the beginning too, take some of the white folk songs on 'Anthology of American Folk Music' and add an electric guitar and it's rock music.

You overestimated the black influence while I conceded all along it was a relevant factor in rock's history which you implied was racism because it wasn't obsequious enough.

You're the one who wants to give credit for an entire genre of music, not even a sub-genre but anyone who so much as touches the instrument in question, to one race. It's a shame you wouldn't look at crime statistics by race as closely.

As for electric guitars, every person I see mentioned as having a hand in the creation of electric guitars is white. Early models by Lloyd Loar and George Breed, to the 1930s models closer to what we have today by George Beauchamp and Adolph Rickenbacker. If white men invented the instrument I fail to see how you can't bend a string without being influenced by a black musician.

If I created a new instrument and handed it to you before I played a note on it, and you composed a song and handed it back to me saying "now you can't play a note without being influenced by The Truth", it wouldn't make it true. An instrument only has so many notes, and whatever sounds you came up with while playing it, I would have found for myself before long.

The person who wrote the first novel in English is disputed, I've heard it credited before to Samuel Richardson. If he did write the first English language novel, that doesn't make Margaret Atwood's latest novel indebted to him and his legacy. She likely would have turned to writing fiction regardless of whether Samuel Richardson had ever existed. And there have been so many novels since then that Richardson's influence has been all but lost in the 21st century. We could say the same for the vast majority of the early 20th century acoustic blues musicians. So she can type up her novel without being influenced by Richardson or Defoe and I can bend my guitar string without having to credit Lightning Hopkins for it.

And like you said "string bending may have happened in classical music before the dawn of the twentieth century." but you close with "facts are facts", after establishing that you're not entirely sure what the facts actually are. :rolleyes: :guitar:

I think the problem we see the idea of "influence" differently.
We agree that "black music" was an influence that was present in the 50's. I would call it a founding influence. You might use other words.
Robert Smith wasn't a great choice. Here he is in 2004 talking about his influences.
What was the first show you went to?
The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or ’74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn’t really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous. I saw them probably ten times in two years. The actual sound of them live was just so overpowering, it was better than drinking.

What else did you listen to as a kid?
When punk came along, I found my generation’s music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, ’cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, “This is it.” And I saw the Buzzcocks the following week, and I thought, “This is definitely it.”
You might have said The Pet Shop Boys, but Neil Tennant was in a hippie band in the 60's and has most likely has "jammed" on "the blues" at some point. Would love to see a video of that.
Maybe DeadMau5 or something? Does he play an instrument? But you can't really get into dance music and avoid a black influence. I think you'd be stuck with classical. Wait though.
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Maybe bluegrass? You would have to find out who Bill Monroe's influences were.
When you pick up your electric guitar do you play something like this?


The reason I say bending strings is African is because there are stringed African instruments where string bending is part of the technique. It's very different than classical guitar. But Africans in the US who were influenced by having heard these instruments replicated them on guitar.
Attempting call and response between instrument and voice was another reason strings were bent. It was to make a stringed instrument slide between notes like a voice.

But I can't prove it to you. But I do know that string-bending is a blues thing. I said that it may have occurred in classical music because there is an awful lot of music I'd have to be very familiar with to say that it never occurred.

I get that your opinion is basically "if it's white, it's alright" and you don't really care what the facts are. But you'll never win an argument by trying to twist my words.
 

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