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