BCB 100 - The Smiths

Threads and discussion dedicated to major acts.
Bungo the Mungo

Postby Bungo the Mungo » 17 Jun 2006, 10:56

Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?


I do. But there's loads of great music out there. some of it with a lot more relevance to my circumstances and emotional state.

I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind.


Agree, again. I liked the band, but it was all very calculated. Or at least it seemed so. 'What will appeal to the dispossessed? the teenage recluses?'.

Appearing to be calculated is almost as much of a crime as being so, really, in rock music. Don't you think? Morrissey's pose was the antithesis of Rick James saying 'girl look at my cock', and yet equally forced and off-putting.

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Postby Owen » 17 Jun 2006, 10:56

Minnie the Minx wrote:
Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?




I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind. .


You are on some kind of bizarre hallucigenic medications, and I claim my five pounds.


I wish i was. He just comes across as a complete twat to me, that mediawhore interview tour he did for the last album was dire, an old man still passing out the same glib lines to cover up the fact he didn't really have anything to say about anything and was a little dim really.

Made me think of all those fragile teens back then basing life choices on him.

But the fans lapped it up, again.

Minnie, Boss of Appropriate Posting

Postby Minnie, Boss of Appropriate Posting » 17 Jun 2006, 11:02

the name is Coan wrote:
Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?


I do. But there's loads of great music out there. some of it with a lot more relevance to my circumstances and emotional state.

I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind.


Agree, again. I liked the band, but it was all very calculated. Or at least it seemed so. 'What will appeal to the dispossessed? the teenage recluses?'.

Appearing to be calculated is almost as much of a crime as being so, really, in rock music. Don't you think? Morrissey's pose was the antithesis of Rick James saying 'girl look at my cock', and yet equally forced and off-putting.


Hey, I'm not a fragile teen now and I STILL ask Morrissey what milk I should have on my coco pops.

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Owen
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Postby Owen » 17 Jun 2006, 11:03

the name is Coan wrote:
Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?


I do. But there's loads of great music out there. some of it with a lot more relevance to my circumstances and emotional state.

I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind.


Agree, again. I liked the band, but it was all very calculated. Or at least it seemed so. 'What will appeal to the dispossessed? the teenage recluses?'.

Appearing to be calculated is almost as much of a crime as being so, really, in rock music. Don't you think? Morrissey's pose was the antithesis of Rick James saying 'girl look at my cock', and yet equally forced and off-putting.


You probably were unable to see him on Jonathan Ross last year, just answering every question with these silly little studied non-sequitors because he appeared, to me at least, unable to actually process what had been asked and answer intelligently. In retrospect a lot of his big quotable soundbytes in the 80s sound the same. He will readily admit that very few of them were actually 'true', be it celibacy or hating reggae,

I dont mind that kind of act, in a large part it was what 80s music was missing, there was something glorious and self created about it all that tied into the kitchen sink northern realism that I mentioned above. It was an understandable reaction to the times and his background and it sparked something in thousands of people including myself. I wouldn't challenge the Smiths music at all, and dont really care if Morrissey meant it or had any ideas deeper than a soundbyte.

But it's a bit sad seeing it still trotted out.

It's not really worth discussing though, they are the one band on here where it is impossible to actually have a debate however many threads there are, because people just see it as 'you're slagging off the smiths', get all misty eyed about the impact he had on them, and misread it as an accusation that there is something intrinsically teenage about them that you grow out of.

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Postby The Prof » 17 Jun 2006, 11:06

Owen wrote:
the name is Coan wrote:
Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?


I do. But there's loads of great music out there. some of it with a lot more relevance to my circumstances and emotional state.

I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind.


Agree, again. I liked the band, but it was all very calculated. Or at least it seemed so. 'What will appeal to the dispossessed? the teenage recluses?'.

Appearing to be calculated is almost as much of a crime as being so, really, in rock music. Don't you think? Morrissey's pose was the antithesis of Rick James saying 'girl look at my cock', and yet equally forced and off-putting.


You probably were unable to see him on Jonathan Ross last year, just answering every question with these silly little studied non-sequitors because he appeared, to me at least, unable to actually process what had been asked and answer intelligently. In retrospect a lot of his big quotable soundbytes in the 80s sound the same. He will readily admit that very few of them were actually 'true', be it celibacy or hating reggae,

I dont mind that kind of act, in a large part it was what 80s music was missing, there was something glorious and self created about it all that tied into the kitchen sink northern realism that I mentioned above. It was an understandable reaction to the times and his background and it sparked something in thousands of people including myself. I wouldn't challenge the Smiths music at all, and dont really care if Morrissey meant it or had any ideas deeper than a soundbyte.

But it's a bit sad seeing it still trotted out.

It's not really worth discussing though, they are the one band on here where it is impossible to actually have a debate however many threads there are, because people just see it as 'you're slagging off the smiths', get all misty eyed about the impact he had on them, and misread it as an accusation that there is something intrinsically teenage about them that you grow out of.


Seems to me like you're just slagging off the Smiths

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Penk!
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Postby Penk! » 17 Jun 2006, 11:06

the name is Coan wrote:
Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?


I do. But there's loads of great music out there. some of it with a lot more relevance to my circumstances and emotional state.

I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind.


Agree, again. I liked the band, but it was all very calculated. Or at least it seemed so. 'What will appeal to the dispossessed? the teenage recluses?'.

Appearing to be calculated is almost as much of a crime as being so, really, in rock music. Don't you think? Morrissey's pose was the antithesis of Rick James saying 'girl look at my cock', and yet equally forced and off-putting.


I shouldn't really post on this thread because my feelings about the Smiths are pretty well-known by now anyway but I do have to agree strongly with this point. I always thought, and I'm pretty sure I said elsewhere recently, that Morrissey's lyrics never seemed particularly natural, that they were always carefully tailored to a particular image and didn't really reflect his own feelings or views, or even his ownwriting style - it was all far too contrived.
Of course teens everywhere are always going to fall for lyrics about not having a girlfriend and sitting in your room staring at the wall, that's why emo is so popular, but with the Smiths it never seemed to strike a chord with me. I'm not pretending I was any different to other teens, aside from the tiresome ones with haircuts and ripped jeans who were too vapid to realise they had a self to be aware of, of course I had my spells of indulgent adolescent misery but I got through it by listening to Joy Division or bands like that who put a more interesting slant on it. What Morrissey had to say about it always seemed a little too obvious and never drew me in even when other people were discovering them, they're still popular with alienated teens and like Owen says it is because of the miserable angsty stuff rather than any of their political or wider-ranging social lyrics, though again those lyrics never really connected with me because they are very much of their time, they don't have any real relevance to more modern concerns.
And yeah Morrissey's a bit of a knob anyway.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

Minnie, Boss of Appropriate Posting

Postby Minnie, Boss of Appropriate Posting » 17 Jun 2006, 11:11

Penk wrote:
the name is Coan wrote:
Owen wrote:
Classic Prof wrote:It's just like putting on a classic film or skimming through the pages of a book. Why would you not want to play great music?


I do. But there's loads of great music out there. some of it with a lot more relevance to my circumstances and emotional state.

I think the Morrissey of recent years has gone a long way to killing any remaining interest as well, you can't really see him without wondering how stupid we had to be to pay him any mind.


Agree, again. I liked the band, but it was all very calculated. Or at least it seemed so. 'What will appeal to the dispossessed? the teenage recluses?'.

Appearing to be calculated is almost as much of a crime as being so, really, in rock music. Don't you think? Morrissey's pose was the antithesis of Rick James saying 'girl look at my cock', and yet equally forced and off-putting.


I shouldn't really post on this thread because my feelings about the Smiths are pretty well-known by now anyway but I do have to agree strongly with this point. I always thought, and I'm pretty sure I said elsewhere recently, that Morrissey's lyrics never seemed particularly natural, that they were always carefully tailored to a particular image and didn't really reflect his own feelings or views, or even his ownwriting style - it was all far too contrived.
Of course teens everywhere are always going to fall for lyrics about not having a girlfriend and sitting in your room staring at the wall, that's why emo is so popular, but with the Smiths it never seemed to strike a chord with me. I'm not pretending I was any different to other teens, aside from the tiresome ones with haircuts and ripped jeans who were too vapid to realise they had a self to be aware of, of course I had my spells of indulgent adolescent misery but I got through it by listening to Joy Division or bands like that who put a more interesting slant on it. What Morrissey had to say about it always seemed a little too obvious and never drew me in even when other people were discovering them, they're still popular with alienated teens and like Owen says it is because of the miserable angsty stuff rather than any of their political or wider-ranging social lyrics, though again those lyrics never really connected with me because they are very much of their time, they don't have any real relevance to more modern concerns.
And yeah Morrissey's a bit of a knob anyway.


His words didnt reflect his experiences and feelings?
Let me tell you this, I have spent considerable time with Morrissey.

When he wasn't reeling round fountains, he was getting punctures on desolate hillsides. The times he rang me and said, Minnie, Ive got a puncture. And this hillside, it's desolate.

How you can claim that he wasn't writing from the heart is beyond me. You just don't know him like what I do.

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Postby Owen » 17 Jun 2006, 11:26

DiamondDog wrote:
you always seem to approach them from a very specific angle, owen, wondering about their relevance to yourself and the world at large these days. i can see your point but songs like "bigmouth strikes again" or "the boy with the thorn in his side" aren't trapped in the eighties at all - there'll always be kids who get caught up in the romanticism of those songs.


Like Penk said i dont actually think that is what is appealing to kids today, they see the more miserable stuff as some sort of proto-emo, all the stuff we saw the irony and humour in they take at face value. Because these days there are plenty of bands with thousands of teenage fans whose names never crop up here or in Mojo or whatever writing totally earnest teen angst music that never happened in 'our day'

Kids who like 'bullet for my valentine' like 'Heaven Knows I'm Miserable now' at face value, because they are used to music being earnest about that stuff, it's not some timeless recognition of irony and Shelagh Delaney references.

apart from that, you don't have to have been part of a band's context to enjoy them on a certain level. as i've said before, i'm not a penniless, heartbroken black man and (unlike lenny!) i've never worked in a coalmine but i still like john lee hooker and lee dorsey.


True, but I think a lot of those cases the music is a lot more visceral and the lyrics either a lot more generalised or simply irrelevant. Marr still sounds amazing to me (to be fair the Smiths do, this prompted me to put hatful of hollow on and it sounds great), and intellectually i still get the lyrics, but i have to struggle to remember the context.

it might be that the smiths' uniqueness has diminished over the years as their influence has crept into other music but they're still a very singular entity in pop. i don't play them so much these days but whenever i do i'm struck by how magnificent they were.


whenever i hear them they sound great, its the connection thats gone with me rather than appreciation

The Modernist

Postby The Modernist » 17 Jun 2006, 11:32

I think more than any other artist, Morrissey's lyrics create their own very specific world. This is partly what made them so great in the first place, I'd not heard anyone singing of such things before and certainly not with such wit. At the same time, it is this singularity which means that some struggle to go back to them. It is, I think, rather like reentering a world that you've long since left behind.

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Postby Oscar » 17 Jun 2006, 11:35

What a load of old cock cheese! If you want relevant, up-to-date themes then watch the news, listen to radio 4, subscribe to the documentary channel. I don't think the Smiths were ever a current affairs band, were they? I thought the fairly accurate 'kitchen sink drama' label pointed more towards those English post-war, bleak, northern films. Lots of new groups are doing and saying exactly what the Smiths were doing and saying and the same kids are loving it.

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Postby Penk! » 17 Jun 2006, 21:07

Oscar wrote:I don't think the Smiths were ever a current affairs band, were they? I thought the fairly accurate 'kitchen sink drama' label pointed more towards those English post-war, bleak, northern films. Lots of new groups are doing and saying exactly what the Smiths were doing and saying and the same kids are loving it.


'The same kids' are all 40-year-olds by now though. Yeah there's an influence there, you can't hear bands like the Arctic Monkeys without noticing it, but the Arctic Monkeys are a lot more vivacious and energetic. There's plenty of pose but they actually have fun rather than being so determinedly miserable and I think it's reflected in the music, they're shouty and punky and noisy where the Smiths are dreary and grey. Morrissey probably is a better lyricist than the Arctics guy, I don't like either but Morrissey at least gives the impression of being fairly bright whereas the Arctics guy just gives the impression of trying to appear bright.
This is just an idea, before the Smiths fans get the torches and pitchforks out again, but was the more upbeat British indie that really galvanised British rock in the late '80s perhaps a reaction to and against the dourness of the Smiths?
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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Postby Tom Violence » 17 Jun 2006, 21:39

Who has ever written a better two liner than:

'A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand
I think I can help you get through your exams'
I'm the sort who gets out of a bath with a dirty face

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Postby Penk! » 17 Jun 2006, 21:44

Pretty Boy Floyd wrote:Who has ever written a better two liner than:

'A boy in the bush is worth two in the hand
I think I can help you get through your exams'


Do you want a list?
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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Tom Violence
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Postby Tom Violence » 17 Jun 2006, 21:52

Please
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Penk!
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Postby Penk! » 17 Jun 2006, 22:06

Rolf Harris
Simon Le Bon
Des'ree
Leonard Cohen
Sir Mixalot

There's a few to get you started.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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Postby copehead » 17 Jun 2006, 22:13

Penk wrote:
Oscar wrote:I don't think the Smiths were ever a current affairs band, were they? I thought the fairly accurate 'kitchen sink drama' label pointed more towards those English post-war, bleak, northern films. Lots of new groups are doing and saying exactly what the Smiths were doing and saying and the same kids are loving it.


'The same kids' are all 40-year-olds by now though. Yeah there's an influence there, you can't hear bands like the Arctic Monkeys without noticing it, but the Arctic Monkeys are a lot more vivacious and energetic. There's plenty of pose but they actually have fun rather than being so determinedly miserable and I think it's reflected in the music, they're shouty and punky and noisy where the Smiths are dreary and grey. "Morrissey probably is a better lyricist than the Arctics guy, I don't like either but Morrissey at least gives the impression of being fairly bright whereas the Arctics guy just gives the impression of trying to appear bright.
This is just an idea, before the Smiths fans get the torches and pitchforks out again, but was the more upbeat British indie that really galvanised British rock in the late '80s perhaps a reaction to and against the dourness of the Smiths?


quoted for emphasis

"have fun rather than being so determinedly miserable"

"the Smiths are dreary and grey"

I sometimes think there were 2 bands called the Smiths in the 80s, the band that we listened to and the band that people like Penk didn't listen to but thought they knew all about by taking a couple of lyrics out of context.

I always thought the Smiths were, generally, cheerful, bright pop music of the highest quality with brilliant thought provoking lyrics that could be mordant or sad but always with a wicked knowing grin, but also often be happy, angry, violent ................etc.
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Postby Mike Boom » 17 Jun 2006, 22:13

No way were the Smiths dreary or grey, the music really sparkles and is a million times more vivacous and energetic than the bloody Arctic Monkeys - listen to "the Headmaster Ritual" or "The Queen is Dead" or "Rusholme Ruffians" , there is tons of energy there - the lyrics may often address the fight against dreariness and dullness etc but they are set against extremely colorful music. The juxtaposition is what makes it great. Does the humour pass you right by? "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before"!

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Postby copehead » 17 Jun 2006, 22:19

Penk wrote:Rolf Harris
Simon Le Bon
Des'ree
Leonard Cohen
Sir Mixalot

There's a few to get you started.


:D :D :D :D

What a card

Straight to the treasury of mirth with that side splitter
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Penk!
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Postby Penk! » 17 Jun 2006, 22:22

Owen wrote:It's not really worth discussing though, they are the one band on here where it is impossible to actually have a debate however many threads there are, because people just see it as 'you're slagging off the smiths', get all misty eyed about the impact he had on them, and misread it as an accusation that there is something intrinsically teenage about them that you grow out of.


Quoted for emphasis.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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Postby Tom Violence » 17 Jun 2006, 22:25

Miserable Lie
Heaven Knws I'm Miserable Now
handsome Devil
Headmaster Ritual
Rusholme Ruffians
Nowhere Fast
Cemetery Gates
Frankly Mr Shankly
Vicar ina Tutu
Girlfriend in a Coma
Is it Really so Strnage?


Every one packed with wry humour.

A lot of people seem to think Morrissey means it when he says he's miserable now. He might mean it, but its all tongue in cheek. A lot of his lyrics (eg Girlfriend in a Coma) are not meant to be taken seriously. In his time he was even criticised for what was seen as 'taking the piss'.

Keane are a miserable band. The Smiths are sometimes deep and meaningful, but more often fun, tongue in cheek humour sung along to some of the best melodies this side of oooh shall we say the Beatles.
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