Smiths are for Kids

[Deleted member 6305]

For the most part, this article is pretty spot on. The older I am getting, the further I am getting from my 12 year old self. Although the lyrics and music I am finding is becoming less and less relevant to me, Morrissey (as a person) is still my main affection. Let's be honest, the only reason a teenager is so enthralled my Morrissey's forlorn voice and Johnny Marr's rhythm is because of the particular phase they're in. I mean, if I had to be a teenager without the wisdom that age brings for the rest of my life I would end it. The music was (or is) our lives. No one wants to be unloveable. And I'll tell you this, if my 17 year old self read this, he would kick my ass.

Of course, I can only speak for myself...

 

[Qvist]

Let's be honest, the only reason a teenager is so enthralled my Morrissey's forlorn voice and Johnny Marr's rhythm is because of the particular phase they're in.

No it isn't. And you're wrong.

 

[Deleted member 6305]

No it isn't. And you're wrong.

Yeah you're right. I meant to include much more than just Morrissey's voice. Sorry.

But what I meant in general is that as Morrissey fans grow older, the more they evolve. The greatest testimony to that would be Morrissey himself. He doesn't write about the some stuff anymore. Not because he's a horrible writter now as some would put it. But I believe it's because he has evolved as a person. This doesn't make Morrissey any less valid.

 

[murder and desire]

I didn't know that actually, thanks for the heads-up. Not that it makes the lyric less great.



Well spotted and fair points all, I was half expecting someone to make them. You're right, of course. I was piling it on a bit, but my point was mainly that the relationship to a piece of music doesn't need to stop at the personal level, and that the waning of the personal circumstances that fed the connection originally does not need to imply the waning of the music. I didn't intend to put the Smiths up on some lofty pedestal of great, olympian art to be admired at a distance. I wouldn't dream of poo-pooing the significance of human and utterly subjective connection, youthful or otherwise. But I do think it ultimately turns out to be not the most important thing when it comes to truly great stuff - part of it though it may be. A time and place for everything, perhaps?

Yes, check the song out- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWiZU6y38PQ
Miss Wood is of course fantastic. I used to have a tape (remember those) filled with the words of the wonderful victoria.

"Not meekly, not bleakly smack me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly"

 

[murder and desire]

For the most part, this article is pretty spot on. The older I am getting, the further I am getting from my 12 year old self. Although the lyrics and music I am finding is becoming less and less relevant to me, Morrissey (as a person) is still my main affection. Let's be honest, the only reason a teenager is so enthralled my Morrissey's forlorn voice and Johnny Marr's rhythm is because of the particular phase they're in. I mean, if I had to be a teenager without the wisdom that age brings for the rest of my life I would end it. The music was (or is) our lives. No one wants to be unloveable. And I'll tell you this, if my 17 year old self read this, he would kick my ass.

Of course, I can only speak for myself...

"Morrissey as a person", is in his songs. The main thing and most important thing you know about him is via his songs. So to tire of the songs is to tire of him.
Also, I would suggest there is not a universe of difference from what Moz writes now to what he wrote in The Smurfs.

 

[Qvist]

Yes, check the song out- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWiZU6y38PQ
Miss Wood is of course fantastic. I used to have a tape (remember those) filled with the words of the wonderful victoria.

"Not meekly, not bleakly smack me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly"

Hah, wonderful! The references are of course too many and too blunt to leave any room for doubt. That being said, what Morrissey does in Rusholme Ruffians seems to me to be something very different from the general tone of Victoria Wood's song, which is frankly and straightforwardly nostalgic (or, failing that, equally straightforwardly sarcastic).

You almost get the sense that all of his nostalgia is for the song and the singer he is referencing. For the actual subject and scene - the fair - there is none. If anything it's rather a gesture of alienation - he is drawing a scene taken from a song, and hence invoking "the last night of the fair" as a state of being or a sort of quasi-mythical scenery rather than as actual biographical experience. The last night of the fair, as experienced inside my head as I watch TV in my mother's sitting room. How very Morrisseyesque.

Anyway, what is so extraordinary about the lyric in my opinion is that it's so tense it's almost like a frozen explosion. A series of small telling scenes, each separate except in their shared tension - a schoolgirl joking about suicide, a vulgarly compulsive exhibitionistess, a radiant girl with an obviously tragic engagement, an eroticised speedway operator. This is what made me think of Dos Passos: The ability to conjure up an overpowering sense of vitality from an unconnected mass of barely glimpsed individual fates, caught at exactly the angle in which some key defining aspect emerges, in so far as we can tell.

Intermixed with this - or perhaps rather engulfing it - the consciousness of the narrator; alienation (senses being dulled by all this pointless falling in love and getting beaten up as the air hangs heavy like a dulling wine) the futile wished for gesture of the fountain pen - and this absolutely extraordinary self-affirmation in the midst of this swirling mass of strange-attractive-hostile humanity: I might walk home alone, but my faith in love is still devout. In every sense the negation of everything that went before it in the lyric.

 

[Deleted member 6305]

"Morrissey as a person", is in his songs. The main thing and most important thing you know about him is via his songs. So to tire of the songs is to tire of him.
Also, I would suggest there is not a universe of difference from what Moz writes now to what he wrote in The Smurfs.

No. You're just saying Morrissey is 2 dimensional.

 

[murder and desire]

Hah, wonderful! The references are of course too many and too blunt to leave any room for doubt. That being said, what Morrissey does in Rusholme Ruffians seems to me to be something very different from the general tone of Victoria Wood's song, which is frankly and straightforwardly nostalgic (or, failing that, equally straightforwardly sarcastic).

You almost get the sense that all of his nostalgia is for the song and the singer he is referencing. For the actual subject and scene - the fair - there is none. If anything it's rather a gesture of alienation - he is drawing a scene taken from a song, and hence invoking "the last night of the fair" as a state of being or a sort of quasi-mythical scenery rather than as actual biographical experience. The last night of the fair, as experienced inside my head as I watch TV in my mother's sitting room. How very Morrisseyesque.

Anyway, what is so extraordinary about the lyric in my opinion is that it's so tense it's almost like a frozen explosion. A series of small telling scenes, each separate except in their shared tension - a schoolgirl joking about suicide, a vulgarly compulsive exhibitionistess, a radiant girl with an obviously tragic engagement, an eroticised speedway operator. This is what made me think of Dos Passos: The ability to conjure up an overpowering sense of vitality from an unconnected mass of barely glimpsed individual fates, caught at exactly the angle in which some key defining aspect emerges, in so far as we can tell.

Intermixed with this - or perhaps rather engulfing it - the consciousness of the narrator; alienation (senses being dulled by all this pointless falling in love and getting beaten up as the air hangs heavy like a dulling wine) the futile wished for gesture of the fountain pen - and this absolutely extraordinary self-affirmation in the midst of this swirling mass of strange-attractive-hostile humanity: I might walk home alone, but my faith in love is still devout. In every sense the negation of everything that went before it in the lyric.

I knew what you were saying, I was just pointing out....well you know what I was pointing out.
Nice bit of writing by the way.

 

[murder and desire]

No. You're just saying Morrissey is 2 dimensional.

No, I am not at all and if you put some thought into it you would see I am not saying that.
I am saying, the only way you know Morrissey as a "person", to use your word, is through his music or at least its the main rout to the the "truth".

That is where he pours his life, or used to. Obviously, there is more to him than what he puts in his music.
But I am almost certain you don't know a thing about him outside a few facts and the gossip mill.
Thus, all I am saying is that your main source of info is through his music and that really is as it should be- do you think knowing what he had for breakfast in 1991, who he hanged around with in 2001, what coat he wears or where he lives gives you anymore info than one his LPs?
The reason Morrisseys art has touched so many of us is because he uses emotion and aims from a "real place" within himself.
I think you are mixing music and media image up, I am in no way talking about his media image -that has never meant a thing to me, mainly because I have always look to the human behind it.

You say you were into the Smiths at 12, I think at 12 you wouldn't have had any real sense of what Morrissey or his music were about.
Also, you mention being "unloveable" as if the Smiths were all about being "unloved". This is silly, Morrissey talked about many states of mind, being alone and unloved was just a part of that. You do not have to be a teenager to have those feelings,

 

[david1957]

Just like the Beatles were for kids, once we got into the late Seventies and Eighties.

The truth is, the music was pioneering - whether it's the Beatles or the Smiths. Then their time is over and we all move on.

Let's not forget though , just how influential and exhilarating it was at the time.

 

[Deleted member 6305]

But I am almost certain you don't know a thing about him outside a few facts and the gossip mill.
Thus, all I am saying is that your main source of info is through his music and that really is as it should be

How can you be so sure? Cheers dude.

 

[murder and desire]

How can you be so sure? Cheers dude.

Well, I did say "almost", for all I know you could buy his socks for him.
Enjoy your weekend, it's freezing here in Blighty

 

[murder and desire]

Just like the Beatles were for kids, once we got into the late Seventies and Eighties.

The truth is, the music was pioneering - whether it's the Beatles or the Smiths. Then their time is over and we all move on.

Let's not forget though , just how influential and exhilarating it was at the time.

I really don't understand your point. The (over rated), Beatles are a different beast to The Smiths.
The Beatles did push the art form forward in a stylistic sense, in as much as they tried new sounds and what not, The trouble with moving things forward in this way is that styles change and those whom were once avant guard get over taken.
The Smiths didn't move music forward in that way at all, the Smiths were always quite traditional. Morrissey pushed things forward by being poetic and talking about hitherto untapped subjects and bringing a certain depth. Then there is his singing and (the often over looked) phrasing.
In truth hardly anything The Smiths did was "new" as such it was the way they mixed it all together.
(For instance Pop stars had talked of Jean Genet,Wilde,Kitchen Sink dramas,James Dean, Elvis and working class life before- Bowie,The Kinks,Lennon,The Jam etc).
Morrissey, did represent an ilk of person that hadn't really been highlighted in pop before or if it had then not to much success- the sensitive, shy,poetic and feminine English working class male with issues.

You say music has moved on since the Smiths as if they are no longer relevant, I say this is poppycock. The reason they are just is valid is because they talked about the human condition and the human condition never, really changes.
I actually think pop and rock has moved backward rather than forward in the last 20 years- there are, it must be said, a number of female pop stars of worth but since Morrissey there has been not one truly potent male pop person- I don't think

 

[Qvist]

Just like the Beatles were for kids, once we got into the late Seventies and Eighties.

The truth is, the music was pioneering - whether it's the Beatles or the Smiths. Then their time is over and we all move on.

Let's not forget though , just how influential and exhilarating it was at the time.

Er, no. That's exactly the point. The music was pioneering, which is why it remains influential and exhilirating. There is absolutely no good reason to discard it and move on, any more than we discard Leonardo Da Vinci or the Marx brothers.

The whole "right now and just for us" idiom of pop music died about 20 years ago, didn't you notice? The Doors revival of the early nineties was its death knell.

Bloody good thing too, because when you think about it, that was a way of relating to music that treated it like it was pretty much just another fashion accessory - at the very most, the soundtrack of the hipper segment of 5 or 6 year classes. Of course, that was once part of the point - to embrace consumerism and discardability was to embrace a new form of freedom and identity, which was the heart of pop art and the intrinsic core of pop culture. But does anybody believe that anymore?

 

[marisela]

For the most part, this article is pretty spot on. The older I am getting, the further I am getting from my 12 year old self. Although the lyrics and music I am finding is becoming less and less relevant to me, Morrissey (as a person) is still my main affection. Let's be honest, the only reason a teenager is so enthralled my Morrissey's forlorn voice and Johnny Marr's rhythm is because of the particular phase they're in. I mean, if I had to be a teenager without the wisdom that age brings for the rest of my life I would end it. The music was (or is) our lives. No one wants to be unloveable. And I'll tell you this, if my 17 year old self read this, he would kick my ass.

Of course, I can only speak for myself...

There is a differance and the Immaturity of taking what Morrissey (or if you want to differentiate "The Smiths) was saying so literal. Even at the time.
You are right! Finally, True,it is not nice to feel unlovable. Or Still Ill.
But lets go to Morrissey!. I Love him, Yet, this is why we should not take things so literal, But eh! you were 17. That is what is so fasinating about him. His music his way of thinking.He sums it all up. So maybe you just needed a good guide to help out with what you were feeling when listening to The Smiths.
Oh, I heard people tell me time and time again that Morrissey depresses people by comparing it with Girlfriend in a Coma.
You have finally learned??
Say
Interesting drug"
The one that you took
TELL THE TRUTH - IT REALLY HELPED YOU!

It's all good..It all can be taken as a Metaphor.
The reality is that Mr Morrissey did pretty good for himself.
I doubt he wanted to evr depress you.
He just sang HIS life.

 

[ellay mort]

Here's a rather irritating little Smiths tidbit:

Three Bands Everyone Pretends to Like More Than They Actually Do:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/thre...ends-to-like-more-more-than-they-actually-do/

Excerpt: "Today hearing 'That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore' is nice for about ten seconds until you’re transported back to being an unloved teenager and then things start to get uncomfortable. Your lip starts to quiver, your eyes start blinking rapidly, a zit begins to form on your chin. Suddenly you get the urge to throw your iPod across the room and smash into a million dejected little pieces. It’s okay. This just means you’re a grownup now who doesn’t need to magnify their sadness by listening to some closeted British guy wailing."

that makes me angry. not everyone was only alone and sad, once, for a week, when they were 14. for some people that's life, morrissey being one of them, and the people who react that way frankly don't have the right in my opinion to have any ownership of the smiths or their music, and can go off being their happy selves and listen to shit records. for people whose only frame of reference for those feelings are those few weeks in between relationships or that one awkward month in adolescence, anything morrissey says is going to sound magnified and melodramatic, because they frankly haven't got a clue.

i know that's a bit extreme, but it's how i feel about it. the smiths are not a teenage band.

 

[joe frady]

Apropos perhaps...
last night on the bus home I had a little iPod epiphany ~ 'I'd Love To' means far more to me now than 'This Charming Man'.

 

[crackersoup]

This bit about Radiohead actually irked me more than anything written about The Smiths:

"So apparently Bob and the drunk woman love Radiohead. Do they love the band like they love their french press or their Roomba? Who knows, who cares, I’m turned off. When a band has the ability to transcend social groups, you might take that just to mean they’re super talented, but you’re wrong! It means someone is not being completely honest with their feelings, someone is using the band to establish some sort of credibility. I’m not pointing any fingers here, but let’s just put it this way— I doubt Thom Yorke would ever wear a performance fleece vest."

Oh, I'm sorry.. does that mean because I don't wear over-sized women's blouses and carry gladiolas in my back pocket on the daily that I can't be a true fan of The Smiths? I was completely unaware we had to dress like a band to listen to them.

Ryan O'Connell is a div.