The Smiths (again!)

["BING E BONG"]

I've been meaning to start this for a while, but wasn't sure it'd get much response (I mean, we talk about them pretty often, don't we?) - and also, you know, the (predictable) labelling of present-day Morrissey as 'toxic' tends to drown sweet pretty discourse about his fabulous and fabled old band.

Anyway...

The BBC showed some old Smiths' footage from 1983 recently - did you see it? have a watch







it struck me once again how extraordinary they were, right from the outset. That's in many ways a pretty uncompromising thing they were presenting - the strained vocal, the 'off' lyrical themes, the lack of anything synthetic in the music. I can't remember, quite honestly, paying much attention this early on (although I bought the debut on cassette, the same day as Under A Blood Red Sky, fwiw) but those early singles quickly became big talking points between me and my mates. By the time they broke up just four years later we were major fans, and the split left us heartbroken.

Do you remember first hearing or seeing them?

Was there a contemporary band that was comparable, in terms of how they affected you? (I'm assuming we're not going to get any mentions of Duran Duran here)

Did you see them live?

Do you still listen to them?

[loveless]

Do you remember first hearing or seeing them?

I certainly do. "How Soon is Now" would have popped up on MTV once or twice in early 1985 (keep in mind that I lived in New Orleans then, and a lot of major "alternative" music had a minimal presence in that time and place), and I think a friend of my parents who was visiting had it on a cassette as well (which I listened to specifically to hear that song again).

It's such a striking and compelling track to hear as one's introduction.

Was there a contemporary band that was comparable, in terms of how they affected you?

Honestly, their effect on me was delayed (if not altogether posthumous), so...huge band for me down the years, but...I think other things of the era that I was moved by couldn't have affected me in any real similar way. Differently? Sure. But...all the things people talk about with them and those records...what would you even compare them to?

There's groups to whom I would have sworn a far greater allegiance in real time (specifically, the 1980s) whose effect on me, as I now look back, is comparatively minimal, or downright nil.

Did you see them live?

Sadly, no. If I had an opportunity, I didn't know or value it, but...again, I don't actually think I had one.

Friends of mine who lived in more of "a John Hughes movie" (I mean, quite literally - the moneyed north suburbs of Chicago) DID see them on the Queen is Dead tour and still rave about it, so the sense of what I missed is acute enough.

Do you still listen to them?

Like anything I love, I go in and out of phases. Some of the bigger phases were in the late 80s (when a lot of the records became available on CD), and at/near/either side of the turn of the millennium (when I started learning a lot of their songs on guitar), and again maybe 5 or 6 years later. I never stopped listening, just...you know, things go on the shelf for a spell, and then come back down.

They are such an unlikely band (in terms of the evergreen success and reputation and renown), and this is yet another element I treasure. Our sort of pet bands (however obscure or famous any of them may be) often look like these improbable and impossible combinations of people and elements and styles.

Collecting them was an absolute treat, because so much of their best work wasn't always part of the four canonical albums (I feel like the singles, B sides, and "only played it on Peel Sessions" type tracks - some of which were compiled immediately, and some of which were not - are kind of massive in number...you'd think you had it all with something like Hatful of Hollow or Louder Than Bombs, and then find there was even more lurking on The World Won't Listen...or elsewhere). Some of those "extra tracks" are standards now (things like 'Please Please Please...' for example).

They were probably a bigger influence on my own work than artists I've maybe championed more conspicuously. And, yeah, the issue of Morrissey's latter day bullshit is...for me, at any rate, that's never going to become the cover story.

[loveless]

Oct 28, 2024 16:33:53 GMT loveless said:

.

[fearlessfreap]

Do you remember first hearing or seeing them?

Vaguely - they got some press here when the first album came out. It probably was released later here than in the UK. I bought the first album (I bought all of the US releases) while it was pretty new.

Was there a contemporary band that was comparable, in terms of how they affected you? (I'm assuming we're not going to get any mentions of Duran Duran here)

To be honest, they were just another band to me. I liked them fine, but no more than say, Echo and the Bunnymen or Psychedelic Furs. What was it 83,84? I was most likely into stuff like the Wipers and the Minutemen.

Did you see them live?

I did - At The Beacon Theater around 85.

Do you still listen to them?

I haven't for some time - maybe sometime this week since I have been reminded of them.

[Charlie O.]

I remember reading a review of their first album in, I think, Stereophile Magazine (not a magazine I read regularly or even liked much, but there was an issue lying around at work - at the time, I had a summer job in the electrical shop at the Library Of Congress). To call the review over the top would be an understatement; I think the writer said something like it was the most exciting and important debut since The Velvet Underground & Nico! Which was especially weird to read in Stereophile, which was typically quite sober in tone. I didn't take the review seriously, in part because it was so over the top, and in part because there were a number of lyric quotes that lost something in translation, as it were (true of most good lyrics that get quoted in reviews, really) - so I didn't rush out to buy it.

Like loveless, the first thing I heard was "How Soon is Now", on local freeform station WHFS, and I was immediately struck by the cool tremelo and various other guitar flourishes, and by Morrissey's pitchy voice and the unusual structure/melodies of both verse and chorus. Again, I didn't run to the record store, but I was intrigued. Maybe a week or two later, I heard "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" on the same station, and laughed out loud - not only were the lyrics a riot, but the vocal seemed so gratingly off-key that I wondered what made them think they could get away with it. (At some point, I stopped hearing M's voice that way, but that was certainly my first impression.)

From the release of Meat Is Murder 'til well past the band breaking up, I heard The Smiths all over the place - in friends' dorm rooms/houses, in record stores, on college radio... so much so that I never felt the need to actually buy any of their music at the time. In those college and immediately-post-college days, the band's most passionate American admirers seemed to be gay males, and females who I'll describe as "goth-curious." They all took Morrissey's lyrics very seriously/personally, and seemed bewildered or offended when I would suggest that many of those lyrics were hilarious. (See also Cohen, Leonard.)

In 1989, I think, I somehow came into possession of a pre-recorded cassette of Louder Than Bombs (I really can't remember how - I was never much of a cassette buyer), and soon found myself playing it a lot. Within a few years I'd bought the whole catalogue (bar some b-side obscurities) on CD.

I did not see them live. Somewhere I have a Warner Theatre poster from 1986 advertising back-to-back shows by Public Image Ltd. and The Smiths; I attended the former. (It was great! The Beastie Boys, of whom I had never heard, opened. Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before.)

Do I still listen to them? Sure! By this point it's mostly back to hearing them when someone else puts them on, but I always, always enjoy it.

[Stacy Heydon]

Do you remember first hearing or seeing them?
I got into them very early...as early as you can get really without living in Manchester. I still have a memory of this..I tuned into the radio one night and heard 'Hand in Glove' and it immediately grabbed me. Didn't know who it was or anything like that. It was just the sound of thing, it's driving sadness and desperate romanticism. I really liked the sad wail of the harmonica (though it turned out it was hardly a signature sound, was this the only time they used it on a record?) and that 'I'll probably never see you again' coda. Although it's never become one of their most loved songs, it really did have an impact -one of the rare times a new band, who I knew nothing about, completely transfixed me through their originality. I bought it that week. Anyway we heard they were playing London for their first London headlining gig and went up, to the ICA in The Mall. But as we approached the small venue we could already see a sizable queue, it seemed half of London had turned up and of course we couldn't get in. I've thought about this since, how did such a new band build up such a buzz so quickly? They'd had very little media at this point, there was no charismatic manager hyping them up. It was the closest thing to a completely organic, natural overnight success as I've seen. They just managed to excite a lot of people very, very quickly.



Was there a contemporary band that was comparable, in terms of how they affected you?

Not quite in that immediate way, I think that was the only time it happened to me.


Did you see them live?

Yes, a couple months later at The Electric Ballroom in Camden, still in 1983. By this time 'This Charming Man' had come out and blown everyone away, maybe the third single too, but not yet the debut album. So this meant I sill didn't know that many songs, although me and my mate loved the b sides as much as the a sides, another thing that was different about them. I've a memory of looking down on them, but can't remember enough about the layout to know why, perhaps we were upstairs. I remember thinking Marr looked pretty cool, he impressed me more than Morrissey. They were sprightly and bouncy, but still had a rawness that gave away their inexperience. They had such a short set, they had to play 'This Charming Man' twice. I enjoyed them, but they didn't blow me away.
I never saw them again, nothing against them particularly, it's just that as the 80s progressed I became more of a clubber than gig goer. I felt they split at the right time, they were beginning to lose their sparkle.

Do you still listen to them?

Not really.

[loveless]

Oct 28, 2024 19:24:59 GMT Stacy Heydon said:

 I felt they split at the right time, they were beginning to lose their sparkle.

I would absolutely agree with this. 

And, to your point, I think it's for the best that we got to hear them for a few minutes without their sparkle, cause...had they split a year or even six months earlier, there might be some collective sense (among the fandom) of unfinished business, or "what might have been".

[DarknessFish]

I don't recall the first time I heard them at all, but then at the time they were at their peak/end, I was probably only just getting into music, and was largely listening to Level 42 and The Pet Shop Boys. They don't really mean an awful lot to me at all. I love a handful of their songs, (Bigmouth, This Charming Man, ..Light..), but the only album I own is The Queen is Dead, and find it pretty patchy.

I guess they were always there in the background, but with the trajectory my music taste was to take (roughly - extreme metal to goth to industrial to folk) they just weren't as interesting as the post-punk and less NME-favoured bands bands. Mid 80s NME approved indie is all watery shit, really, and to be a bit harsh, The Smiths are in some ways an embodiment of that. Too tasteful, too concerned with image, and I still think The Monochrome Set did it first, and better.

["BING E BONG"]

Oct 28, 2024 17:47:11 GMT Charlie O. said:

...I heard "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now" on the same station, and laughed out loud - not only were the lyrics a riot, but the vocal seemed so gratingly off-key that I wondered what made them think they could get away with it. (At some point, I stopped hearing M's voice that way, but that was certainly my first impression.)

I think it was mine, too.

I only found out just a couple of days ago that the title was a reference to this song by Mozz' hero (it's not very good, by the way):

[rayge]

Do you remember first hearing or seeing them?
I think the first time I heard them was when I got home from Rough Trade with my copy of Hand in Glove, bought the weekend after it came out based on something I read in the NME. I was smitten. I bought everything they released in the lifetime of the band, usually within days of its release.

Was there a contemporary band that was comparable, in terms of how they affected you?
I was in my 30s, so they didn't really engage withem emotionally or feel any commonality. I wasn't a fan of the band as such, so much as their records and Morrissey's interviews (I was already familiar with him to a degree as someone who wrote to and for the NME). Their TV performances and presentation - the glads in the back pocket, the hearing aid tribute to Johnny Ray, Moz's wierd dancing - all added to the general joys.
So this question for me really boils down to, were there any other bands that you collected all their records and lapped everything up, in the mid-Eighties? And the answer to that is probably New Order and the Stone Roses: there may be others that have slipped my mind, plus I'm not really sure of the choronologies: Spacemen 3 or Dinosaur Jr fit the lapping up and collecting criteria, but think they might not have been contemporary.

Did you see them live?
Nope. Saw very few bands in the ’80s; met Chip in 1982 and she wasn't into gig-going.

Do you still listen to them?
Not for decades. I pretty much stopped listening after they broke up - it all evaporated rather quickly. I sold all my 12-inch singles some years ago - Copehead bought most of them - and I think the albums have all gone now, too: not that any album after the first was much good anyway, they were a singles band as far as I was concerned.

[fonz]

I listened to a comp last week. The early stuff took me straight back, like a madeleine, to my early teens.
Good songs.
I lost interest after MiM to be honest.

[Charlie O.]

Oct 28, 2024 19:33:32 GMT loveless said:

Oct 28, 2024 19:24:59 GMT Stacy Heydon said:

 I felt they split at the right time, they were beginning to lose their sparkle.

I would absolutely agree with this. 

And, to your point, I think it's for the best that we got to hear them for a few minutes without their sparkle, cause...had they split a year or even six months earlier, there might be some collective sense (among the fandom) of unfinished business, or "what might have been".

I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person in the world who thinks Strangeways is their best. For me, they went from strength to strength, at least non-comp album-wise.

I was just looking at their discography on Wiki, and was startled to be reminded that Strangeways followed The Queen Is Dead by only a year and change (and of course there was The World Won't Listen/Louder Than Bombs in between). I suppose it's just a reflection of how much my life was changing in that time, and of course how productive the band was, but it feels to me more like a span of three years!

[adamcoan]

I said on this very forum that I thought strangeways was their best.

Hounded i was, laughed at and a hint of a sneer.

["BING E BONG"]

It is DILUTEDe Smiths

[adamcoan]

RUBBISHe